@Ozzymac
@Draig
@Oliver's Army
@rooch 3
@Smug in Boots
Apologies to those l have missed but you have a better grip than me.
Could/should the UN have done more l also include International war crime commission which seem as pointless as Man Utd?
OK, had a think about this and done some nosing about the UN charter, etc. My conclusion is that the UN cannot really do much.
The UN General Assembly cannot order any military actions or peacekeeping operations, only the UN Security Council can do that. The UN response to the Korean War is a prime example of the type of action that can be ordered, but that was only passed because of special circumstances. The UN had recognised the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the China which was to occupy China's seat on the UN Security Council, the USSR (which, incidentally, had previously demanded that Ukraine was a separate country and so must have a separate seat at the UN) protested by not taking its permanent seat on the Security Council and the resolution was passed in its absence. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council had the USSR taken its seat then it could have used its 'veto' to stymie the resolution.
This is the problem at the UN now, Russia just uses its 'veto' to halt any action being taken.
I think that the current fuss at the UN about Russia being expelled from the UN Security Council (because no UN Procedures were followed when Russia were awarded the permanent seat of the USSR after the USSR was dissolved) is valid, but is taking too much time due to the legal issues involved. Moreover, doing this only feeds Putin's paranoia plus it gives him a propaganda weapon to convince the Russian population that the UN are a tool of NATO and they are trying to 'cancel' Russia. Ultimately this road leads to WW3 and the possibility of nuclear weapons being used.
What I think we should be doing is getting the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution that no country can take its (permanent or elected) seat on the UN Security Council whilst it is in contravention of an agreed UN General Assembly Motion requiring them to cease armed operations and withdraw from an occupied or contested territory. This is eminently doable, given that the 11th Emergency Special Session resulted in 140 Member States voting to adopt the resolution (drafted by Ukraine and 90 co-sponsors) entitled
Humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine – with 38 abstaining and five against.
Only having done that would then be possible to get some real action voted through the UN Security Council.
Putin would still moan and gripe but the critical difference would be that the suspension would be the result of normal UN procedures and not disqualification of Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council based on questionable retrospective legal interpretation.
The trouble is that the UK and USA would themselves likely have fallen foul of this in the past (eg Iraq and Afghanistan) and could be used against the UK's position on the Falkland Islands so they might not want to go down this route.