Letter

In response to UN at 80 – Rome is burning, governments are fiddling and the UN is ailing

Dying from malignancy of its controllers

The UN was set up at the end of World War II to create a better world, but almost immediately its purpose was turned to preserving the power of the West (specifically the US) over the vast bulk of humanity. There have been valiant fights by that bulk of humanity — some successful, many not — to give meaning to its charter, but always against the staunch opposition of the rulers of the world.

So much is this true, and particularly with the calculated ignoring of it by the US and Europe, that the rest of the world is now designing and building institutions that will eventually supplant it with conclaves designed to eliminate the unipolarity that dominates it, with a true multipolarity of interests.

The UN is failing largely due to the fact that it operates in a world driven by the observation of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnese War that “the strong do as they will, while the weak suffer what they must”.

— Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041