United nations and the use of force
Established with both the unscrupulous inaction of the League of Nations and the decisive effectiveness of the coalition against the Axis powers, the United Nations seemed to provide a multilateral, enforceable approach to international law and order at its inception. The bipolar world of the Cold War and the arguably hegemonic position of the United States in its aftermath provided sundry challenges to the UN's preeminence. As a climate of great-power policing pervaded international initiatives, the collective security goals of the UN were compromised by the national security objectives of the more prominent states. UN operations could be improved through Security Council reform and funding of peacekeeping operations, combined with expansion of the judicial authority of the United Nations to force compliance with its objectives. The structure of the UN Security Co
The United Nations has experienced varied results with peacekeeping operations since its first attempt during the Suez Canal crisis. Countries such as the United States, who has a 2/3 share of the $1 billion peacekeeping debt, ought to be subject to legal action should they fail to fulfill their fiscal obligations. Altering or expanding the permanent membership to include eminent states from each continent would give the body a more global voice. Though some of the remaining ten seats are reserved for Africa and Latin America, the regions do not automatically gain increased clout. Due to the national interests of the states holding the veto, the UN was not involved in Vietnam, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or the Falklands War despite the fact action in these situations would have been well within the UN's mandate. The permanent membership of the United States, France, England, Russia, and China is anachronistic, reflecting a geo-political order that no longer exists. Furthermore, in the interests of equality, the veto must be abolished to prevent obstructionist behaviour. With the exception of the establishment of peacekeeping forces in the 1950's, the UN's mechanisms for addressing collective security issues have remained largely unchanged since the institution was created to reflect the new, multipolar world in the twilight of World War II. Expansion of the permanent Security Council membership to include prominent states from all continents, combined with enforcement of the obligations of member states towards peacekeeping missions would empower the United Nations to make concrete steps towards collective security. The trend to outsource peacekeeping operations to other bodies, such as NATO as in the Balkans conflict and ECOMOG in West Africa, further illustrates the urgency for reform as the UN evidently cannot serve the interests of its member states without help from other organizations. Conversely, involvement in Somalia and Rwanda left the major powers reluctant to assume fiscal and military responsibility to rectify disaster in nonstrategic areas . Though in principle, this solution is incredibly sound, the possibility of non-compliance exists in the present climate of unilateralism, where all intergovernmental organizations face the same difficulty of enforceability. The UN requires judicial enforceability measures to ensure operations have the fiscal and military support necessary to adequately serve member states. Initiatives such as the debt-plagued UNFIL in Lebanon demonstrated large-scale initiatives require a considerable degree of support from the world's economic and military leaders.
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Acceptance Essays
