Should there be a United Nations?

Answer 1

Yes, indeed the UN headquarters are located in New York and the US has a permanent seat on the UN security council. However, the current US administration is widely perceived to be having some difficulty with aspects of what the UN does and how it is managed.

Answer 2

Yes - it is indispensable for international peace and security and provides massive funds and aid to developing countries.
"More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations" - Kofi Annan, The seventh secretary-general of the United Nations.

Not only that the UN exists with its aims to prevent wars, promote social and economic development, improve standard of living, uphold human rights, and facilitate cooperation for international law, it gives a country its voice in the political arena. Additionally, it allows the creation of networks and cooperation among nations, UNOs, and NGOs in addressing and solving international problems.

It is after the devastating humanitarian consequences brought about by the Second World War that leads to the establishment of the UN, hoping to avoid history from repeating itself.

The Human Security Report 2005, produced by the Human Security Centre, documented 40% drop in violent conflict, and 80% drop in genocides which concluded the dramatic decrease of the abuse of human rights since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, the report published by Oxford University Press argued that international activism leaded by the UN is the main cause of the Post Cold War decline in armed conflict.

From 1990 to 2002, there's a dramatic increase in number of UN missions to prevent wars and the increase in efforts to stop existing conflicts as well as from 1987 to 1999, there's an increase in number of UN peacekeeping operations.

However, there are cases of which the UN members have failed to enforce the Security Council resolutions such as the case of Israel delaying the implementation of resolution calling for the dismantling of Jewish communities in the occupied territories and the case of Iraq having said to have broken 17 Security Council resolutions since 1991, suggesting the UN's failures in implementation of resolutions concerning security issues.

Nevertheless, millions of lives benefit from the existence of the UN and its organisations. The World Food Programme formulated by the UN saved more than 100 million lives a year in 80 countries as well as the UNHCR and its projects over 116 countries and peacekeeping projects in over 24 countries. The UN, over the period of time, has become the assistance for nations to develop and for the world to step forward together for the better tomorrow.

Answer 3

This, of course is an opinion question. But this is my opinion:

Article I of the constitution clearly states that laws are supposed to be made by congress. The reason for that is rather clear, congress is elected by the people, similarly, these laws need to follow the rest of the constitution which limits the powers of government. The UN completely undermines that, and replaces elected officials with at least some accountability with bureaucrats which are not elected and have no accountability. Furthermore, the treaties signed through the UN can essentially be law in the US without having the ability to have the courts revoke them as unconstitutional.

Thomas Jefferson said this when writing about foreign policy, "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." I certainly think that the UN counts as an "entangling alliance" it prevents the US from making its own laws and having full review over them.

Furthermore, the UN is far too often all talk and no action. Consider for example the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Countries such as Iran, China, the US, and the USSR all helped draft it. Yet all of those countries have violated key articles in it to very little backlash. For example, in Guantanamo Bay, the US clearly violated Article 5 stating: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment., similarly I think we can all agree that the Soviet Union violated that with the Gulag, China has violated Article 9 several times: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. yet they essentially detained their Nobel Prize winner and his wife so they couldn't attend. The PATRIOT act of the USA violates Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. And the list goes on and on.

The only thing that the UN has done well, and was the only thing the UN was really designed to do, was to prevent another world war on the scale of WWI and WWII from happening. But really, the UN has done nothing but violate the United State's sovereignty, destroyed the rights of their people and hypocritically ignores all the declarations that the US even helped the UN draw up.

Answer 4

Of course the United States is a member of the United Nations.

Answer 5

Yes, the United States is a charter member of the United Nations. They hold a permanent seat on the Security Council.