When is it right to go to war?

[likesfish]

the UN sounds good but if you look at it closely how can anyone take seriously an organisation that allows saudi on the human rights committee and zim on development
and the US russia and china have played fast and loose with it for so long its fairly meaningless.
its is massively corrupt and inefficient and often broke
so I would'nt rely on it as a final say in anything

 

[nino_savatte]

the UN sounds good but if you look at it closely how can anyone take seriously an organisation that allows saudi on the human rights committee and zim on development
and the US russia and china have played fast and loose with it for so long its fairly meaningless.
its is massively corrupt and inefficient and often broke
so I would'nt rely on it as a final say in anything

The UN is only as good as it members and some of its members are out to undermine the organisation. You left out Israel btw, who have also played "fast and loose" with it.

The UN was never meant to wage war, yet in its first 6 years, it was coerced into going to war with North Korea at the behest of the US (China and the USSR were absent the day war was declared iirc).

 

[TAE]

Even for occasions when it should have happened such as Rwanda?

If those who started that war had waited for UN approval then there would not have been such carnage and there would have been no need for anyone else to get involved.

 

[MikeMcc]

That's mind-numbingly naive, especially since it was a civil war due more to the imposed borders that intermixed tribal lands. The problem was that 1, no-one with the authority to do so got off their arses to do anything about it, and 2, even if they had they would have been shouted down in the UN for being imperialistic. The really stupid thing is that the UN Charter allows for armed intervention to prevent genocide.

 

[TAE]

That's mind-numbingly naive

I was not being entirely serious.

The problem was that 1, no-one with the authority to do so got off their arses to do anything about it, and 2, even if they had they would have been shouted down in the UN for being imperialistic. The really stupid thing is that the UN Charter allows for armed intervention to prevent genocide.

I don't think the UN would have been a problem. It was not a problem in the 1st gulf war.

I do think the problem was (1) no one in power actually cared that much and (2) even if they did, how long would it have taken, say, NATO to get their troops & supplies organised and deployed?