On Wednesday, speaking after an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres begged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war he had unleashed on Ukraine, pleading:
In the name of humanity, do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century, with consequences not only devastating for Ukraine, not only tragic for the Russian Federation, but with an impact we cannot even foresee in relation to their consequence for the global economy in the moment when we are emerging from COVID-19.
Guterres added, “This war doesn’t make any sense.”
Guterres’ plea fell on deaf ears, as Putin relentlessly continued his assault on Ukraine into the day.
The ineffectual nature of the United Nations, which has no intrinsic military power of its own, and its incapacity to confront belligerent nations invading other nations, has been demonstrated again and again, and one critic took note, tweeting, “The United Nations died today (I personally think it was dead already but nothing left after tonight).”
The United Nations died today (I personally think it was dead already but nothing left after tonight)
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) February 24, 2022
The Council of Foreign Relations admitted in September 2020:
During the four decades of the Cold War, the UN became a venue for US-Soviet rivalry. The fact that the Cold War did not turn hot (as great power competition had twice before in the twentieth century) was due less to what happened at the UN than to nuclear deterrence and a balance of power that compelled significant caution in US and Soviet behavior. The principal occasion when the UN intervened to maintain international peace – committing an international force to reverse North Korean aggression against South Korea – it could do so only because the Soviet Union was boycotting it.
Writing about the United Nations in National Review in 2017, Andrew McCarthy opined:
When you pretend that all states are equal, that there is no difference between the good guys and the bad guys, that is always a coup for the bad guys. And that’s what the U.N. is: a coup for the bad guys.
Think about it: We are voluntarily entered into an arrangement in which actions affecting American national security and prosperity are subject to the Security Council veto power of Vladimir Putin and the Communist Party of China – the principal patrons of the “Death to America” regime in Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of anti-American terrorism.
Article 1 of the United Nations Charter states: “The Purposes of the United Nations are: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”
Article 2 adds, “The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles. … All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
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