Create a stronger UN

Are there any plausible ways to make the UN much stronger than it is today, where it acts more like a global government? Possibly with its own armed forces? What got me thinking about this was that I discovered that, in either 1946 or 47 President Truman proposed to give the US atomic arsenal to the UN.


So maybe a longer, more destructive world war 2 makes people more willing to give the UN real power, to prevent a new even more destructive war? Possibly with atomic weapons used by both sides, or maybe things break down as the nazis collapse and the west and the USSR duke it out, and after that war this more powerful alt-UN is formed?
 
I'm reposting an idea I had:

I think using the Congo Crisis would make a good starting point for this- Hammarskjöld was a very proactive SecGen, and the possibility of foul play involved in his passing makes it interesting. Let's say Dag was targeted by mercenaries hired by whichever intelligence agency- the South Africans, perhaps. The mercs are caught, sanctions are passed, and the U.N. manages to squeeze in an anti-PMC resolution decades before it's become a hot button issue. This is all due to international outrage at the attempted assassination. Not only that, the U.N. peacekeepers are augmented by more formal structure, eventually leading to the creation of a unit specifically for anti-partisan operations... including against non-state actors such as mercenaries.

The nations supporting this are not the P5 (except perhaps France!) but the second-tier nations that composed the Suez and Congo missions. Especially Canada.

Melvin Loh said:
Fellas, I did a thesis on the UN 1 of whose chapters covered this exact topic, so I'm pretty familiar with this issue. There are plenty of int'l law journals about the UN having its own standing army, including with the implementation of Art. 43 agreements (no country has ever signed 1, so it's all a dead letter) which allow the UN to have national armed forces signed over to fulfil the Charter's Ch. VII peace-enforcement purposes directly under its command and control, and other proposals under Art. 97 iirc for the UN to have its own directly-recruited military force, similar to the Secretariat, although such a force would probably only be speculated at approx 5,000-10,000. Such latter proposals, which included a 1993 article written by former Under-SG Sir Brian Urquhart (who had also been a 1st Airborne Div intel officer leading up to Op MARKET GARDEN) discussed the possibilities of hiring Gurkhas to fight for the UN, in the same manner as they serve the British Army, or to directly recruit individuals in the same manner as the FFL. Thus far, I believe the only time the UN has recruited its own armed personnel directly was with the lightly-armed 500-strong UN Guards Contingent in northern Iraq from 1991, who took over from the coalition Op PROVIDE COMFORT force providing humanitarian relief to Kurdish refugees.

Hmmm, maybe 1 viable way you can begin to have a UN standing army a la foreign legion, but not of course of the sizes you're mentioning, would be to have the UN from the early 1990s subcontracting private military cos. like EO and Sandline after seeing their phenomenal success in combatting war crimes-committing irregulars in Sierra Leone and Angola, and perhaps even if the SC had adopted ADL's 1994 proposal to employ private security guards to disarm the Hutu armed extremist elements in the Zairean refugee camps. There are BTW also many int'l legal journal articles discussing this concept.
 
One thing that might help is reversing the USA's unilateral rule that US troops will always be under US commanders. I've known some superb British, Canadian, Austrailan, German, French, Japanese, Pakastani, Egyptian, Israeli, and other commanders whom I would be proud and confident serving under in a joint UN force.
 

MSZ

Banned
The UN is an international organization - not a state. Hence it cannot have a military force, nor cannot it enforce any laws on non-members. All it's actions regarding any state are dependent on that states conduct and it's willingness to use it's law enforcement to uphold UN laws. So you will never have a UN Army without it becoming a World Government first - and it's not going to become a world government due to the number of countries unwilling to become subjects to one. You could have a more 'active' UN if you weakend the veto power of Security Council Permanent Members, for example by allowing that veto to be overruled by a 4/5 majority of the whole Security Council - though that would require either a different UN charter from the start, or a WW3 to amend it, since nothing else seems likely to be able to change it.
 
Well honestly that's kinda what I was aiming for, give the UN more power AF the start and have it become a world government over time.
 
You could make it a bit more active and stronger, but not much.

The problem is no nation state is going to yield it's authority to the UN. They will only carry out sanctions or provide troops when it is in their own best interest. There is nothing the UN can do to really compel them.

As for removing the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council all that will happen is that the super powers will walk out or just ignore UN edicts they don't care for. If that happens all you get is a toothless organization that is little more than a debate society. Similar to the League of Nations without the US in it. The UN was deliberately set up this way because otherwise the US and USSR would not have participated.
 

MSZ

Banned
You could make it a bit more active and stronger, but not much.

The problem is no nation state is going to yield it's authority to the UN. They will only carry out sanctions or provide troops when it is in their own best interest. There is nothing the UN can do to really compel them.

As for removing the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council all that will happen is that the super powers will walk out or just ignore UN edicts they don't care for. If that happens all you get is a toothless organization that is little more than a debate society. Similar to the League of Nations without the US in it. The UN was deliberately set up this way because otherwise the US and USSR would not have participated.

In a nutshell, this is correct. I suppose though that if the UN used different procedures, you could end up with more 2011 Libya or 1956 Suez situations. For example: State X would suggest a resolution taking action against Y and has some countries supporting it. It brings it to the Security Council's attention, where state Z vetos it. However that veto is sent to an 'appeal' to the whole SC or General Assembly or something, where the veto is overruled by say 80% (so to make sure that it's the greater majority of the states of the world who support it.). The resolution would nominally compell all countries of the UN to take action against Y, but would not penalise those who would limit themselves to 'condemnation'. Thus the remaining 80% would be free to act using both their own and UN resources, the 20% de facto stay out. I doubt those 80% would be stupid enough to take on any of the superpowers, as creating such a majority would be very difficult in the first place.

Essentially the idea is for the UN to give more approval to states being allowed to act, without forcing any to participate. If a broad alliance of world states would be formed for a single purpose, the Superpowers right to 'criminalise' that groups actions would be limited (without limiting the superpowers freedoms in any way) and those states being limited to their own resources. It's something I came up with ad hoc now, not sure if or how it would work in action.
 
You'd totally have to avoid the Cold War, and I have no clue how you'd do that. Having Stalin and McCarthy die suddenly might be a minor start.

Having the Cold War being a Cool War (there are too many differences for the East and West to be friendly in the long run) might enable some more working together.

Getting rid of the Veto would be essential, and I don't see how to do that.

OTL, as I understand it, if the US (or USSR or whomever) votes no on a Security Council resolution, that's a veto.

I could see a different charter that says that the respective government actually has to deliberately veto a move (a stronger process than simply voting no).

Then the US (or USSR) could vote against moves it didn't like, but not actually veto them.

THEN we'd have to get international opinion to put pressure on 'frivolous' vetoes, and then...

OK, we're descending towards ASB territory, but it might be possible.


Another thought, assuming the Cold War is cool, not Cold, is that the veto might be modified. This would likely be part of a process that enlarged the number of permanent members.

Suppose a sustained veto had to have a seconder? The USSR/Russia could often count on Red China (once they have the China seat), while the US could often count on the UK. Still, unilateral US and USSR vetoes might then fail. Sometimes diplomacy failed because it would be impossible to convince both the UK and the US or both the USSR and China. If you only had to convince one of them....

So, why would the US or USSR agree? Well, if there's a period of particularly warm relations, AND we're redoing the whole charter, letting e.g. India in (possibly without veto?), politicians might be afraid to be seen as letting the world down just to defend their own parochial interests. Oh, ja, we're verging towards ASB territory, again. Sigh.
 
Top