Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

barbazoo·

Why couldn’t this be resolved using the international institutions we already have? What needs to change?

View on HN

> Why couldn’t this be resolved using the international institutions we already have?

They’re dead and have been for decades. The reason is they had no enforcement arm.

Mostly because the US has been boycotting them.

The institutions work if all countries abide by their rulings. The US doing this sort for things is destroying the institutions we have, chief of all the UN and the ICJ, put in place at the end of World War 2 to avoid a repeat. We have not learned.

JFK tried to build up international institutions on the basis that "Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside", but then both he and NSK got cancelled...

This has nothing to do with JFK - it was put in place in 1945

Yes, the UN was founded in 1945, and the Geneva Conventions originated all the way back in 1864, but some US administrations have tried to bolster international institutions, and some to tear them down. JFK, having said, "If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved" was among the former.

In 1962, he and NSK managed to arrive at a diplomatic cooperation; the reward for both of them was being cancelled.

That would be the UN. The last time the UN invaded a nation was in 1950. That happened because the Soviet Union boycotted the UN, so it wasn't able to veto it.

For the UN to ever fix a international issue it would require that country to anger all 5 UN powers. Venezuela has Russia and China on its side, so nothing would have happened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com