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Comment by thinker34 | Hacker News Reader

The Russia-Ukraine war has all signs to lead the world into world war 3 if its not stopped. All these sabotage acts will continue across the globe to drag more countries into the mix. What is the UN Security council doing?. Nobody hears their efforts to stop anything

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>The Russia-Ukraine war has all signs to lead the world into world war 3 if its not stopped.

Russia can withdraw today and all the fighting would stop immediately.

>All these sabotage acts will continue across the globe to drag more countries into the mix.

Russia can choose to stop these sabotage acts immediately.

>What is the UN Security council doing?. Nobody hears their efforts to stop anything

Russia doesn't need anyone's permission to stop the war immediately.

(But also, Russia is a founder and permanent member of the UNSC, so...)

The US has invaded 3 countries this year so far. Seems many countries could choose to stop doing things if they wanted to.

What is your definition of 'invaded' ?

Sadly, if WWIII happened now the US probably won't be the good guys.

The problem being, of course, that if they stop any of what they're doing, in their own heads, they're no longer Russia.

And to them, that's a bad thing.

I think it would be wonderful if people read this:

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/western-media-are-not-reportin...

The russian disinfo was flagged so I'm posting it here.

Full disclaimer: I'm in contact with the NAFO leadership. ;)

The council with Russia in it (usurping the Ussr slot) doing this and China which supports Russia ? While the US president says its all irrelevant and Russia is a great partner ?

That leaves France and the UK. Not exactly a majority for action even IF they could do something relevant about it

> What is the UN Security council doing?

What do you expect UN Security Council to do here, really? Two of the permanent members are waging offensive wars without cause, and Russia keeps vetoing anything about Ukraine, and the US keeps vetoing anything about Gaza/Israel and Iran. What exactly could they realistically do, in your opinion?

Russia has a permanent seat and an absolute veto on all UN Security Council actions.

Russia lashing out beyond Ukraine is a sign of desperation, not of strength. They've destroyed their economy and have little chance of making more progress in Ukraine, and they know it. The predictions of escalation into WW3 don't seem credible to me.

Or maybe it’s the Iranians this time? Whoever it is, getting good at cybersecurity seems more useful than going to war over it.

What does Iran have to gain from provoking the Europeans?

> What is the UN Security council doing?

Echoing what everyone else is saying:

The UN Security council has no effective power over the five permanent members (or those countries a permanent member wishes to protect). Of course it is doing nothing against Russia, USA, China, UK or France; it can't.

That seems rather dysfunctional & kinda making the institution itself useless ?

Of course it's dysfunctional. Sovereign governments aren't super interested in reducing their sovereignty. The deal for the more powerful governments is they have a venue to legitimize imposing their will on other governments ... if the big 5 can come to consensus.

The deal for the less powerful governments is if they have a dispute with other less powerful governments, they can get it resolved by consensus of the big 5. If they have a dispute with a member of the big 5, there's an imbalance of power that the UN can't solve.

IMHO, this is better than the status quo from before the UN / League of Nations.

It might be nice to have an institution with the responsibility and ability to issue binding resolutions on all governments with regard to authorizing war/etc, but you can't really bind the big 5 (or at least the big 3) without their consent or overwhelming force.

What can the UN do if countries like Russia, China and the USA can simply ignore them?

Let me guess, we have to war now to... prevent... a war?

US wouldn't need to join the war for Ukraine to prevail. Not trying to force them to unconditionally surrender would be a good start.

The only superpower of the Security Council is sending nastygrams, and they can't be very nasty anyway, and any of the 5 members can veto it anyway, and any other nuclear power can play an UNO card and ignore the nastygram anyway.

The UN is a discussion forum, imagine "Reddit for countries". It's useful to coordinate some global actions like vaccines and stop small fights, but anyone with nukes can ignore it.

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