on the United Nations
from The Economist
The United Nations: Mission impossible?
http://www.economist.com/world/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8490176
Quite fair and balanced review on the inabilities, problems and promises of the current United Nations. I really hope Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the new secretary-general of the UN, would 'surprise' all the under-estimations targeted at his leadership. One touchstone of his ability and originality would lie in success and failure to redefine UN's distance toward the super powers, namely US and China, in favor of a more simmetrical yet efficient relation with the rest of the world i.e. G77.
As the editor notes, the undemocratic and concentrating nature of the Security Council is its very own Achilles' heal with the royalistic power of veto attributed to the five permanent seats.
The theoretical answer to this situation seems quite simple; an independent, nationalism-and-interest-free, overwhelming military power only commanded by and for a revised UN charter. It seems to be something like a day dream for any one to conceive it as a efficient solution, but let us try to imagine it for a few minutes.
- A-nationality: The members of this still fictional UN military might be attributed a common nationality, or a non-nationality, accredited by the UN and its members.
- Redefining Violence: This military group will be governed and directed solely by an a-national board of commandment, and would be targeted at a newly defined notion of terrorism and savagery that could encompass even the US invasion of Iraq and 9.11 with the same set of criteria.
- Exist to vanish: This military organization's long-term goal is its own dissolution (in the manner of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional's Subcomandante Marcos's words)
- Wordly Tax: This military force's funding will be partly based on a wordly taxation of any human being, relatively calculated by the income of the individuals, or donated on a benevolant basis.
- Transparency and new journalism: All the activity records of any soldier of this force would be archived and made available in a publicly accessible online, i.e. a la lifelog.
- and so forth...
The biggest problems would be to consider what the realistic and feasible incentives for exisiting nations to support this force could be like. Maybe this could start as a small collective effort between the developing areas such as Africa or even smaller territories such as the current problematic case of Haiti.
The biggest effort possible of social hack for world plasticity is definitely found here. This endeavour is definitely not just political as it requires also visioning and designing, but substantially relie its realization on the abilities of building, negotiating, persuading , socializing and brutalizing to some extent.
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