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US Vetoes UN Resolution for Ceasefire in Gaza
(consortiumnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Why is veto even a thing?
@Luccajan basically the UN is a forum for dialogue and we need the big players to be part of it.
If they don't get veto on the security council they will have a tantrum and leave, which will benefit no one.
The superpowers already flout international law when they really want to, because there is nothing the rest of us can do to stop them, but it would probably be far worse if they weren't even part of the UN.
Allowing the five biggest arms manufacturers on the planet to decide "security" issues is no different than allowing the five biggest drug cartels in the world to decide "health" issues.
@masquenox I agree apart from the bit about allowing. We literally can't physically stop them. They will decide "security" issues whether we want them to or not. That's my point.
It's not just because of their military might. In the 1980s, France carried out a terror attack in my country which killed two people. We actually caught the terrorists but our "allies" the UK, EU and US told us that unless we let them go (we had wanted to give them a trial and imprisonment) we would no longer be able to trade with those countries and faced economic ruin.
If we had no government able to withstand them, it would be better to be in dialogue with the cartels than not - and good to have a space where they could dialogue with each other, too.
Bodies like the UNFP and UNHCR are valuable. Discussion is valuable. Even with the security council it's better that the world at least express what we want, where each other can see it, even if it's inevitably vetoed by US or Russia or China.
I think mostly because the Allied Powers won WWII and got to make the rules. Often the argument is made that, by giving the nuclear-capable countries veto power, they’re less likely to use those weapons, but that might be more of a rationalization than the actual reason.
All it really boils down to is that the UN is toothless when trying to regulate any nuclear-armed country and any country or conflict a nuclear-armed country has an interest in. It absolutely sets certain countries apart in a multi-tiered system of international cooperation.
Because the US only agreed to join the UN on the condition that they would get to veto whatever they like.
That's just plain wrong. The veto was a feature in the League of Nations (the predecessor of the UN). When the UN was formed, the permanent members (US, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and China) all wanted this feature, ostensibly for unity and have all the major powers act together, but most likely to protect their own national interests.
China and Russia have used the veto to act against US interests as well.
This is like asking for medical advice on a naturopathic forum; sure you might get some vaguely correct answers, but mostly it's just going to be a lot of feel-good nonsense from partisan idiots who want to see the world in black and white.