- UN and NATO have refused to intervene in the Ukraine-Russia crisis
- This is in coherence with their 70 years old legacy of failing to assist the needy ones
- The time has come to think beyond UN and NATO
The Ukraine-Russia war has picked momentum. Russian troops are inside Ukrainian territories now and are constantly engaged in street fights. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are left wondering why did supranational organisations like NATO and United Nations (UN) not come to defend them?
UN and NATO won’t intervene
It should be now established that the UN and NATO will not provide substantial support to Ukraine. All they can do now is provide lip service and appeal to maintain peace and security in the region. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed this uncomfortable truth about these organisations.
Grateful to all members of the UN Security Council 🇦🇱 🇧🇷 🇫🇷 🇬🇦 🇬🇭 🇮🇪 🇰🇪 🇲🇽 🇳🇴 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 who voted to stop 🇷🇺 treacherous attack on 🇺🇦 & 🇺🇳 Charter. The veto of 🇷🇺 is a bloodstain on its plaque in the Security Council, the map of Europe & 🌎. Anti-war coalition must act immediately!
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 25, 2022
However, this is barely the first time these organisations have failed to protect a nation. Their records of failure are so big that you will have to be a beneficiary of that failure to ignore them. First, let’s look at the UN’s chequered history.
United Nations
UN, an upgrade of the erstwhile league of nations came into existence in October 1945. Its main purpose is to prevent future world wars and promote the message of peace, prosperity, unity, and human development in the world. It tries to do this through six principal organs like UNSC, UNGA etc.
However, over a period of 75 years of its existence, it has nothing other than the elimination of some diseases to boast for. Its failure is particularly visible in the peace and security domain of its function.
List of UN failures
The failure to prevent the disintegration of the Korean peninsula into North and South Korea is the first documented failure of the UN. In later years, it saw more such failures in the form of the Indo-China war of 1962, the India-Pakistan war of 1965. Its failure to grasp the Kashmir problem still haunts the organisation.
Read more: The ONLY solution for the Kashmir problem
The aforementioned problem originated from so-called ‘third world nations’, which is why they were not counted by many as a big failure of the UN. The first big dent in the UN’s reputation in the western world came in 1967 when Israel asserted its authority on the land allotted to Palestine in a resolution by the UN in 1947. Even now, the UN has failed to solve the problem.
UN’s failures to stop genocides
The non-recognition of 20 lakh victims of genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is another one of those failures which have tainted the UN. When Rogue was ousted from power, the UN refused to recognise the new government.
Similarly, in 1994, despite having first-hand information and able ground support, United Nations kept watching while more than 8 lakh people were slaughtered in Rwanda Genocide within a span of 100 days.
Other failures like the IRAQ war, Gulf war, Sudan genocide, Bosnian crisis are some of the other prominent failures of the UN. UN’s key arm, the Security council is especially responsible for its failure due to its fundamentally undemocratic and self-defeating nature of functioning.
If the UN is defeating its mandate regularly, NATO is not far behind. It is mired by contradictions, infighting and the non-consensual nature of its members.
NATO – A soviet era legacy
The fundamental reason NATO was formed in 1949 was to protect Europe from wars. They were fearful of the Russians and Germans invading their lands. While one purpose it served was the protection of European allies of capitalist America, the other purpose it served was providing America with a possible launch pad in case cold war rivalry turns into a full-fledged war.
Read more: Jaishankar explains the difference between Cold War era NATO the futuristic QUAD
However, its own members were not convinced of its potency. In 1966, France decided to withdraw from the alliance. However, the organisation somehow maintained its relevancy till the early 1990s with the number of official members constantly on the rise.
Risked losing relevancy in the 1990s
However, as soon as the Soviet Union disintegrated into smaller states, NATO risked losing relevancy. For member countries, NATO had become an all-important and quick-fix solution to its strategic problems. Its clause that attacks on any members will mean that all others will be forced to defend the attacked party is one of the most favourable as well as contentious clauses of NATO.
In its post-cold-war era avatar, NATO started to militarily intervene in countries like Kuwait, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Herzegovina. Its biggest intervention was in the Afghanistan war in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the USA. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the biggest failure as well and prompted experts to puzzle about its relevancy.
NATO is full of intra-organisation contradiction
NATO is not just failing on a military level; it is also turning out to be a massive failure in maintaining its consensus. On one hand, it considers Russia as its key enemy, while on the other hand, its members are constantly allying with Russia on militaristic, economic as well as strategic levels.
Additionally, the member countries like Turkey, Hungry and Poland are constantly criticised by the international community for not adhering to the key principle of NATO, which is maintaining internal democracy. Turkey’s Erdogan is especially infamous for thwarting his opposition. Moreover, he went ahead with the deal of purchasing S-400 from Russia, despite Russia being NATO’s enemy.
Read more: Is Turkey about to be thrown out of NATO? There are some solid hints
Hungary has denounced European Union and is said to be the closest ally of Putin’s Russia. Both countries share a disdain for documented core values of NATO. Hungary and Russia are key allies in the economic domain as well.
Moreover, common people of NATO member countries are largely critical of the organisation as well. A Pew research in 2015 found that only in Canada and USA do the people support military intervention. Other surveys have pointed out that people from other nations of NATO countries believe that their leaders should refrain from intervening in domestic affairs of other countries.
Over the last decade or so, the UN has become a place for diplomatic battlefield between USA and China. Similarly, NATO is no longer a unified organisation aiming for a common goal. The time has come when these organisations need to be dismantled to make way for new and more pragmatic ones.
