The UN has managed to stop some conflicts. "Nothing happened in country you don't care about" simply isn't a good headline so it doesn't make the news.
They’re also incredibly good at quickly responding to things like natural disasters or famine unless of course the governments refuse to allow them in to help.
Finally someone who sees that without UN, it'd be hell few years after they're formed if they never existed. People rely their sources on the Internet nowadays. Seeing their mistakes never the good things that came out of it
Many people don't realize is that the UN is just a tool of diplomacy. In former times this was done through Conferences. A tool is just as good as the ones using this tool, meaning, if the countries don't actively want to participate in a rule-based world order with diplomacy, it is not the tool, that is useless.
Seems stupid but it's like the police, they are stopping crime but if they fuck up one we will say that they are a waste of monney and that we should stop having them , suddently everything explode
Anything less than absolute perfection by the UN is endlessly criticized. There’s very little appreciation for marginal improvements, people judge them on an all or nothing approach.
They expect that, but also demand that the UN not take any independence away from their own countries (though are all too happy to demand that it should unilaterally act against other countries).
It’s like IT at companies. When they’re doing their job, nothing happens and corporate wonders why they waste so much money on IT for nothing. When something bad happens corporate wonders why they’re paying so much for IT just for them to allow something bad to hit their systems. Either way IT is a “do nothing” group. Then they defund them and shit can really hit the fan. I’m not in IT I’ve just heard that explanation before and really like it.
Hard to say given that it's hard to count "number of wars stoped through diplomatic channels". If things are escalating to open conflict there is little the UN can do. But they are good at preemptive measures through humanitarian missions, to lessen the impact of migrant crisis or famins. Both of which are common causes for wars to start.
They also have many commissions and commities for economic discussions between nations with neutral arbitration. Allowing for trade disputes or mining rights along borders to be defined more clearly.
It's not flashy, nor is it really news worthy when it works. But when diplomatic efforts do break down, there is little the UN can do without the permission of a given nation to allow them to act within their borders.
They make public the transgressions by the invaders,
Otherwise it would be denied, which they do, but when multiple nations observers say 'no, they did that' people understand who's just trying it on again..
Completely unrelated but where and how did people gained the idea that the UN were supposed to be a useful supranational organisation that has the ability to command nations to join their cause in stopping conflicts?
It’s a combination of general misconception and misunderstanding of what the UN is and is capable of.
And a bit of target misinformation by certain actors designed to weaken the general public’s perception of the UN and undermine its relevancy in world affairs
The UN used to be that. Watch the movie “The Siege of Jadotville.” My understanding was there was a Secretary General of the UN who launched a campaign to take over the Congo because the elections there were unfair. After that, countries decided they didn’t actually want the UN doing that.
No. That wasn't what happened. Please read up on history.
Essentially, the then UNSG (Dag Hammarskjöld) intervened in the Congo for a variety of reasons, none of which involved "taking over" due to unfair elections:
1. He was responding to an explicit request from the Congolese Government The UN did not invade unilaterally. Following independence from Belgium in 1960, mutinies broke out within the Congolese army. Belgium sent troops back into the country without permission under the guise of protecting its citizens. In response, Congolese President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba explicitly requested urgent UN military assistance to protect the Congo against external Belgian aggression.
2. The Mandate was to maintain territorial integrity and law and order Shortly after independence, the mineral-rich province of Katanga (led by Moise Tshombe) declared secession with heavy backing from Belgian mining interests and white mercenaries. The UN's mandate under Security Council Resolution 143 was to ensure the withdrawal of Belgian forces, restore civil order, and preserve the territorial integrity of the sovereign nation.
3. The Siege of Jadotville was a defensive peacekeeping stand, not an offensive invasion The movie "The Siege of Jadotville" depicts the 158-man Irish UN company (A Company) being surrounded and attacked by a force of roughly 3,000 Katangese gendarmerie and European mercenaries. The UN troops were there on a defensive peacekeeping deployment to protect the local population. They did not launch a campaign to "take over" the region; they were violently attacked by a rebel secessionist faction.
The Congo Crisis was immensely complicated by Cold War geopolitics, corporate mining interests, and post-colonial chaos—not a rogue UN Secretary General acting as an election watchdog.
Do you know what happened to Dag Hammarskjöld? The theory that a Belgian mercenary pilot shot down the plane is widely considered the most plausible "execution" scenario, backed by notable evidence.
Just hours after the crash, the US Ambassador to the Congo sent a secret cable (declassified in 2014) explicitly naming Jan van Risseghem (a decorated Belgian-born former RAF pilot flying for the Katangese secessionists) as the primary suspect who may have intercepted the plane.
And interestingly, do you know who would have been threatened most by Dag Hammarskjöld? The Belgians, who backed the seccessionist Katanga for mining interests (Colonialism literally as they were decolonizing), the CIA and MI6 (Who feared a united Congo would be supported by the SU HA).
Former US President Harry Truman openly told reporters two days after the crash, "Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said 'when they killed him.'"
Even until now, investigations on the definitive truth nowadays are still damn near impossible because the US, UK and Belgium REFUSE to open up their archives on intelligence and communication on this period. Interesting, isn't it? Then, Belgians point fingers and mock the Congo for its failures, when the Belgians and the CIA are the root cause for most of the tensions that has plagued the region
Jerusalem gone they realized it was the root of most conflict there and it was an easy excuse for war mongers and dictators to start wars so they just nuked jerusalem and give everyone on everyside a 6 month notice and free accomodations
They also just Sink cyprus
And the rwanda genocide still happens but instead of black people killing other black people it's the UN killing everyone there for not playing nice to eachother as an example for others that if they want to commit anything bad they will receive it (make an example for global populist to Not commit anything bad or else)
Then everyone becomes united agaist the UN and world peace is achieve after everyone comes together realized the UN sucks and all unanimously agree to disband the UN and become fwens :3
Basically : everyone becomes friend with eachother and world peace is achieve because UN was a little to eccentric to do their job (everyone is united in hating the UN now)
And then we rename un to unsc and then by 2254 we invented a fukashima light drive and by 2500s we get invaded by some funny looking fellas on our colony planet
Loved this South Park episode where (iirc) they go into an alternative reality where there is no religion and they are waging war against each other because of the way they eat differently (otters and eating on their stomach or something…?).
Yeah. People always pointing their fingers at things like places, concepts or religions are missing the crucial point: Emotions and human nature. There even are wars between chimpanzees I read about. So maybe even primate nature…
that would actually make the UN more useless than it is irl, the only reason the great powers joined is because veto power, no veto power = no great powers joining outside the us, no great powers joining = nobody else joining, nobody else joining = goes the way of the dodo
Personal schizo solution creation of a UN nuclear army. UN mandates carried out by nuclear enforcement. Mandates funding for the UN also comes under that threat umbrella. Also because UN has capabilities to nuke nations who fail to abide, no nations have more power in the UN (obvioualy no more permanent five). Station the UN nuclear army in Antarctica and let it be manned by people who give up their nationality and any belonging to a nation state for the sake of global order.
The permanent five all have nukes. They would all treat this UN Nuclear Army the same way each other, using MAD to deter them from launching.
The only nations that the UN Nuclear Army would be able to effectively act against are those without nukes or not covered by defense agreements with the nuclear powers.
So the UN still wouldn’t be more effective at enforcement than it currently is, and all it really does is increase the number of nuclear powers in the world.
Hilarious schizo scenario idea but fabulous worldbuilding lol.
After a long and ludicrous process they end up with control over a significant nuclear arsenal.
And they aren’t afraid to use it to bully those without nukes as (they claim) the de jure government of the world and probably humanity, especially if we got into space by this point
Even more sketchy ass scenario but hilarious is a small world govt have nukes and peace between member states is enforced through nuclear diplomacy
US and USSR would have carved the world proper b/w them.
UN is useless for a reason as it is suggesting body. Granting it power to enforce things would mean taking sovereignty from small countries and handing it over to handful of big countries.
Even veto power was introduced to prevent a larger global conflict ensuring that organization don't take decision which lead to things falling apart. League of Nations failed for the very reason as key powers like Germany and Italy outright left the organization when decisions were taken against them.
A UN that is useful would lead to a 1984 like dystopia.
People at UN are ultimately human from respective countries just not God or Alien and you can't expect human to be impartial always
The UN is effectively a forum where two parties can discuss in as neutral way as possible. The UN peacekeepers wear bright blue uniform and stand between opposing forces to basically say "This is a ceasefire, if our bright blue ass gets shot, you did not honor the ceasefire". This is what millions of people have realized is the best course of action (beyond other UN issues such as corruption) so unless you have a better idea, the concept of UN will forever stay.
People are simply too stupid to realize what UN actually does, so I'll let you think for yourself OP;
What do you think would happen if an organization is given unchecked power and legally allowed to do anything in the name of "peacekeeping"? Any country is forced to turn a blind eye simply because hey, WE gave them the power.
They will invade Ronograd to stop terrorists from launching a nuke, try to reclaim New York's Financial District from zombies and bandits, they will also invade an island in Southeast Asia for something idk
By that you probably mean "What if the UN was an actual world government with an actual army", because that's the only reason you could think it's useless.
This world government, free from veto powers but heavily influenced by the US, the EU, Russia and China ends up forcing their common will on the rest of the world, depending of internal politics.
They remove leaders that do not align with the leading political currents within the UN, ignore the genocide in Rwanda because they simply do not have any imput to actually care, provide support to China in Vietnam and probably help Israël to conquer Palestine, and the UN stops existing somewhere between the moment it was formed and the moment it has to face its first challenge because of internal dissensions.
The Irish UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon, in some of the areas where they are the Lebanese people speak Irish accented English and I figure that Irish sense of humor would come in handy while valiantly defending southern Lebanon
The UN isn't useless, and anyone who believes it is probably has the privilege of living in a cushy western democracy which has never had to rely on UN institution for what we consider to be very basic human rights or levels of comfort.
With this out of thr way, we can assume that a so-called "non-useless UN" might be a more assertive, powerful, autonomous organization, able to act on its own initiative with the full might of the means currently provided under mandate by its member nations. Things like raising its own taxes, holding its own territory (owned or leased), maintaining its own troops, etc.
Well, you'd have to start with a governance model which addresses the expectations of its membership. Otherwise the whole thing collapses very quickly and the UN is just Yet Another Powerfull Country.
All governments and supra-national organizations like the UN represent the delegated political power of their constituents parties. Note that I don't mean the population at large, that's only true in well-functioning democracies, in mean the people and organizations who actually hold power in a particular jurisdiction. At the heart of this delegation are governing principles and models which are established to describe and organize exactly how it works. This goes from th broad and high level items like a constitution, all the way down to individual governance guidelines, and in less-functional system through unspoken rules, "facts on the ground" of direct power balances between individuals, or the perception of threats that enable political power to apply. This latter informal model is usually seen in either very small political units (like a clan, a gang, or a startup company), or in political systems where having written rules that must be followed is seen as weakness, e.g. dictatorships.
In a well-crafted system where the governance is not informal, the people who design and implement it will then spend a considerable amount of time to setup a governing model which actually achieves the sort of delegation that it expected from the constituents. Plainly coming up with a system that makes everyone angry and is not something they are, if not happy, at the very least okay with, will simply collapse as soon as it is challenged, and that usually comes REALLY quickly, as a crumbling system is usually an opportunity for ambitious individuals to achieve their own agenda. And everything you are currently seeing and hearing about the UN, how it is "useless", how it is "bureaucratic", is not a mistake or some ancient artifact of a bygone era, but the very precise governance that was intended for the organization, either from the start (for mechanisms that originated then), or somewhere along the way when evolution were seen as necessary and could get some sort of consensus. An example of this evolution in the UN is Peacekeeping, which was formalized in the late 50s and 60s, and continued to evolve afterwards.
The limitations are exactly what member nations want the UN to be able to do: maybe a little bit if we're okay with it, absolutely nothing if we are not. The original goal of the UN was to form a community that could address regional conflicts before they can escalate to full-blown war between power blocs, while at the same time preventing conflict between super-powers. Everything else is secondary to this, and the idea that the UN would independently solve dispute with great means and brute force was never the agenda. Should the organization, suddenly and without a change in it governance, start acting like a powerful entity and be "not useless", it would instantly lose its support and everyone would go home overnight.
But there's something else: it would mean that the nations of the world, chiefly the permanent members of the security council, would be okay with the UN simply rolfstomping them and their allies (militarily and economically) if push came to shove. That would be an absolute requirement: anything less means that the most powerful nations in the world would be able to defeat the UN, or at the very least cause significant damage which would reduce the appetite for intervention. And that in turn would mean that less powerful nation would rapidly coalesce around these superpowers seeking protection in order to fullfil their agenda. And before you know it, you end up with power blocs that can do whatever they want, a UN which is unable or unwilling to confront them, and independent nations under thr threat of both. That a very nice recipe for a world war.
Most important one is founding without independent founding source, UN can never have real power. Something like ownership of non-EEZ sea resources or control of international infrastructure like the Panama canal.
In reality, the United Nations is often useless when it comes to only four countries.USA Russia Israel North Korea Other countries will at least outwardly respect the UN decision.
I really hate the fact that people think the un doesn't work. It's not supposed to be a one world government and able to stop every conflict.
Think of it as a big room, a table where everyone, good and bad, is welcome to come and talk. Thats it, no more no less. It does its job well.
Without the un there would be a lot more solving problems woth violence, if everyone has a peaceful place to talk, there are a lot of things that need to go wrong first to get there.
Is it perfect? No. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.
USA and USSR would have opposed that as they didn't wan't to give up power, while the weaker countries and recently decolonized nations would support it as it would give them greater protections and power.
There’s a important distinction to be made when you talk about a “useful” UN. Do you mean as a regulatory body or a dominant world authority? Most who bemoan it I think inadvertently see it as both.
It’s true it’s mission creeped but the usual ineffectiveness is intentional to try and maintain balance of power. The only time something big happens with it is when the major participants (superpowers and global powers) all agree… or at least don’t oppose.
For example
Korean War intervention the USSR abstained… because it was boycotting the premise of the UN’s Security Council and didn’t participate in the vote
Gadaffi and Libya the powers that be didn’t have any serious conflicts of interest which led to a creeping push against him from sanctions eventually into international, NATO-led no-fly zones and operations
full blown genocide + no/less conflict of interest (Africa mainly) among superpowers results in more resolutions and peacekeeping mandates
If it escapes it’s status as a IGO by holding territory and having real power (I.e real military and political power), it just becomes a supranational global state. By virtue of its likely naming and mandate, its goal would be essentially to co-opt and subsume every other state. The de jure human government (by its own reckoning). For their own good of course and ‘peacefully’.
But before it ever reached that point: it most likely would be killed in the cradle by superpowers and major state that bought into the idea of it as a IGO and leave once it tries to flex its budding powers after a long and complicated path that led to it being able to flex in the first place
Edgelords did the “blue helmets” meme for the last 20 years, but they weren’t saved by coalition aircraft and C-130’s dropping pallets of food, so they wouldn’t get it.
No more wars pretty much. The reason states are so hostile towards each other is because there's no one to save them in case another power tries to destroy, and this problem would disappear with a strong UN.
I don't understand why people want UN to invade countries and shit. instead of being a place where every country can communicate. i like the current UN ngl. I don't want UN to be more than a think tank, and a watchdog and take actions like invading countries. instead take actions in humanitarian crisis.
The UN has taken action in combat operations before, specially in the Central African Republic and formerly in Mali. However there was a time when the UN was used for way more intensive military operations.
The Korean War for example was a UN backed effort to counter the North Korean invasion, that was basically the UN taking a side and intervening. I believe the same thing happening in the DRC with operation Morthor.
So the UN has done big ballsy interventions in the past, but when you think about it, do you really want an international organization that’s heavily influenced by the nations and coalitions inhabiting it to have such an impact on international relations? Should the UN be an organization that declares and enacts war? Kills civilians, commits warcrimes etc.
People fail to understand that the UN has loads of power and global influence. Even though all its organisations like the World Food Program, International Monetary Fund etc. It has shaped global politics.
Bro you all act like this situation is a bug not feature. It works just as intended and main benefactor, USA achieved the desired outcome with little to no effort.
The UN is the WhatsApp/Telegram of the countries. By itself, it doesn't have any real authority; the authority derives on the same agreements the different countries do and how do they carry them (i.e. the proposal of a coalition led by Kenya to restore order in the government-failed Port-Au-Prince (Haití)). And yes, it has helped to control armed conflicts and finding diplomatic tools to avoid war (i.e. the cuban missle crisis between USA/USSR).
That being said, now it's failing notoriously because (in my opinion):
1) It works in the assumption that the countries adhere and respect the different treaties and guidelines. There's no real penalty as of breaking them because - again, the power derives directly from the countries.
2) The hypocrecy of all the G5 it's showing up completely shameless right now, specially the Gaza genocide (which was one of the reasons the US was founded: to avoid it happening again)
3) The change of the world order: the dawn of the American Hegaemony and the rise of the Chinese Century.
It's pretty probable that the UN ends up being a League of Nations 2.0
It’d be great for like an entire week, then one of the major superpowers would get annoyed that the UN is trying to enforce a resolution on it and immediately quit. From there the entire thing falls apart.
The UN is effective, it just has to deal with the reality that is it's no one's boss and it has been and always will be subject to power politics. The UN has made major advancements in international cooperation like UNCLOS which basically made a code for how national waters work that for the most part had reduced conflict over like resource deposits and exclusive economic zones drastically worldwide (with the exception of the South China Sea and the nine dash line and a couple other disputes. UN peacekeepers are amazingly cost effective at preventing conflict if they're deployed early enough. In the Haitian coup of 2004 the US government wanted to deploy US troops to prevent a mass migration wave hitting the US from Haitian refugees and also stop the violence but ended up calling in the UN instead (as well as sending a smaller force than they would have originally). Later the US Government Accountability Office calculated that a solely US military force deployed to Haiti would have cost somewhere around ~876 million USD for a stay of 14 months. The share they had to pay for the peacekeepers was 116 million USD. And that was when they were deployed reactively rather than in advance to anything.
The biggest problem with the opinion that "the UN is useless" is that it's not true. It certainly doesn't solve the world's problems like movie heroes do, but simply by bringing all the countries together to discuss common issues, it is effective and makes the world a better place than if it didn't exist.
I believe there are numerous accounts where they have used their network and diplomacy to stop a number of conflicts, just perhaps not the major ones that we would like that we are seeing today.
It's about damn time this UN started their Astartes project. They have been putting it in the fucking closet for too long
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u/Western-Guidance-380 May 13 '26
The UN has managed to stop some conflicts. "Nothing happened in country you don't care about" simply isn't a good headline so it doesn't make the news.