US to pull out of Saudi Arabia.

[PLATO]

I have to agree GePap. The political realities of "back home" can't be ignored even if the result is for the greater good.

This is partially why I support the ability of a nation to take independent action, in the abscense of formal SC objection, to protect its national interests. The war in Iraq is a good example.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
and thus they leave them to the UN and then blame the UN for not doing a good job when it fact that pooor job is based on the fact that these rich states don't care to give the resources and manpower to actually suceed if they are not directly in charge of them.

Gepap: If it is unable to martial the needed resources then it is not up to the Job. It really doesn't matter if greedy, uncaring states refuse to hand over their entire national budgets or not; the bottom line is it doesn't have the resources to get the job done and it is highly unlikely that it will ever have the resources to get the job done.

No country is going to give the UN the power to levy taxes and no country is going to agree to continually waste money on programs which are not held accountable. The UN is already used as a giant welfare program by 3rd world dictatorships and the 1st world countries have deficites of their own to deal with so they're not going to pay more money into an inefficient system which can't acheive the needed results.

That, my friend, is the plain truth.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
The sort of orgnization you seek Ned will never see the light of day, since you secifically call for the end of National soverignty (perhaps except for the Us by allowing it a veto) as the basis of international relations. I would agree with you that National soverignty (including of the US) is not as important as it is made out to be, but political realities are what they are, and people, specially people of a "dmeocratic age" demand national soverignty, since today it is seen as one of the fundamental bases of democracy.As for Humanitarian aid: starving people don;t revolt, and most states can feed themselves, or at least, fed the politcally connected. Denying humanitarian aid just helps the regime kill the unwanted faster.

I partially agree with this, GePap. We should perhaps simply form ad hoc coalitions when necessary. The only examples of truly effective action since WWII are by US-led ad hoc coalitions.

On the starving kid issue, no regime need let its people starve if even if they run a communist agriculutural system. They can buy food from free market countries as did the USSR for most of its history. But, giving food away to the likes of NK with no strings attached simply permits the communist system to continue and for shortages to continue. I can see short-term relief if a regime agrees to modify its failed policies, but not otherwise.

The IMF operates this way if a debtor nation is in debt due to poorly-structured economies - which are almost always, though not exclusively, socialist experiments in centrally owned and planned economies. The IMF asks for reforms, including privatizing industry.

[gsmoove23]

There is strange logic whenever you deal with the UN. Detractors bring up all instances of failure yet conveniently UN actions that were successful are turned into US successes. Wasn't the Korean War a UN action and the 1st Gulf War, not to mention Afghanistan. As everyone here has been saying the difference between succes and failure of UN operations is the amount of political will behind them. The war in Afghanistan was certainly a success, the reconstruction is another story.

The discussions I see on the UN remind me a lot of the earliest years of the US federal government. The struggle to get funds for the revolution and so forth. The only important question is whether a strong international governing body is necessary or desired. If the answer is yes then bashing the UN is not the answer but working on it and reforming it might be.

As for creating a new institution, whats the point? Just to trade one institution with flaws for another?

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Ned

... and you can never take effective action to kill the enemy due to political restrictions.

My buddies' deputy battalion commander got fed up one day after weeks of Serb artillery shelling. He sent out his Danish tank company the next morning and shot the Serb artillery position to gravel and ash. 8 Serbian soldiers died. My buddy was the signal soldier on duty that night so he was the one who woke up the colonel and then sat in the same room when the officers planned the attack. He revealed to me that the officers were actually drunk when making the decision. That was the first time UN fired back in Bosnia, and I think the incident was very controversial in international relations. But perhaps some booze helped them to the get guts to ignore orders and just give the Serbs what they deserved. The Danish Officer reached the front page of Time Magazine.

No-one should ever ask anyone to serve under UN command when its boss is the UN SC.

I suspect, however, that there is not a soldier or would-be soldier anywhere in the world that would not want to serve under US command with president Bush as the Commander in Chief.

I don't think so. The risk is high that you will be sent somewhere where you don't want to be. Bush, or rather his advisors, are too "active" in starting wars of aggression. One war per term is more than enough but they already started 2 and who knows what comes next. I read that Bush had actually overruled a Rumsfeld order to Pentagon to make a war plan against Syria.

[Dinner]

Afghanistan was never a UN action until after the US, UK, and the Northern Alliance had pummeled the Taliban into submission. The Korean War was officially a UN action but the U.S. was already sending forces to Korea any way before the Soviets had a hissy fit and walked out of the UNSC thus giving the Americans a chance to pass an unvetoed resolution.

[Ned]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
There is strange logic whenever you deal with the UN. Detractors bring up all instances of failure yet conveniently UN actions that were successful are turned into US successes. Wasn't the Korean War a UN action and the 1st Gulf War, not to mention Afghanistan. As everyone here has been saying the difference between succes and failure of UN operations is the amount of political will behind them. The war in Afghanistan was certainly a success, the reconstruction is another story.

The discussions I see on the UN remind me a lot of the earliest years of the US federal government. The struggle to get funds for the revolution and so forth. The only important question is whether a strong international governing body is necessary or desired. If the answer is yes then bashing the UN is not the answer but working on it and reforming it might be.

As for creating a new institution, whats the point? Just to trade one institution with flaws for another?

In the words of many, the only time the UN has been successful is when it rubber-stamped an US initiative. UN advocates then denouce the US for causing the UN to fail.

I think their might be a majority in the US who now realize that the UN needs fixing if it is to be effective or even worthy of continuation. The rest of the democratic world who want to advance civilization should also support reform. The non democratic countries can be expected to resist reform because they know where that will lead.

Korea is a good example. MacArthur acted immediately without even getting authorization from the president of the United States or the UN. His actions were later endorse by both. Rescuing Korea was not about a UN initiative, nor about a US initiative by Truman, but about the courage of one man, Douglas MacArthur. Had the choice been given to Truman directly, I am not at all convinced he would have authorized a resue mission.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Olaf Hårfagre My buddies' deputy battalion commander got fed up one day after weeks of Serb artillery shelling. He sent out his Danish tank company the next morning and shot the Serb artillery position to gravel and ash. 8 Serbian soldiers died. My buddy was the signal soldier on duty that night so he was the one who woke up the colonel and then sat in the same room when the officers planned the attack. He revealed to me that the officers were actually drunk when making the decision. That was the first time UN fired back in Bosnia, and I think the incident was very controversial in international relations. But perhaps some booze helped them to the get guts to ignore orders and just give the Serbs what they deserved. The Danish Officer reached the front page of Time Magazine.

This is a major difference between the UN and the US/NATO approach. IFOR (the original UN peace keeping force in Bosnia) wasn't allowed to shot back even when shot at without approval from higher up while SFOR (the NATO peace keeping force) was allowed to fire when ever they were directly threatened. That ment the Serbs routinely bombarded IFOR forces, threatened them, stole weapons, killed persons in UN "safe areas", and other things while IFOR could do nothing to stop them.

SFOR's standing orders meant that the first time Serbs tried to treat NATO soldiers the same way the Americans would call in the B-52s and absolutely level the offending Serbian fighting position. Several European diplomates called the Americans a bunch of cowboys but a funny thing happened... With in two months the Serbs had totally stopped firing on SFOR positions.

That's right, a problem that had been endemic for two years was solved virtually over night simply because NATO forces had the will and ability to do what the UN's convoluted decision making process could not do.

[gsmoove23]

You say that by angering China and over-stepping his bounds completely that was successful, and his actions were later endorsed? If McArthur knew when to stop or would have allowed himself to be told he might have wrung a peace deal out of NK without the many extra years of stalemate.

Where the UN has been successful without rubberstamping US plans, East Timor, Cambodia(somewhat recently ushering in elections as the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge were weeded out) and a Godawful amount of other small insignificant countries that never made the front page. The UN has been fostering democracy for a long time, it seems the problems arise when it goes against the wishes of the US.

[Ned]

Oerdin, that story is illustrative of why the UN is an abomination -- just like Johnson's conduct of the war in Vietnam.

The VC and the NVA would both hide out in Cambodia, move across the border at a time and place of their own choosing, ambush and kill a lot of US and ARVN, and then sneak back across the border before pursuing US troops could catch them. Johnson gave our troops strict orders not to cross or shoot over the border - as did Truman in Korea.

So, what I am saying is that troops should never be placed in harms way when the politicians place too many restrictions on the soldier's right to defend himself or pursue the enemy.

[gsmoove23]

I'll admit that in hot areas like Bosnia there are difficulties resulting from not having a clear command structure, objectives and decisive action. All things that can be reformed, especially after that lesson. Currently, I think having a UN administration and urban security along with a partially independant US force would be the best approach. Baghdad is really not the place for armed US soldiers to be walking around for any amount of time.

I think once fighting has cooled the UN has been a very successful and balanced stabilizing force.

[Ned]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
You say that by angering China and over-stepping his bounds completely that was successful, and his actions were later endorsed? If McArthur knew when to stop or would have allowed himself to be told he might have wrung a peace deal out of NK without the many extra years of stalemate.

Where the UN has been successful without rubberstamping US plans, East Timor, Cambodia(somewhat recently ushering in elections as the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge were weeded out) and a Godawful amount of other small insignificant countries that never made the front page. The UN has been fostering democracy for a long time, it seems the problems arise when it goes against the wishes of the US.

Ah, come on now. I recall that the US and the Australians intervened in East Timor to end the chaos.

The rescue of Cambodia from Pol Pot was the work of Vietnam, not the UN.

[Chemical Ollie]

Yeah, I agree that it's hard to understand why UN are not allowed to fire back when fired upon. I think they should. But this hasn't always been the case. In the early 60's, Swedish soldiers were on a UN mission in Kongo, and they killed plenty of Baluba warriors. They also found out that their 9 mm sub-machine guns were very useless against warriors hiding behind tribal wooden shields if the range was above 200 meters. The bullets just bounced. That was when the Swedish army decided to get 7.62 mm AKs.

[gsmoove23]

Originally posted by Ned


Ah, come on now. I recall that the US and the Australians intervened in East Timor to end the chaos.

The rescue of Cambodia from Pol Pot was the work of Vietnam, not the UN.

In the first instance wasn't this intervention a UN thing? This is what I'm talking about, because it was US and Australian forces you consider it a coalition of the willing even though it was done with full UN backing.

In both instances I was referring to the more peaceful, but often just as difficult job, sheparding the countries to democracy, creating institutions, running elections ad general peacekeeping. Cambodia, the UN was there to make sure the transition from monarchy, which followed the Khmer, to democracy went smoothly.

[Ned]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
You say that by angering China and over-stepping his bounds completely that was successful, and his actions were later endorsed? If McArthur knew when to stop or would have allowed himself to be told he might have wrung a peace deal out of NK without the many extra years of stalemate.

What I am talking about is MacArthur's initial actions to send in the airforce and supplies. He later asked permission, IIRC, to send in ground troops. He also asked permission to attack North of the 38th parallel. He further asked, but was denied permission, to pursue fleeing NK (read Russian) planes into China and to bomb NK airbases there.

MacArthur's biggest mistake was not that he did not follow or seek orders, which your post incorrectly suggests he did, but by pubicly disagreeing with the order to not allow his troops the traditional right of hot pursuit.

For this, the man has been defamed by Democrats and other rewriters of history, read communists, ever since.

Even so, I think he should have resigned first then blasted Truman.