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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

The UN exists because the alternative is a series of international crises caused by people having literally no idea how to talk to their counterparts.

Let it not be forgotten that some of the finest wires of the Cold War came down to the delays in international diplomatic communications between Washington DC and Moscow due to the need to relay messages via embassies.

People have gotten so used to an international power structure with high speed communications and well defined diplomatic channels that they mistake the purpose of these organizations for their effectiveness. The alternative is a lot worse.

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The "high level diplomats from each country meet each other" part of the UN budget is a tiny fraction of their overall spending.

Yeah and this might be too obvious to spell out but can we really expect the UN to be efficient when its purpose is to coordinate organisations that themselves are neither efficient nor willing to cooperate much of the time.

Isn't the only way to make UN more efficient to make nation states more efficient?

The above is not true. It was not speaking to each other that caused world war 2. It was Mr. Chamberlain talking to Mr. Hitler and believing him that caused the problem.

It was also the League of Nations failing to live up to it's principles when Japan invaded Manchuria.

The UN was a dream to try and resolve things in a multi-laterial world, and sometimes early on was effective (See Korea). after the debacle of the Korean War (Moscow boycotting rather then using their veto), the progress in the cold war was almost always bilateral. (not always though).

In it's current form, it's useful - but I think the WTO / World Bank and the Red Hotlines have been far more useful.

They never mentioned anything about World War 2. They are talking about the Cold War. The nuclear crisis between US and Russia. And I think they are right because I believe they set up a direct line between Moscow and DC right after that conflict ended.

Which had nothing to do with the UN.

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