Just as states and provinces don’t go to war when there is a strong national government to arbitrate their disputes, a strong UN would prevent wars between nations. The veto-less UN with access to enforcement troops that Roosevelt originally envisioned would have “kept the peace” by arbitrating international disputes and enforcing its decisions. But the insistence of Stalin and Republican isolatio
nists and jingoists on a unilateral veto system forced Roosevelt to accept a UN which cannot make decisions in controversial situations. In addition to the problems created by the structurally paralyzing unilateral veto system, figuring out how to give the UN reliable access to enforcement troops has also been a problem for most of its existence. However, the current willingness of ten to fifteen large nations to provide enforcement troops in return for guaranteed representation on the Security Council provides an avenue to solve that problem. The vast majority of foreign nations would accept an empowered UN which would resolve the veto issue, the lack of enforcement troops and a variety of US concerns. But foreigners don’t propose such an idea because they assume that no US government would take a principled position in favor of shifting the world policeman responsibility from the US to the UN. Until the costs of the problematical Iraq and Afghan wars caused huge economic problems for the US, US democrats and foreign experts may have been right to believe that the American people were too tied to “standing tall” to disagree with Republican ideas that the US alone should be the global sheriff. If you agree that the American people might be ready to support a plan to empower the UN to end war and allow the US economy to be free of the costs of being the world policeman, why not help me organize a grass roots movement for this issue. Since Einstein believed that whether we empower the UN to “keep the peace” will determine if the human race dies in a nuclear war, isn’t this an important enough issue to warrant a little bit of your time and energy? Please write me at my email address and/or look at the associated website (“the road to peace and prosperity” as per the link button on this facebook organizational page) for more information and to share your views and opinions.
