Revamping the UN
Reader comment on item: After Saddam? Remaking the Mideast

Submitted by Shep Fargotstein (United States), Feb 13, 2003 at 10:10

President Bush could easily put the UN, France and Germany on the defensive by stating the obvious: The UN must be reorganized, or face the same fate as the League of Nations. The first order of business should be to take a good look at the actual members of the General Assembly (GA) and the Security Council (SC).

It is rather bizarre that after the formation of the EU, France still maintains its status as a member of the UN Security Council. It is even stranger that the global press has barely even mentioned it. If common sense and fair play were attributes of the UN, which hasn't been the case for decades, they would relinquish their seat for a single EU chair, and give India - whose global weight based on it's population, it's economic importance, and it's responsible use of it's formidable nuclear industry, it's rightful place among it's peers. While they're at it, the 15 European countries that sit at the General Assembly should receive only one seat – just like the US. The current 5 rotating General Assembly members who get to sit at the Security Council, of which 2 are Spain and Germany (plus France), effectively gives the EU 3 seats verses the single US seat.

If the EU, led by France and Germany, want to flex their collective political muscle in defiance of the US, they must be willing to level the playing field. To do otherwise would expose them and the UN for what it is: A collection of third world banana republics, violent dictators, and dubious self righteous European countries - hell bent on using the so-called legitimacy of the UN to gang up on their victim of the day.

I am sure that, given the corrupted pattern of allied third world regional voting blocks assisted more often than not by various EU members, this logical, fundamental, and significant change – which would do much to reclaim it's lost legitimacy - has little chance of passing a GA of SC vote. But it would bring the UN's current irrelevance into the light of day, for all to see.

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