-----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>We believe that a stronger UN should be prepared to authorize or
>themselves intervene in destructive military conflicts in the future.
>The inability of either the UN or the European Union to intervene in this
>conflict clearly demonstrates the need for stronger, more democratic and
>more political international institutions.
-More democratic? The reason the UN isn't involved in this war is that at
-least two rather significant members, Russia and China, object, as do many
-smaller countries who can only view NATO's offensive strategy with alarm.
-Is DSA working with some special definition of "democratic" here - as in
-decisions DSA agrees with, or perhaps decisions the Democrats have already
-made?
The very fact that Russia and China (or the US for that matter) can veto action of any kind is precisely why a "more democratic" UN is needed. Whether some kind of Kosovo intervention could have found a majority is an open question, but given the broad support for some kind of action from Europe and much of the Islamic world, a more democratic UN likely could have found a better solution than solely NATO intervention. Even a number of countries opposing NATO intervention would have supported armed intervention if done under a UN umbrella, a choice none of them could have given the Russian and Chinese vetoes,
That you hold up Yeltsin's Russia or China as an example of a democratic embodiment at the UN makes your definitions of democracy pretty suspect.
--Nathan Newman