Ending wars

This writer published a book some years ago Ending War which argued that war is an endemic aspect of human nature (with some convincing evidence). He asserts on another OLO blog, Do we have free will?, that we, the human race, has a limited freedom to choose, that we don't have the ability to prevent war, and that is why we have had war after war since the beginning of recorded history.

We, therefore, can never end wars. The best we can do is stop it once a war has broken out. This is the responsibility of the United Nations - at which it has failed miserably.

The peacekeeping failures of the United Nations over the years have been numerous, including:

1. Failure to stop the 2003 US invasion or Iraq.
2. Inability to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
3. Not being able to end the Israel-Palestine conflict.
4. Failure to prevent the 2017 Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
5. Not doing enough to end the genocide in Darfur, from 2003 onwards.
6. The Kashmir dispute being the oldest and most serious of all is unresolved since 1948.
7. Bosnia, where Dutch UN Peacekeepers failed to prevent the Srebrenica massacre in which Bosnian Serb forces murdered over 8000 Bosnian Muslims.
8. Syria, where protests clamouring for political change, evolved into a civil war,
9. Papua New Guinea, where local indigenous people clamour for independence from Indonesia,
10. The Vietnam War raged for 19 years and cost the lives of two million people. The UN proved powerless to stop it.
11. The current crisis in Ukraine
12. The current Israel Hamas conflict where large numbers of people from Gaza have died. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in 10 months of war in Gaza, the health ministry says

The UN charter is to ensure peace. it was signed in San Francisco, by 50 of the 51 original member countries. The reasons for the failure of the UN appear to be:

1. The veto power of the founding five. Russian vetos in the UN are numerous, including its attempts to unlawfully annex four regions of Ukraine
2. Inadequacy and incompetence of UN Peacekeeping forces because of limited mandates from the UN Security Council (UNSC), inadequate resources from donors, excessive and immoral behaviour on UN troopsincludingsexual exploitation, child abuse, corruption and torture. Also frequently, excessive bureaucratic requirements. For the civilians caught in the crossfire, the results can prove deadly.Peacekeepers have been accused of sexually exploiting women in the Congo, being involved in sex trafficking in Bosnia and Kosovo, child abuse in Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti, as well as corruption, stealing, drink-driving and manslaughter. These are just some of the many crimes committed by United Nations peacekeepers.
3. Unwillingness to act in difficult wars including the two major current wars, Ukraine and Israel/Hamas.

My suggestion is that Australia start a movement to strengthen UN peacekeeping. It can do this by urging nations with which Australia has alliances to join in a movement to strengthen the ability of the UN to stop wars. These are The Commonwealth of Nations, ASEAN, The Five Eyes, The Asia Pacific Cooperation Pact and ANZUS. These collective agencies must constitute the bulk of the world's population. The Commonwealth alone consists of 2.7 billion people in a world population of 8 billion.

Collectively, they would:

1. Urge the abandonment of the veto power of the founding five.
2. Volunteer their own troops for peace keeping operations
3. Undertake UN sponsored studies on any additional reviews that would strengthen peace keeping.

If we were to act collectively, we could stop all wars, the moment of any outbreak of war.