The United Nations: states vs international laws

Product Description Few Americans understand why the United Nations can t do more when facing catastrophes like those in the former Yugoslavia, East Timor, and Palestine/Israel. The author traces the UN s weaknesses to the compromises that were made at its founding, and highlights all the organization has accomplished despite these handicaps. The U.N. has no army, no power of the purse, no ultimate means to enforce its resolutions, and cannot even come to the aid of suffering humanity if the sovereign nation where they dwell denies entry. Yet, for all its warts and wrinkles, the UN has accomplished wonders and is still the best hope for saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights (preamble to the UN Charter). The book shows that the United Nations structure was tailored to suit the United States, in 1944, to ensure that decisions in the General Assembly (where we might be outvoted) would be considered recommendations which could be ignored. The US use of the veto is explored, especially as it has made it impossible for the U.N. to serve as the appropriate reconciler to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict. Why did the US delegate vote against the Convention Against the Discrimination of Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming? These and similar questions are addressed. The book explains the role of the U.N. Security Council in establishing when a threat to the peace exists, whether an embargo is legitimate, and whether, in the last instance, military action is justified. The author considers both the importance of the newly ratified International Criminal Court (ICC), and the reasons for the US rejection of such a Court. In view of the current debates over the authenticity of the 1949 Geneva Conventions as they speak to the treatment of prisoners of war, the role of U.N. declarations is especially critical. Can the leader of any state arbitrarily invent international laws, while rejecting conventions ratified by a majority of the world s nations? Review In his timely new book, The United Nations: States vs. International Laws, philosopher-historian Don Wells, now residing in Medford, offers a relatively brief but richly informed survey of the institution founded in 1945 primarily in order "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." No American today needs reminding that the United Nations has not yet achieved this goal. One of the many virtues of this study is that Wells shows clearly and simply why that goal has proven elusive. As Wells demonstrates, the United Nations, basically designed by American leaders at Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, was a work of fallible and self-interested parties, all with their own agendas, hidden and open. In short, it was inevitably flawed even in regard to its supposedly primary goal of preserving the peace. Wells notes that the UN charter, Article 39, affirms that "the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat (of war)," implying that nations were to take any issues to the UN before engaging in war. But, in order to win the nationalistically-driven members' approval of the United Nations, Article 51 was included, which assured each nation that "nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United nations." Wells trenchantly notes, "Nations did not, as a matter of fact, bother to ask the Security Council if their war was, indeed, a matter of 'self-defense.'" No American need ask how simple it is for a nation to proclaim itself under the threat of immediate aggression---no matter how far-fetched and against the evidence--- and thus to justify undertaking a preemptive war of "self-defense." America and the other powerful nations have used and abused the United Nations for their own purposes and that's the unhappy part of the UN picture. But, Wells makes