“The UN is worthless, it’s worth half a medio [1]”

By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein

Loyal readers of this column likely thought I would write this week about the repercussions of the Israeli and US aggression against Iran. I too believed it was necessary, but after reading Fernando Esteche’s brilliant article in PIA Global entitled “First Thoughts on the Ceasefire in the War Against Iran, ” I have nothing to say; I wouldn’t add or subtract a comma. In addition to congratulating Fernando, I would like to recommend reading it at https://noticiaspia.com/hasty-thoughts-on-the-ceasefire-in-the-war-against-iran/.

Under these circumstances, I turn to another extremely important topic, one I have been stressing for many years. That is why I am pleased to have agreed—even if only partially—with President Nicolás Maduro when he referred to this issue on his program “Con Maduro+” last Monday, June 30th. The president said that “in the face of the horrendous crimes of Zionism, the UN ‘is overwhelmed, overtaken by this situation… the UN is worthless, not worth a medio.’ He added that this will lead the multilateral organization to collapse and that when that happens, ‘the countries that are promoting this multipolar world will be refounding the UN.’”

I apologize to my readers for not being original, but on this occasion, I’m going to put forward some past ideas that might reinforce the president’s opinion. As long ago as September 25, 2011, I wrote a short article entitled “The UN is Dead” in which I said: “Throughout history, the end of a war has always brought new territorial divisions in different parts of the world and with it an international system that responds to the logic of the victors. In our immediate surroundings, Trinidad, which was Spanish, ended up becoming British, and Curaçao, which was an English possession, went down in history as Dutch.”

In the more recent past, the end of the First World War saw the birth of the League of Nations as an organization where disputes between countries were to be settled. Likewise, at the end of the Second World War, the United Nations (UN) was created as an instrument to guarantee global peace in the face of the devastation caused by the two great wars of the 20th century and, above all, to control the threat posed to the world by the United States when it unnecessarily dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war had already ended. Previously, five countries reserved the right to decide for the rest of the world, generating a contradiction that remains unresolved today: that of the democratic nature of the General Assembly and the authoritarian and dictatorial nature of the Security Council.

Moreover, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the world has failed to take note of the international situation that has created the foundation for a new organization with a distinct logic that takes into account emerging international actors and, above all, a new agenda of cooperation and peace that focuses on the serious problems facing humanity.

The events of recent years, marked by a closed unipolarity from 2001 to 2008 and the transition to a balance of power in the face of the United States’ economic and financial weakness since that date, reveal an ineffective UN subservient to the will of rogue states.

The unanimous resolution condemning Iran for its alleged intention to build atomic weapons contrasts with the existence of such weapons in countries such as Israel, India, and Pakistan, which share the common characteristic of being among the largest buyers of weapons from producing countries, which are essentially the permanent members of the Security Council.

The unanimous approval by the powers to authorize Resolution 1973, which led to the indiscriminate bombing of Libyan cities and the murder of thousands of citizens, demonstrates an organization that is no longer a guarantor of peace but a promoter of war. A similar situation occurred during the recent events in the Ivory Coast, where the UN Secretary-General himself ordered the Blue Helmets to become militarily involved under the orders of the French Armed Forces that invaded the African country. Finally, the announced US veto of Palestine’s entry into the organization as a state with full rights only serves to say that the UN is dead.

I continued my sermon on the subject in articles written on August 19, 2020, March 17, 2021, and most recently on November 15, 2023. The latter was titled “The UN Must Disappear,” something similar to what President Maduro said. I will share some of the most substantial paragraphs from this slightly longer work, published 12 years after the previous one, but in which I refer to it.

The article says:

Twelve years later, the diagnosis remains the same, but the crisis is even deeper. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the world to the UN’s inability to manage the fight against the virus that has become humanity’s common enemy.

In this battle, the World Health Organization (WHO) failed miserably. By October 2021, 20 months after the pandemic began, only 57% of the world’s population had been vaccinated. The pandemic was never brought under control through vaccine distribution. Rich countries clearly distanced themselves from poorer ones. In January 2022, the WHO published a guide to prioritize the equitable global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, but it was too late, and the plan was flawed. The logic of the market, of profit, and of gain, prevailed over the logic of protecting human beings, their health, and their lives. This is because the WHO depends primarily on the goodwill of rich countries and corporations.

Similar circumstances occurred in the WHO’s actions during the A flu (subtype H1N1) that attacked the world in 2009. Another example of repeated errors by the WHO was its actions in 2014 during the Ebola crisis. Her incompetence is recurrent. In the first case, governments that followed her recommendations stockpiled unnecessary quantities of flu drugs solely for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies. And in the second, she acted with extreme passivity in the face of the seriousness of the Ebola spread, underestimating the problem. Only when the epidemic was already out of control in West Africa did the Director-General declare a global emergency.

It must be said that the aforementioned “goodwill” is directly related to the companies’ decision to act when they see that contagion could affect their profits and those of wealthy countries. This fact violates Article 1, Chapter 1, Section 3 of the United Nations Charter, which establishes the purposes and principles of the UN and states that the organization must: ” Provide international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

Likewise, the UN’s poor performance in handling the pandemic blatantly violates Article 3 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: ” Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” The UN has demonstrated its inability to guarantee this right, or even fulfill the purposes assigned to it by the Charter.

In this context, Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and the recent conflict in Palestine brought the UN’s ineffectiveness to the forefront. In both cases, the organization was unable to prevent the planning and execution of genocides against the peoples of Donbas and Palestine, respectively. In Ukraine, they turned a blind eye for eight years while Nazi-fascist hordes exterminated the Russian-speaking population with extreme cruelty.

The Palestinian issue is much worse because the UN is directly responsible for it by illegally creating the State of Israel, when it is not within its power—according to the Charter—to create countries. Yet, even after having decided on such a legal absurdity, it has been unable to enforce General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, which established the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state , an Arab state , and a zone under a separate international regime. In this case, perhaps more than in any other, the use of the UN as an instrument of US foreign policy has become evident. The UN has failed in its primary responsibility, which was to promote and consolidate peace on the planet.

In another context, one might wonder what the point of the World Trade Organization (WTO), another UN agency, is if, as of August 2023, 26,162 unilateral coercive measures (misnamed sanctions) had been applied by the United States, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other countries, affecting 30 states worldwide. Thus, 28% of the world’s population is prevented from living a completely normal life.

It is worth noting that in this case, the UN General Assembly, at its 78th session, approved a resolution on the promotion and protection of human rights against unilateral coercive measures by 128 votes to 54.

However, it’s all in vain. International relations are not about law but about power. The UN is a structure sustained by the atomic power of five countries that impose that condition on the world. The institution of the veto is an antidemocratic practice that dictates that the world must live under the dictatorship of five countries for the sole reason that they have the capacity to destroy the planet. Thus, this capacity is what establishes and sustains the international system and its structure.

There are currently several cases that expose the retrograde nature of the UN in addition to those already known in Ukraine and Palestine. In this regard, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has stated that the UN Command, responsible for monitoring compliance with the armistice after the Korean War of the 1950s, should be dissolved to “prevent the start of a new war and to defend peace and security on the Korean peninsula.”

According to the statement issued by the North Korean government, the command represents “nothing more than an instrument of US confrontation because it has nothing to do with the UN.” According to Pyongyang, the command “once again reveals its aggressive nature, seeking to prepare a declaration of confrontation simulating the Second Korean War.” As early as 1975, the UN General Assembly passed two resolutions stipulating the dissolution of the command and the withdrawal of US troops from the region. Two former UN Secretaries-General, Butros Ghali and Kofi Annan, even stated that “the organization is not under the control of the United Nations, but of Washington.” Now—according to the DPRK’s complaint—the Command “is being reactivated as an instrument of multinational warfare, led by the United States. These are serious events that endanger security in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Korean Peninsula.” It seems evident that the UN is allowing itself to be used by the United States to generate another scenario of conflict on the planet.

It couldn’t be otherwise when the UN Secretary-General is a man from a NATO country. It must be remembered that when he was Prime Minister of Portugal, he supported all of this warmongering group’s misdeeds, including the Balkan war and the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s difficult for a figure of this ilk to possess the equanimity and neutrality necessary to address matters that concern the organization. A just world should never have a warmonger as its supreme leader.

Europe has already provided us with examples of the leadership that represents it. Between 1972 and 1981, Kurt Waldheim, a far-right Austrian politician, was appointed Secretary General of the UN. It didn’t matter that Waldheim had been a member of the National Socialist German Students’ League, a branch of his country’s Nazi Party, which even led him to join the SA, the Nazi Party’s shock troops who, under Hitler’s direct orders, sowed terror in occupied countries. None other than a Nazi was sent by Europe to become Secretary General of the UN.

The actions regarding Venezuela are not without its imprint. The UN has violated the Geneva Agreement, which establishes a friendly and satisfactory solution for both parties in the Essequibo conflict. The enormous oil reserves discovered in 2015 in that disputed territory mobilized the United States government, which, by exerting pressure on the UN, managed to have the case illegally referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a UN body that has decided to act without having jurisdiction over the case.

The former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, a Washington puppet, had already unilaterally and illegally decided to end the role of the “good officer.” Continuing this legal aberration, Antonio Guterres—almost from the moment of his appointment—accepted the lawsuit filed by the United States against his predecessor, unilaterally favoring Guyana’s decision, which is in fact the decision of ExxonMobil, which seeks to illegally and unilaterally exploit the resources of the Essequibo. Guterres is complicit in this attempted plunder, just as the ICJ is, which, putting itself outside the law, seeks to uphold Guyana’s claim.

Guterres should have consulted with Venezuela to obtain its consent regarding the ICJ’s jurisdiction, as established by the Geneva Agreement. It is worth adding that Venezuela is not a signatory to the ICJ’s protocol on compulsory jurisdiction, so it is not obligated to abide by this body’s decision. It is not Venezuela that has placed itself outside the law. It has been—once again—the United Nations.

Perhaps no one has put it so precisely as the President of Brazil: ” The UN of 1945 is worthless in 2023.” He said this, appalled by the organization’s inability to stop the Israeli genocide in Palestine. As usual, the anachronistic veto dictatorship exercised by the United States has even prevented the armed actions in Gaza from being halted. Regarding this, Lula said: “Only one country had the right to veto and it vetoed [the proposal], and it was the United States. This is incomprehensible, it is unacceptable. That is why we are fighting to change the UN,” and added: “That is why we want to change the number [of members], how it works, and end the right of veto.” Of course, Lula’s speech hides his country’s ambition to become a permanent member of the Security Council.

In this context, it was the Israeli government itself that placed itself outside the scope of international law by publicly acknowledging its possession of nuclear weapons, a practice prohibited by the UN Charter. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), another UN body so active in seeking to audit and control Russia in the conflict in Ukraine, has turned a blind eye to avoiding having to issue an opinion on this situation, which once again calls into question the UN’s neutrality and its adherence to international law. All of this undermines global security, placing at serious risk the international arms control regime that the UN must uphold, defend, and enforce.

Washington has placed itself above the UN by endorsing all the abuses committed by Israel, a country that, incidentally, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its 300 thermonuclear bombs are a real danger not only to the Palestinian people but to the entire planet, even though it is known that they are in the hands of these new 21st-century Nazis, brimming with hatred, eager to kill, and devoid of any sense of humanity.

The UN has failed; it no longer exists. A new world is emerging. A new organization must accompany it.

[1] For non-Venezuelan readers, the “medio” is an old Venezuelan coin that was worth a quarter of a bolivar, that is, 0.25 bolivar cents.