A rather disconcerting number of people have bought — hook, line and sinker — the notion that the United Nations (UN) is some insidiously nefarious globalist cabal that apparently wants to impose a new world order.
Although Canada’s Yellow Vest movement identifies the carbon tax as its primary concern, many — if not most members — harbour deep-seated fears that the UN is pursuing a dark agenda to take over the world.
Formed in the ruinous fallout of the Second World War, the UN is the successor to its utterly failed and ineffective predecessor, the League of Nations.
The latter was created following the First World War — also known as the war to end all wars — and only ended up proving completely useless in preventing another catastrophically devastating global conflict.
Regardless, when I was a younger, even more hopeless idealist, part of me felt a calling to enlist with the UN’s peacekeepers, the blue helmets.
I wanted to believe the UN was an improvement over the failed League of Nations. For whatever reason, the prospect of taking up arms in defence of those who cannot protect themselves appealed to me.
But then I started to learn how impotent the UN mostly is.
The blood of so many innocent people spilled in Rwanda and Serbia was a clear enough indication that the peacekeepers were largely nothing more than armed observers watching from a safe distance while militants slaughtered civilians under rules of engagement that prevented the blue helmets from firing unless first fired upon.
My problem with the UN is that the international body is essentially an impotent, toothless organization that in the face of some global crisis is almost always paralyzed by one single member of the Security Council that vetoes any meaningful action — usually Russia or China; sometimes both.
While the UN does deliver humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine where an unfolding conflict does not present too great a threat to its personnel, it seems to do little to nothing to actually engage and stop extremist militants of all stripes in their tracks.
So how this group could possibly take over the world and impose a new order is completely beyond me.
They can barely feed starving people in Yemen or protect migrants from human traffickers in Libya, so I really doubt they’re about to usurp the sovereignty of a nation like ours.
Arguably, the UN might be impotent to a degree and in that regard duly deserves criticism, but it is not by any measurable evidence malevolently Machiavellian.
