Mr. Stefan Olszowski, Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs, stated in a letter dated May 9, 1985: “Even perfect decisions of the Organization cannot yield expected practical results unless and until they have the response and support in the political will of Member States. I trust that mankind will succeed in halting and reversing the course towards the precipice.”

Therefore, the UN can only be a persuasive force, not a police force with powers of arrest. It is really a world forum, a debating arena wherein the nations present their grievances​—if it suits them. As former Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim wrote: “If they are not prepared to bring a problem to the [Security] Council, the United Nations can be of little help . . . The side-tracking or ignoring of the Security Council erodes its prestige and weakens its position . . . I regard this as potentially one of the most dangerous trends in the history of the United Nations.”

However, if nations do bring their problems to the UN, it is often to accuse and counteraccuse. The UN becomes a forum for political propaganda. That being so, you might ask, ‘How can the UN use its influence for peace?’

The answer given by UN officials is that the UN publicizes issues and tries to sway world opinion so that governments will respond. But in itself, it cannot take any armed action to prevent or impede a war. In that case, what about its own armed UN forces?

A UN publication answers: “These forces [if empowered by the Security Council or the General Assembly] typically assist in preventing the recurrence of fighting, restoring and maintaining order and promoting a return to normal conditions. To this end, peace-keeping forces are authorized as necessary to use negotiation, persuasion, observation and fact-finding. . . . While they are armed, they are permitted to use their weapons only in self-defence.” (Italics ours.) Thus their purpose is to dissuade others from conflict and avoid it themselves.

While admitting the UN’s shortcomings, he also explained: “One should realize that the United Nations is, after all, the world in microcosm. Its weaknesses must consequently be ascribed primarily to the contradictions that characterize the world community itself.” He adds: “I should point out that it [the UN] is no more than a mirror of the world it serves. That world is a conglomerate of extremely varied, often intractable, passionate, and antagonistic nations.” But not all commentators see the UN in such a favorable light.

In their book A Dangerous Place​—The United Nations as a Weapon in World Politics, Professors Yeselson and Gaglione argue that from its earliest days the UN has been a forum for expressing belligerence, and that it is a tinderbox of antagonisms and political manipulations that can only fan the flames of international conflict. And what about the world in which it operates? “A perverse yet simple truth is that world politics is very much like a jungle. National behavior is fundamentally grounded in self-interest and survival. Obsession with the latter imparts to the nation-state system not only the law of the jungle but its morality as well.” As a consequence, “war has become a permanent feature of international relations.”