It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."~Voltaire
The United Nations was formed on June 26, 1945 near the end of World War II, just weeks before the world's first atomic weapon was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, adding emphasis to the importance of its stated mission: to end war and promote peace, justice and better living for all humankind.
By that standard, the United Nations has been a failure.
That is not to say that the United Nations has not done some good in the world. It has. Many of its initiatives have had profound impacts. And it has many talented, dedicated people. But as a symbol of peace, it has failed, and its presence may give false hope to those who still believe in its primary mission.
On its primary mission, the United Nations was set-up for failure from the start; it was established by the victors of WW2, who decided to grant themselves more power than the other nations of the world. This obvious flaw was compounded in both the Security Council and the General Assembly by granting an equal vote to each nation, regardless of size. As such, the UN is a union of nation-states, with a deeply flawed attempt at democracy including unnecessary veto powers granted to the founding members.
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time. That time has passed.
Now we need a World Federation with the power to make enforceable laws, global courts, and a global law enforcement agency.
Beyond the challenges of promoting world peace, the United Nations, in its current state, has no power to enforce solutions to the climate crisis, and perhaps most importantly, it has no power to regulate emerging, dangerous technologies like artificial intelligence.
UN Reform
Could the UN be reformed? Of course, that is a possibility and many talented, dedicated people are working toward that. Attempts to reform the United Nations in the past have been impeded by entrenched resistance to change among more influential member states and organizational inertia.
We need what the United Nations was intended to be; a global body that has the power to legislate against war, and crucially, a body that has the power to enforce those laws. In our current state, we also need an institution that can enforce climate crisis regulations and limit the proliferation of artificial intelligence and other dangerous technologies. New global threats will arise in the future that will need to be addressed as well.
Whether the World Federation can emerge as a substantially reformed UN, or whether we need to create a whole new organization, is an academic exercise that will be determined over the coming months and years. Regardless, there are vital institutions within the UN that would ideally be included in a new World Federation.
Just as the United Nations necessarily replaced the League of Nations, we now need a World Federation, constructed democratically from the bottom up, with real power.
Working together, we can build the largest movement in human history