Well, the UN ultimately mostly reflects actual geopolitical reality. It's not actually a world government, there is no world government. It has the power nation-states choose to give it. The countries that wield vetoes? They also generally wield real "vetoes" IRL, ie., they've got nukes/massive militaries/economies. The formal legal veto they have in the UN merely reflects that if there was no UN, they'd have options on things they didn't like regardless. A basic point of the UN was to try to prevent WW3, and in that respect it did pretty well. For all the ideals, a lot of the core parts of it are pretty pragmatic about the limitations embodied by definition in anything "international". It seeks consensus and to avoid hot conflicts, and the former is pretty important to avoiding the latter.
Obviously it's not entirely without power of its own, particularly various kinds of soft power. But that soft power has sharp limits without hard power backing it, which is a very sticky wicket in most scenarios that make the news.
The UN hasn’t prevented nuclear war, it’s accomplished virtually nothing in its long history. It’s the League of Nations with better PR.
Geopolitical reality doesn’t require letting authoritarian regimes chair your human rights committees.
The UN would be a far more effective and useful body if it took away the right to vote from authoritarian regimes. The idea of providing a UN vote to a dictator or kleptocrat who doesn’t allow a real democracy in their own country is absurd.
> The UN hasn’t prevented nuclear war, it’s accomplished virtually nothing in its long history.
Last "nuclear war" was on 9 August 1945.
UN formed on 24 October 1945.
> Geopolitical reality doesn’t require letting authoritarian regimes chair your human rights committees.
Yes, it does. If they have large militaries and/or economies.
> The UN would be a far more effective and useful body if it took away the right to vote from authoritarian regimes. The idea of providing a UN vote to a dictator or kleptocrat who doesn’t allow a real democracy in their own country is absurd.
No, it wouldn't. The point of the UN is to avoid war, not to spread democracy [1]. The structure of the UN is a consequence of that aim.
There hasn’t been a nuclear war since the Cleveland Rams last NFL championship. The correlation is just as apt.
As far as preventing war in general, the Korean War, Vietnam, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Falklands, two gulf wars, Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc, etc. UN mediation is no more effective than any other major power mediation efforts in history, in fact it can be argued the UN has been less effective.
The key method to avoiding war is to spread democracy, which is why the UN is such a failure, and it’s charter is the prime reason.
Would learning that the diplomatic channels of the UN were some of the methods used to relay information during, for example, the Cuban middle crisis change your opinion? The comparison seems to lack historical context, the UN has been involved into international diplomatic actions relating to nuclear war far more than any footballers.
I think the “spreading democracy” mindset is wholly unsubstantiated, as most of the wars you mentioned were predicated on either preserving or spreading democracy. If we need war to prevent war, it seems that there can be no peace.
> The UN would be a far more effective and useful body if it took away the right to vote from authoritarian regimes.
That's like saying that the House of Representatives would be far more effective if it took away the right to vote from Representatives you don't agree with.
That would simply be the end of the UN. Countries are sovereign and if they lose their voice in the UN they would just leave it and ignore it.
Right, I’m saying the UN is ineffectual and corrupt and needs to be ended. Countries already are sovereign, and already freely ignore the toothless UN.
And no, its like saying we should take away the right to vote from Representatives who used corruption and murder to rig their own elections.
The UN is a paper tiger by design, at the core its nothing more then a forum for UN permanent members to talk with each other.
And to make sure red lines are well defined and not accidentally being crossed.
UN like a League of Nations is rather a sad joke (well, apart from peace keeping missions).