On the Relevance of NATO and the United Nations

Some useful thoughts are portrayed in this piece by Sarah Abed.

“Turkey holds NATO hostage until Syria-related demands are met”

I am in complete agreement that NATO has run its course and has no role to play, none at all, in the 21st century.  It is a quasi-military organisation with no army and no enemy since the fall of the Soviet Union late last century.  It currently serves only as an excuse for rogue states like the US and UK to interfere in the domains of any other non-NATO nation they choose to target.

That role is also partially shared by the United Nations Organisation, which it could be argued is also past its use-by date in many respects.  In the globally interconnected world of the 21st century there is no valid reason for any nation to view any other nation as an enemy.  There are of course non-state actors that still represent real threats to peaceful existence among and within nation states, so I am not saying that the UN, unlike what I said about NATO, has no role to play at all in such matters, but it should not be the privileged role of a number of major states to rule or dictate international action to deal with those things.  By that I mean there is no reason for a separate UNSC subgroup.  In fact in a fair and just UN General Assembly, no state no matter its size and influence should command any greater position to influence the decisions of the whole assembly or any other member state.  And those decisions should be limited in scope to matters of assistance to the legitimate government of other member states, and provide for no powers of veto or punishment to be imposed on any UN member as a means of coercion to comply.

The time for the overshadowing of enforcement practices and unified sanctions on sovereign nations is over.  We are all in this …whatever this is… together, and we need to act as one.  That is the unifying role that the UN should be playing.  And it is not a One World Government but a unity of the many individual sovereign states, made together by agreement and without duress or bribery. 

That, of necessity, is a simplistic view and much more could be said, but hey, is the current system working, in any fair and unbiased way?  I think not.

Are people happy with the way things are today?  I think not.

Look at all the nations subject to unrest, riots, imposed military action, governments overturned, suffering the effects of unilaterally imposed economic sanctions.  

Look at where the current UN stands in all of this.  Inept.  Impotent.  Trapped and held hostage by the corrupt political system of the unworthy owners of the land it resides on.

How can that be considered a working solution?

Of course I reserve the right to say that there probably is no working solution. That the world will go on, following a muddy path to perdition (non-religious) and eventual collapse to a basic existence. Which is why I don’t do more of these exercises in wishful thinking …but sometimes forget that that is what it is.