Exactly. I wouldn't mind the right to tell the UN they don't have a claim over me and I don't accept their laws. But somehow I can't find the ballot paper that gives me this.
Even if you think of the UN as a benign force of good, you still have no way of removing yourself from it.
Each citizen in a country has the possibility and the right to switch to another country, if, for whatever reason, they cannot abide by that countrys laws. This stretches from religious freedom to tax freedom. Yet it's impossible to escape the UN, and, as many people find out the hard way, when the UN passes a rule that ruins your life, you can't vote for the other guy.
My take is that every country should have to hold a periodic (say 10 year) referendum of whether to stay in the UN and continue to fund its programs. Happily, this would easily pass. But it would be nice to think that a citizen can enforce some accountability on the largest government of them all.
You mean it's a dictatorship run by the minority rich western white countries that force their imperialism on the majority of the world through the various arms of UN? That the US is able to impose sanctions on Iraq and now Iran even though the majority of the world is opposed to the sanctions? That the US is able to shield Israel from any sanctions despite its grave violations of human rights, its refusal to end the military occupation, its refusal to allow Palestinians to have their land back (whether 1967-occupied 22% or the 1948-occupied 78%), its refusal to allow the right of return to non-Jews who were kicked out in 1948 (under UN law the refugees forced out or those left voluntarily have the right to return) and its insistence to allow Jewish immigrants to settle in the land being stolen every day by demolishing homes and evicting non-Jewish owners?
MS. NULAND: We have no reason to believe that it is not credible. It’s based on eyewitness accounts, and they’re reporting from a broad cross-section of human rights figures inside Syria.
QUESTION: So the next time Human Rights Watch comes out with a report that’s critical of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, I’ll assume that you’re going to be saying the same thing, correct; that you think that the report is credible, it’s based on eyewitness accounts?
MS. NULAND: As --
QUESTION: And you’re not going to say that it’s politically motivated and should be dismissed?
MS. NULAND: Matt, as you have made clear again and again in this room, we are not always consistent.
The depressing but true fact is that the U.S. wields more military power than the rest of the world combined. Not everyone thinks this is a bad thing: there are some cogent arguments that the lengthy peace enjoyed in Europe since WWII has been largely due to the constantly present American military force and economic hegemony. Countries in Europe and Asia are willing to stomach U.S. presence because the U.S. has not been an imperial power since Palau in 1947 (and, excluding Liberia circa 1840-something, it has never had a mainland colony).
It's obvious that the U.S. will never try to wrest sovereignty from a stable Western-style representative government, so countries are willing to let the U.S. solve the so-called "Security Dilemma" for them. If this means giving them effective veto power over U.N. resolutions for such time as they retain a military hegemony, so be it. There are a lot of benefits to having a hegemon in power, and as Empires go, the American Empire is relatively benign unless you think that American cultural influence will destroy the world or something.
> The depressing but true fact is that the U.S. wields more military power than the rest of the world combined.
Um. This isn't true according to an Economist article I'm having trouble finding. Switching over to Wikipedia, China has the largest active military by a good 8.3 million troops; you'd have to find some explanation that can convincingly say that America has more power by another measure.
Military size is only a small factor when comparing world super powers. Going by that Wikipedia list, North Korea's military isn't too far from the US military. But we all know how that war would go.
>It's obvious that the U.S. will never try to wrest sovereignty from a stable Western-style representative government, so countries are willing to let the U.S. solve the so-called "Security Dilemma" for them.
You must be kidding! Do you not know about the dozens of civilian leaders elected by majority of the citizens which the US assassinated or kidnapped to install a puppet client dictator?
You mean when we had to destroy the villages in order to save them?
Here is a tiny snapshot from the list of coups by US against popular elected leaders of the world:
https://www.google.com/search?q=1953+iran+coup+cia+mi6 (a brutal puppet dictator King Raza Shah Pehlvi was installed in 1953, the Iranians overthrew the tyrant in 1979 and they have been under sanctions since then, Saddam was given weapons in 1980s to kill the Iranians, i.e. before Iraq was the target of sanctions in 1990s)
Remember when Vietnam was denied the right to democracy and instead 4 million Vietnamese bombed and killed, to solve their "security dilemma?"
1954 Dwight Eisenhower: "80% of the population in Vietnam would have voted for the Communist "Ho Chi Minh" over the Emperor Bảo Đại"
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084/
"Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)"
Just imagine someone saying, "3000 American civilians died on 9/11/01 but the cost was worth it." When it's half a million brown / non-European white kids the cost was definitely worth it.
