Showing posts with label UN Charter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UN Charter. Show all posts

Friday, December 14, 2018

Within the UN (United Nations) some are more equal than others



The United Nations was created on 24 October 1945 and represented the will of the world's states to prevent a new global conflagration by: removing threats to world peace and security, developing friendly relations among all world states, co-operation to solve economic, social, cultural and humanitarian challenges faced by mankind; promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.

Although the UN was endowed with all the necessary mechanisms to maintain international peace and security, this desideratum was impossible to achieve given that a number of conflicts have taken place or are still ongoing today as, as far as the system is concerned collective security has opted to subordinate the whole mechanism to a single body, the Security Council. The granting of a privileged status, namely the permanent member of the SC to a number of 5 states: the USA, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Russia, France and China, generated a bicephalous world order, on the one hand the purposes and principles The Charter is opposed to all states, on the other hand, the great powers, although they do not formally deny that the Charter is on top of it.

This article aims to analyze all the conflicts that marked the world after the establishment of the UN, to answer the question of why the UN did not fulfill its mission and what reforms should be made in order to avoid conflicts in the world.

Donald Trump United Nations Credit: USA Today


Conflicts that marked the UN post-world were mainly determined by the Soviet-American confrontation that began to show up with the start of the decolonization process.
The Korean War was the first major UN challenge and highlighted the weakness of the organization. Thus, the CS found that a violation of peace had been committed and recommended the assistance of the South Korean authorities through a United Nations Command UN, ie through a mechanism that is not in the UN Charter.

Instead, the Charter provided for the setting-up of a State Committee as a body for consultation and assistance of the CS in all military matters, as well as for the regulation of arms and eventual disarmament. The Staff Committee would be made up of Heads of State of the 5 permanent members of the CS.

The State Staff Committee was set up by the CS decision adopted on January 25, 1946. Although this body has preserved its existence until present, it has never been able to exercise its functions. The disagreement was mainly misunderstandings between the major powers regarding the composition of the armed forces to be made available to the CS, as well as their location. Also an insurmountable obstacle was the one related to the attribution of the leadership of these forces


The war in Korea

It was the first dilemma of the US policy of embarrassment with the end of the WWII. For three years this type of policy has worked very well. The Atlantica Alliance, which was founded in 1948 as the first peace alliance, served as a bastion against the Soviet expansion, while the Marshall Plan in Western Europe from the economic and social point of view. The Aid Program Greek-Turkish rejects the Soviet threat to the east of the Mediterranean, and the Berlin Air Force made it clear that the democracies were ready to risk the war to resist the threats of the USSR. The policy of encroachment had a major escape, which made the American leaders acting from two wrong premises: the challenges they were going to face would still be the type that had been before the Second World War II, and the communists would expect incapable disintegration of their own mastery.


A column of the U.S. 1st Marine Division's infantry and armor moves through Chinese lines during their breakout from the Chosin Reservoir; UN landing at Incheon harbor, starting point of the Battle of Incheon; Korean refugees in front of a U.S. M26 Pershing tank; U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez, landing at Incheon; F-86 Sabre fighter aircraft photo Credit: Wikipedia

Western leaders have not taken into account that the Soviets will try another kind of strategy. So the US was faced with a threat from a Communist surrogate that triggered a conflict with a state that Washington declared outside the perimeter US strategic interest. The aggressor was North Korea and the South Korean victim, both as far away from Europe as the nodal point of the encroachment policy.

However, Truman, only a few days after the attack, sent an expedition force created ad-hoc from the staff of poorly trained occupation troops in Japan in order to assault local defense. But the US decision to intervene in Korea was in flagrant contradiction to what he had declared a year before, General Douglas MacArthur, who had assured the Soviet side of the Pacific line of defense in the Pacific. There was, however, a favorable context, generated by the soviet sovereignty. More specifically, the Soviet ambassador to the UN, the boycott for months of CS in protest against the organization's refusal to restore China's capital to Bejing. If the Soviet ambassador were less frightened by Stalin or if he could, and gained quicker instructions, could use its right of veto against the US resolution that called for North Korea to cease hostilities and return beyond parallels 38. By not taking part in the session, it allowed the US to organize resistance as a decision of the international community and to justify the American role in ordinary Wilsonian terms, right in opposition to dictatorship, well in opposition to evil.

UN Charter on Human Rights Credit: Democracy Chronicles


At the same time, this is also the context when the US noticed the gateway through which the UN Charter can be "fined."us was b Thorn 377/1950, known as Acheson or Uniting for peace.

Uniting for Peace Resolution is the resolution that fundamentally changed the collective security mechanism of the UN Charter by extending the functions of the General Assembly, which becomes operational in the situation where the CS can not operate being blocked by the right of veto. According to this resolution, in all cases when there is an imminent threat to peace, a violation of peace or an act of aggression, and when, due to the fact that unanimity can not be achieved among CS members, they are unable to discharge their primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security , then the AG will immediately examine the issue in order to make the necessary recommendations on the collective measures to be taken including the use of the armed force. If the AG is not in the session at that time, it will meet in an emergency session within 24 hours of the request submitted to this end either by the CS or by most Member States in the UN.

Beyond the controversy generated by this resolution, being brought at the time by a whole suite of legal criticism (contrary to Art. 12), it was often applied, based on which the Peacekeeping Commission and the Commission for Collective Measures as subsidiary AGs and has enabled the UN to become more actively involved in conflict management through the UN Emergency Force, operable even in those conflicts where the major powers were part, such as the Suez Conflict.


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