- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
On more than 30 occasions, the United Nations Assembly has discussed the blockade against Cuba, which costs the island 5 billion dollars annually, according to some estimates. Every year the resolution is proposed and the whole world, through the vote of the absolute majority of the member countries of the United Nations General Assembly, has condemned the imperialist attitude of the United States towards Cuba.
edit: result of the vote: https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/system/cache/media_attachments/files/113/398/372/180/881/996/original/82c4d1f509e933fa.jpg
Yes, well, at the end of WWII all of the major economic powers in the world were more interested in negotiating than fighting. Nobody wanted to go to war again, at least not for awhile.
Eight decades later, and all those lessons have been forgotten. Self-interested and shortsighted leaders have risen to the tops of many nations, and nationalistic rhetoric is gaining popularity again.
The problem isn’t really with the the UN as an organization, but with the participants who are no longer acting in good faith, and no longer see large-scale war as something to be avoided at any cost.
I wasn’t trying to say that the UN had the power to prevent WWIII, only that it was created with the intent to do so. The UN as an organization never really had any teeth of its own. It’s a forum for discussion between nations - not going to war can really only happen if the nations involved make that the priority above their own interests.
With North Korea now committing troops to the conflict in Ukraine, the current situation seems very familiar, a prelude that will eventually lead to larger economic powers being drawn into the conflict directly. It feels like we’re all on a well-trod historical path, and I don’t know how we get through it without learning those lessons the hard way, again.
I fucking hope I’m wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory
In some ways, I’m a believer in the “80 year cycle, theory”. But to me, it’s a much simpler cause. 80 years is going to be roughly four generations removed from whatever the last chaos was (in this case, Hitler and Fascism and the Holocaust).
The generation that lived through it is long dead. They taught their children (My parents) to never forget. They in turn taught their children (Me…Gex X) to still remember what was fought for. And then the current generation (my kids if I had any) have a far less fundamental grasp on that history. We’re so far removed from that event that it’s been forgotten just long enough that it all makes an appearance again for the very same reasons. Because it’s an easy trap to fall into; blaming someone else for your problems.
All this has happened before and it will happen again. It’s as simple as “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it”.