This is a short essay that I worked on and has been sitting in MarsEdit for two weeks now. I’m not entirely happy with it, but it is good enough for now. The ideas are clear enough. More writings and more thoughts later.

People often ask what is the purpose of the United Nations, mistakingly believing that its purpose is to prevent war completely. In this post I will argue that preventing war is not the role of the UN and that if we assess it based its unique position in the international system we will discover that the UN actually quite effective.

Many people believe that the purpose of the United Nations is to prevent war. After all one of the purposes written in the United Nations Charter is to “maintain international peace and security…” However there is a large gap between maintaining peace and preventing war. Maintaining peace generally refers to using troops for peace keeping or using troops for peace enforcement, a nuance that we will get to in a moment. As a neutral third-party it is not the United Nations’ place to act on behalf of either states nearing a conflict as doing so would displace their neutrality.

Once a conflict has occurred the United Nations still cannot send troops in immediately to ensure peace and stability. This is where the nuance between peace enforcement and peace keeping comes in. Peace enforcement is military action to reinstate the sovereignty of a nation i.e. collective self-defnse e.g. Kuwait vs. Iraq in 1991. Kuwait’s sovereignty was breached and it called for collective self-defense to get Iraq out of Kuwait to restore peace and stability in the region. Conversely, peace keeping can only occur when all parties involved agree for the United Nations to come in and maintain order and they must remain neutral. The moment both nations do not agree to their presence they must leave.

Thus any military action prior to conflict must be preempted by many attempts at diplomatic and economic coercing. However as long as any issues remain internal to a nation the United Nations and its member states cannot legally make any actions militarily. Much of this is due to the fact that the international system is anarchical and that no state has the inherit right to manipulate other states.

This said I can imagine to most people without the ability to enforce peace preemptively or of its own individual will the United Nations is completely useless and irrelevant. However if we consider the United Nations has a unique position in this anarchical international system the relevance of the UN becomes clear. The UN is not a world government (as some like to believe), it does not have sovereignty nor any rights beyond those in its charter, and membership is completely voluntary. But because of its position outside of the state and existing purely as an international body it can act neutrally on a global scale.

With its existence outside of the state, voluntary membership, and neutral position, the ideal role for the United Nations is clear. Organizations and agencies created by the UN should be able to move about the world relatively freely to fulfill their purpose. The UN is not so much as a keeper (or enforcer) of peace, but rather the only organization that has the position and structure necessary to create, manage, and more importantly legitimize these international organizations. Thus any organizations or associations have the reach and neutrality necessary to complete their job without stepping on regional toes.

Today’s globalized world requires an organization that can manage global issues while maintaining state sovereignty. The United Nations is not perfect in its form and function nor is it necessarily the best organization through which to manage all international affairs. However, thus far for as per diplomacy, research, and administrative tasks on a global scale we do not have any other organization that has the international legitimacy and neutrality to perform this tasks. Simply put, it might not be perfect but it’s all we got. Given the choice between a global world with an United Nations-esque organization and a global world without I would pick the world with.