Re: The UN

[J. van Baardwijk]

At 17:59 21-10-2002 -0500, Dan Minette wrote:

> >Do you believe that the principle of "one country, one vote" is a
> >democratic principle?
>
> Yes. Of course, ideally any UN decision would be made by letting every
> citizen of every member country vote on the issue (using the "one man,
> one vote" principle). However, given that this is not doable, the
> principle of "one country, one vote" is the best alternative.

Why?

Why not? To get a picture of the opinions of people around the world, the most accurate results would come from asking every citizen of every member country for his/her opinion. Do you have a better way to obtain that level of accuracy?

IIRC, the majority of countries in the UN are still not representative
governments. I know 20 years ago that was a certainty.

I do not know if that is still the case, and I really do not have the time to do a background check on all 191 member countries.

Why should dictatorships be able to dictate their will to representative
governments.

In the UN (with the exception of the UNSC), no dictatorship can dictate their will to other governments. It can happen in the UNSC, through (ab)use of veto power, but it is not only the dictatorships there who have (ab)used their veto power to dictate their will to the internationals community. The US, the self-proclaimed defender of democracy, has done the exact same thing.

> No. By rejecting the authority of the UN, the US is choosing a form of
> dictatorship ("the US and only the US decides") over what at least to a
> certain extent is a democracy.

No, it is choosing the freedom of a soverign state to act as it deems best.

If the consequences of "acting as it deems best" would only affect the US, then I would probably not have a problem with it. However, going to war against Iraq is an act that has an impact not only on the US, but on the rest of the world as well, and therefore such a decision requires the majority support of the international community. No majority support, no war.

When the US launches a war against Iraq, the fundamentalists in the Middle East (and elsewhere) will see this as yet another act of aggression by the Evil US, and will no doubt strike back with terrorist attacks. When that happens, US cities will not the be the only cities in the world where bombs will start going off.

And quite frankly, I do not really like the idea of being blown up in The Netherlands because a warmonger in the White House wants to enforce his will on the rest of the world.


Jeroen "KABOOM!" van Baardwijk

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