Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia are just some of the countries in recent decades where civil war and genocide has left populations either dead, destitute or living in refugee camps.
Other countries wring their hands and protest about how dreadful this is but it’s usually only the United States of America, sometimes supported by a few allies who take action. And alas for them it often ends in tears and recriminations.
I believe that it is right for foreign countries to try to stop events like the genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda and the slaughter accompanying the disintegration of Yugoslavia. I think it’s right to overthrow tyrants who kill their own population, invade neighbours and threaten world peace.
I believe the world needs a police force to undertake this role of our behalf. And that police force should emanate out of the United Nations.
Prior to the US / UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 there was much talk about getting the UN to authorise such a policing role. But to achieve that the Security Council would need to agree. And here we come to the stumbling block of vetoes from either China and /or Russia. We’d had many vetoes prior to Iraq and we’ve have had many since.
And yet the vast majority of other countries in the world do want to stop genocide and catastrophic civils wars. They don’t want to tolerate tyrants who invade other countries and threaten world peace. The vast majority of governments in the world are liberal democracies with populations who want peace not war, prosperity not famine.
So why do we lack the imagination to create new ways of working at the United Nations that recognise that for different reasons that China and Russia are out of step with the cultures of the rest of the world?
If Russia and China want to veto specific UN actions, why don’t the other nations in the General Assembly discuss it and if they think intervention is appropriate, with say over 2/3rds agreeing, they themselves establish an intervention force.
Ideally UN rules should be changed to enable this to happen so that the force can operate under UN auspices.
But if such a change of rules can be vetoed by China or Russia then such a force still should be organised. Those countries, voting in overwhelming numbers for such an intervention, should then establish whatever was necessary and create a command and accountability structure (outside UN structures) which harnessed the commitment and support of virtually the whole world.
With that moral authority, the world collectively would at last be speaking again. Populations would support their own governments, knowing that they were part of an initiative supported by virtually the whole world.
And a useful by product may well be to make China and Russia think again about whether they want to be so out of step with everyone else.
Mark Roberts 