Well yeah. The problem is the security council.
Or rather that’s the biggest problem. There are others.
UN is not stopping wars
People: What is the point of your existence!
UN wants to stop wars
Also people: You can’t tell us what to do! We have our own sovereignty!
The can’t even stop genocide, or imperial armies killing civilian fishermen, It feels more and more like the only way to avert aggression is procuring nuclear weapons.
While the structure of the UN makes it inherently unable to directly resolve conflict fomented by permanent members, Brazil could itself be applying more pressure to Russia as a member of BRICS.
I believe Brazil basically supports russian occupation of Ukrainian territories (and extermination of Ukrainian citizens, language and culture).
Not really supporting, but mostly turning a blind eye because Russia is a significant ally and the main source of refined diesel fuel.
I believe Lula da Silva publicly supported the annexation of currently occupied territories. It was presented in a more diplomatic manner, but I am talking about outcomes.
Brazil hasn’t legally recognized the occupation like Nicaragua, but from what I’ve read in our local (Ukrainian) media, it’s more like committed support, as opposed to “turning a blind eye”.
Interesting. I looked around what Lula has said and found that, in 2023, he did suggest Ukraine to “cede Crimea in order to stop the war”
In 2025, during a press conference where someone asked him about the Russo-Ukrainian war, after making the case for a ceasefire and negotiating peace, he asked back: “Do you think Putin will leave Crimea?” - although he never supported Russia’s claims for other territories, stating “you don’t always get what you want”.
I can see how that can be taken as support for the aggressor.
can see how that can be taken as support for the aggressor.
Lula changed his stance on Ukraine later, but in May 2022, Lula placed blame on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying “This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war”. Lula also repeatedly attacked NATO and the European Union as having caused the war. He accused NATO of “claiming for itself the right to install military bases in the vicinity of another country”
Also, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brazil has tripled its trade with Russia. Brazil has become one of the largest buyers of Russian diesel and fertilizers. In 2023, Brazil imported Russian fertilizers worth $3.5 billion
What I read also concerned other regions, not only Crimea.
I will give Lula the benefit of the doubt (I am assuming he knows nothing about russia or Ukraine), but yes, you can kick the russians out of Crimea (under putin or otherwise). If you want to do it, one easy supportive action would have been to allow high impact strikes deep into russian territory from day one of the full scale invasion.
Or not reward them with Nord Stream II after they annexed Crimea in 2014 (Merkel).
Generally speaking, being meek, cowardly and corrupt rarely contributes to any goals (military or otherwise).
This might seem callous, but… the purpose of the UN was never to prevent wars from happening. The UN is an international forum, it is not a world government. The purpose is to create a space for nations to talk to each other, and to organize collective action on issues that the majority of members agree on. The UN was not intended to override the sovereignty of member nations - if it was, nations wouldn’t join in the first place.
I disagree, the League of Nations was set up after WW1 with the specific aim of preventing another world war, their stated mission was to “maintain world peace”.
The League of Nations was absorbed into the United Nations, disbanding entirely in 1946, and the primary United Nations stated mission is again to “maintain world peace”.
So its specifically been created as a reaction to World War 2, and its forebear in reaction to WW2 - its goal has always been to maintain peace and prevent wars.
Its entirely fair for presidents/world leaders to call it out as increasingly ineffective in that goal, especially considering one of its founding ‘four powers’ (Russia, who maintains the membership powers of former USSR) is in the midst of a two year war of aggression with a neighbouring country. And two of the other founding powers (US and China) are frequently provoking war by attacking their neighbours. Their core mission is in shambles.
The purpose is to create a space for nations to talk to each other, and to organize collective action on issues that the majority of members agree on.
Save for anything the USA says “nope”, like actual action against climate change, putting an end to the trade blockade against Cuba, etc - then the majority can go fuck itself
The Paris Climate Agreement and still binding, but a lot of countries would rather everybody else does something about it and petrostates want no action at all.
As for Cuba, the issue is taking action. Words are cheap, but nobody wants to actually help Cuba.
I agree but thr ICJ always acknowledge genocides too late.
That isnt really true, as most examples of what the UN does show. Conventions on all kinds of issues that are ratified are things that member states are technically obligated to adhere to, there just are few effective mechanisms to enforce them into it.
The international criminal court is probably the foremost example. A member state is not free to commit war crimes just because they want to, and all states are obligated to abide by the Geneva convention or face consequences for it. Although that is a convention that determines interactions between sovereign states, not interior issues.
But human rights conventions are also a similar obligation that member states are supposed to adhere to, and the UN is certainly capable of attempting to force member states to abide by them. Its just rarely effective. For example, the US refused to ratify conventions on labor organization rights over 70 years ago, and is obligated every year to answer to the UN why US citizens dont have those rights. In practice this means that every year the US tells the UN “because we dont want to give people those rights, our rights are good enough even if below standard” and then the UN can basically do fuck all about it simply because no one is going to go force the US government to comply. And since 99.9% of US citizens dont know or care that they lack labor rights that are considered human rights by the rest of the world there is no internal pressure. So the UN just has to let it go.
But that doesnt mean that on a technical basis that the UN doesnt have the authority to say the US is out of compliance when it is. And it doesnt mean that US sovereignty overrides international convention. It just means that in practice the US can flaunt international regulations on human rights. As do many other countries like Russia and China. The obligation exists, its just ignored
Right, that would be the kind of “collective action” that I mentioned… it doesn’t have anything to do with preventing nations from going to war with each other… the UN doesn’t have that kind of authority and never did.
I was taking issue with the statement “the UN was not intended to override the sovereignty of member nations” considering that in many respects UN convention certainly overrides national sovereignty. At least for smaller states that can be coerced as such
But even then, the idea that the UN was not intended to prevent wars is also false. That was basically the entire point of creating an international body before human rights and other focuses were ever in the conversation.
The League of Nations was invented as a result of WWI and the treaty of Versailles in the interest of preventing another world war. The precursor to that was the 1899 International Peace Conference “held in The Hague to elaborate instruments for settling crises peacefully, preventing wars and codifying rules of warfare”
The whole, at least original, point of international governance is specifically to prevent conflict.
The goals for the UN as outlined at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference make that pretty clear, as peace are literally the first two aims of the organization:
The stated purposes of the proposed international organization were:
- To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace;
- To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
- To achieve international co-operation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems; and
- To afford a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.
Meanwhile BRICS is trying to destabilize the whole world.
BRICS is trying to offer us third worlders an alternative to eternally swallowing the United States’ boots, you mean.
Not really. It’s an alliance of rising imperial forces against the Americans dollar with the goal of creating a multipolar world, but I wouldn’t say that’s inherently more stable than one very powerful empire dominating everything. If anything, the neoliberalism mandated by global capitalism America championed is why the world became so unstable.
The extreme inequality causes artificial scarcity which drives people towards extreme nationalist ideologies. The increased nationalism that makes countries like China, Russia, and India more dangerous is thanks to that global economic system which encourages the worst in humanity. Local efforts at controlling capital are inherently undermined by it, as economic incentives demand fewer protections to compete with the rest of the world.
BRICS isn’t responsible for that, and if anything the deepening of economic ties between these empires will encourage them to seek peace with each other. As America becomes less and less relevant, the old tensions between those countries might cause it to collapse, but that won’t be the fault of it. Rather than it increasing or decreasing stability, it’s just a symptom of change rather than a driving force.
The transition between unipolar and multipolar is inherently unstable. BRICS wants the multipolar world, so it is destabilizing the US world order. That means change, which can be for good. However the transitions tend to be bloody. We unfortunately see some of that. I just hope we do not end up with some US-China war.
Multipolarity was inevitable and could have happened more peacefully with US leadership that understood their limitations and didn’t fight violently over the change. It won’t happen now, but that’s on the US for descending into chaos.
for me, as a latin American BRICS is our only hope.
