My reading of this section of Taub's book basically begins with a moment of incredulity: that within a couple of pages, the author refers to Ralph Bunche as estimable, and notes his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. My confusion stems from the fact that both these designations are due to Bunche's role in the international peace talks around the creation of the state of Israel. No doubt at the time this was seen as a great accomplishment in peace-making because it kept peace in the Middle East, but the overall effect of Israel's "manufacture" is astonishing. If nothing else it definitely calls into question Taub's objectivity in describing/narrating anything!
This sense of irony is deepend when we note the ultimate effect of the UN on Israel and the Middle East: having first destabilised the region through the manufacture of a Jewish state, they re-stabilised it through the efforts of Bunche (which, I admit, it is unfair to criticise with the benefit of hindsight); then they throw the region into chaos once more through the removal of the peacekeeping force mentioned in my first UN post. In and of itself this was politically biased towards Egypt/against Israel, something that the UN has since learned to avoid I believe, and no doubt catapaulted the whole region into deeper chaos in the form of the Six Days War, and the region has remained utterly unstable through the Arab-Israeli conflict ever since.
I take it as a sign, then, that the leader of the UN at this time was U Thant, the Burmese diplomat. I say "sign" primarily because of the political chaos that errupted in Thant's home country in 1962 and still continues to this day, and also because my home cinema is currently graced with Luc Besson's film "The Lady", exploring the political detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and daughter of Aung San, the country's hero of independence.
Despite his relatively poor record overall, Thant was tipped as a possible successor by Hammarskjoeld himself, and was from a country neutral enough that neither the US nor USSR had objections against him. Early in his career, Thant was farsighted enough to suggest opening talks with Ho Chi Minh, but was both shouted down and privately ridiculed by the American government.
This brushing off of the UN's mediatory capacity continues to be typical of the US, and of Russia, neither of whom will allow their own actions to be dictated by anyone or anything, while expecting to be allowed to continue policing the world without question. And here we have our first avenue for considering 'exceptionalism': that political attitude whereby the rules should and must apply to all other countries but my own, because might makes right (the US traditionally being the most powerful country in the world and Russia the largest). Thus the UN played no part in the Vietnam War or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968.
On the other hand, another peacekeeping force was accepted by both Greece and Turkey as the interim solution to the Cyprus conflict that began in 1964, and Thant himself flew to mediate (unsuccessfully as it turned out) in the India-Pakistan conflict of 1965.
It was May 1967 when Thant unilaterally withdrew the UN peacekeeping force from Suez at Egyptian Prime Minister Nasser's simple request, and Israel launched their Six Day War the following month.
It was at this time, as might be guessed, that the UN's involvement in political matters quickly died down, and was replaced by their appearance on the world economic stage, dealing with issues like hunger, poverty, health and so on, through a myriad of new bodies. The World Health Organisation's famous 1966 pledge to eradicate smallpox within a decade ultimately took 11 years but was successful nonetheless.
The point from this entry is that even from some of its earliest days and earliest undertakings, the power of the UN has been thoroughly undermined by the god complex of the country that created, as well as the countries that control it. Of course it would be no surprise to those involved in the UN at any point that being under the thumb of any member nation negates the purpose of the UN, but that very fact precludes any action to change it: none of the Big 5 (as they are now) is ever going to vote in favour of removing their own powers of veto because it's against their own interests. As such, there's a certain sense of doom about the UN, and any hope for it to flourish lies in the generic sphere of global welfare, not in the minefield of politics.
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