Korea, Ukraine and the UN

 I remember when North Korea invaded South Korea.  Harry S Truman was often a lucky man. In 1950 the world, most of it, at least the white and western portions, believed in the United Nations.  And the Soviet Union sometimes boycotted sessions of the Security Council. The invasion happened during a boycott, so the Security Council was able to agree on the use of force to oppose it.  

(For those many people who don't know the structure of the UN, almost all "nations" are included in the General Assembly (which in 1950 also included Ukraine plus another Soviet republic as well as the USSR) but the Security Council was supposed to be the fast-acting executive body with five permanent members (the WWII allies of USA, UK, France, (Nationalist) China, and USSR plus a rotation of other members. Each of the permanent members could veto action, which during the course of 72 years has eroded the UN's ability to act.)

So the Korean War was not the US and South Korea against North Korea and eventually Red China--it was the UN against the Reds. Wikipedia says 21 countries contributed troops, though the US provided the bulk of those coming from outside Korea.

So 72 years later we have a country invading another country, one of the permanent members of the Security Council, and neither Russia nor China is boycotting, so it's impossible for the Security Council to act. If it were possible, then NATO would have had cover to provide planes and troops to war. But as it is the UN becomes even more irrelevant.

I shed a tear for the dreams of the people after WWII who thought they'd fixed the problems of the League of Nations and the UN would lead the way to a better world. 

Gates on Foreign Policy

 Reading Robert Gates: Exercise of Power, American Failures, Success, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World.

This Post review is pretty good.  Gates applauds Nixon and Reagan as having foreign policy agendas on entering office, and working effectively to implement them. He likes George HW Bush's response to the end of the Cold War, but criticizes Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Trump. He offers overviews of our history in dealing with various foreign affairs issues over the last 50 years, during much of which he was either at CIA, NSC, or DOD. Then he offers suggestions for better management.

His three big things are:

•  reviving, in my eyes, the Weinberger/Powell criteria for military engagement
• arguing for building up our non-military instruments of foreign policy--State, foreign aid, sanctions,education, etc.
• arguing for coordinated use of foreign policy instruments--he cites GWBush's Pepfar (aid to Africa for AIDS) as a model.

Two thoughts in response:

• for any organization there's a trade-off between specialization and coordination of effort. We had that in USDA, still do, and I don't think anyone has really solved the problem.  The National Security Council was supposed to be the solution originally, but Gates doesn't think much of  its modern incartnation.
• Gates in a sense is arguing for "defunding the military" as progressives are arguing for "defunding the police." In both cases the analysis is that using force is counter-productive and/or ineffective, and using available alternatives to force would work better. (This is my take, definitely not his.)

Just a note from history--in the1950's the UN was the hope of the left.  While Gates doesn't ignore the UN, it's obvious from his discussion how far its stature has fallen.