HAS THE UN OUTLIVED ITS USEFULNESS?

I wrote this letter, published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.  exactly ten years ago on the eruption of the US-Iraq war.  Allow me to republish it here in light of the continuing ineptness of the United Nations to prevent the Malaysians from demolishing our fellow Filipinos in Sabah.

      "THE FAILURE of the United Nations to prevent the US-Iraq war was lamentable.  But history has just repeated itself.  The League of Nations, the UN's predecessor, also had the same failure.

      Formed after the end of World War I -- curiously with the United States never becoming a member  even if President Woodrow Wilson was its chief founder -- the League in its early years settled a number of disputes and prevented several wars.  But these were between small countries.  It, however, failed to control the Axis and Allied Powers.  After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1933, the league condemned the aggression but did not impose sanctions; Japan withdrew in 1933.  Also withdrawing in 1933, Germany began to rearm, while Italy invaded and annexed Ethiopia in 1935.  The League imposed economic sanctions but allowed Italy to get the supplies it needed most, until Italy withdrew in 1937.  The league expelled Russia for its 1939 aggression against Finland, but then World War II had already begun.

       There have been notable UN achievements, the first being the peaceful lifting of the Berlin Blockade in 1945.  In 1947, the UN prevented a possible Balkan war.  In 1949, it stopped the fighting between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and also settled the Indonesian-Dutch War.  The Korean War in 1950-53 marked the first time an international organization had recommended action that halted a military aggressor.   In the Middle East, hostilities were stopped through UN efforts.  The first effort ended the dispute between Israel and the Arab states in 1948.  The second, following Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the eruption of the Egypt-Israel war, culminated in a ceasefire and the withdrawal of all troops from the Canal area and the Sinai peninsula.  The UN again prevented an imminent and bigger Middle East conflict in 1967.

      But UN efforts have been likewise marked by monumental failures.  They failed to prevent the Vietnam War. in which the United States sided with South Vietnam and Communist China and the USSR with North Vietnam.  The UN also failed to halt the advance of Russian tanks during the Hungarian Revolt in 1956.  The only thing the UN could do then was to pass a resolution denouncing Russia.

      During the Cuban Crisis in 1962, it was not the UN but US President John F. Kennedy who forced an arrogant Nikita Khrushchev to back down.  And now, bereft of a UN imprimatur, the United States has invaded Iraq.

     The above makes one conclusion inescapable: the UN is good only for petty wars; it is downright inutile when the world's superpowers are involved.  Whether, like the League of Nations, the UN must bow out as a world peace maker, is the greatest dilemma that now haunts mankind."   


As things now are, nobody knows how the Sabah standoff would end.  Even as, pursuant to the UN's desire, in fact, already a mandate, for a tripartite peaceful dialogue between Malaysia, the Philippines and the Sultanate of Sultan to begin, the Malaysian forces remain arrogant and defiant as they continue to militarily pursue the Sultan's men into the Sabah hinterlands.  Nothing has yet been heard from the UN since it announced its order for a ceasefire which, in turn, Malaysia had simply sneezed at. The curious question now aches for an equally curious answer:  Has the UN really outlived its usefulness.as a peace keeper  or is it rather  simply because Philippine President Benigno Aquino has been apparently siding with the Malaysians in this issue?