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Comment by hanoz | Hacker News Reader

Bafflingly absurd to suggest a permanent seat at the council could be forfeit over such a matter. These seats are occupied by the victors of the last world war, and will continue to be so until the results of the next one.

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While that might be true for US, UK and Russia, I fail to see how China and France won WW2.

Major powers on the winning side that didn’t finish the war as Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

Beware the overwhelming Eurocentrism of WWII history as well, China was heavily involved throughout the duration of the conflict and took 3-4 million military casualties with 7-8 civilian casualties in the Pacific theater of WWII, second only to Russia (ignoring the losers).

Germany had a war goal of occupying europe. France wasn't occupied at the end of the war, therefore france won.

Same applied to japan and china.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The League of Nations failed, and then disbanded. The UN fails constantly, but has decided to simply become more irrelevant overtime rather than disbanding. I can’t see why a fresh world war would convince them to change tack.

The League of Nations was created by the winners of WWI and disbanded by the events of WWIIz exactly as parent wrote.

The League of Nations was disbanded because it was entirely ineffective at achieving what it had set out to do, as was evident from the outbreak of WWII. The UN had the same goals as the LoN, and has been equally ineffective at achieving them. It has failed to prevent a single war, it has failed to prevent a single genocide, it has failed to resolve a single territorial dispute, and has not had a single successful peacekeeping mission (and given the human rights abuse committed by UN peacekeepers, there’s a compelling case that the peacekeeping mission as a whole has caused more harm than good). Those are the primary reasons that both of those organisations were founded, not as a winners club of the previous world war. The argument for why the LoN was disbanded also applies to the UN, but to an even greater extent. The only difference being that the UN has chosen to continue existing, in a state of total irrelevance. Given the 75 year track record, I see no reason to believe that failing to prevent yet another war would somehow become the tipping point for this organisation.

The League of Nations failed because it was structurally somewhat broken, and the nations that championed its creation failed to use it to effectively wield power to prevent the next war (See Wilsons failure to get the treaty creating/joining the League ratified by the US Senate). The UN fixed the first part, and provided current trends continue, we continue to remember the lesson from the second part. While it is arguable that some sort of conflict was deigned to happen because of the inequities inherent to the Treat of Versailles, a worldwide war was not even the obvious conclusion from that.

The UN and the LoN have exactly the same set of fundamental problems. Neither of those organisations had the power to do anything at all. If they don’t have the power to enforce their decisions, then they’re useless, if they do have the power to enforce their decisions, then national sovereignty ceases to exist. Which is why the UN or any organisation that succeeds it will always be irrelevant. How exactly do you think war has occurred in the post WWII world? Only in one of two ways. Either the instigator doesn’t care what the UN thinks, so they start their war, or they have to be seen to care what the UN thinks, so they ask first, the UN says no, and they start their war anyway. The security council is supposedly a mechanism for checks and balances, but all it really does it make sure that somebody is going to have an interest in vetoing any significant decision. Further cementing it’s irrelevance. The UN has demonstrably failed to prevent even a single war or genocide since its inception, yet it continues to exist. On what basis do you think failing to prevent war is eventually going to lead to its demise? The primary function the UN serves is as a forum for its 193 member states to each pitch a soapbox. It has never been a place that countries rely on to resolve disputes. The only real existential threat it faces is if the tax payers in those 193 countries get sick of paying for it.

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