What would the world be like if the UN could enforce its resolutions?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

The title pretty much says it all?

[Somebody Else]

Better...

But with people complaining about big nanny UN being in control of their lives.

[Idaho]

It can enforce it's resolutions, if they suit the US.

[Fragony]

It can enforce it's resolutions, if they suit the US.

Awwwwww just a little patience untill the yellow dragon lifts off to cast big fat fireballs against anyone who knows how to spell economy correctly.

[Ronin]

if the UN could enforce it´s resolutions AND there were no bull**** veto powers....I´d say the world would be a whole lot better off.

[InsaneApache]

if the UN could enforce it´s resolutions AND there were no bull**** veto powers....I´d say the world would be a whole lot better off.

I disagree. The problem with the UN is that most of it's constituent members are not democracies. You can't have dictatorships lording it over democracies. IMO another organisation should be promoted, one that consists of democracies only. Maybe then we might have something that would be workable. Pressure put on the non-democracies to convert, so to speak, may, in some future time be able to actually do something that really matters.

[Ronin]

I disagree. The problem with the UN is that most of it's constituent members are not democracies. You can't have dictatorships lording it over democracies. IMO another organisation should be promoted, one that consists of democracies only. Maybe then we might have something that would be workable. Pressure put on the non-democracies to convert, so to speak, may, in some future time be able to actually do something that really matters.

If you look at the UN you´ll see that dictatorships are in the minority....so there is no way they would be able to impose their will over others in the UN.....appointments to special groups like human rights and such would have to take into the account the behavior of the country of course.

In my view what drags the UN more than anything else is the Veto power some countries have....as long as some countries can do anything they want because they have a veto power or because they are buddies with a veto power country the place will never work correctly.

[Kralizec]

I disagree. The problem with the UN is that most of it's constituent members are not democracies. You can't have dictatorships lording it over democracies. IMO another organisation should be promoted, one that consists of democracies only. Maybe then we might have something that would be workable. Pressure put on the non-democracies to convert, so to speak, may, in some future time be able to actually do something that really matters.

The UN is obviously a product of its time, wich required a forum of sorts to deal with international disputes peacefully (among other goals)
Simply not recognising authoritarian countries would have been counterproductive, the Soviet Union being so powerful at the time. Even now it's simply a reality that we have to deal with dictatures diplomacticly, since replacing all with democracies is not a viable option. We can see that now with the Iraqi insurgency- it's perhaps to premature to tell with certainty that the whole democratization has failed, but doing that with every dictature on the planet is obviously an impossibility.

I'll say this once: I don't really like the UN myself. I like the idealist vision behind it, but the reality is sadly lacking.

[Louis VI the Fat]

if the UN could enforce it´s resolutions AND there were no bull**** veto powers....I´d say the world would be a whole lot better off.

There's only a veto power system in the security council, not in any of the other UN institutions.

There is nothing wrong with a veto system in itself. The reasoning behind it is very logical - there's no point in a resolution if a major power refuses to abide by it. A preventive veto system merely acknowledges reality.

[Don Corleone]

It can enforce it's resolutions, if they suit the US.

As far as I know, it suited the US just fine to enforce 1559 but it wasn't. The UN had a dozen resolutions against Saddam Hussein but none of them were enforced.