 Yeah, history is here to help. And I'm Jay Fidel. I'm here to help too. And Peter Hoffenberg is with me here today, history professor at UH, and he's here to help. And what are we talking about today? We're asking this question, it's a very hard question, a disturbing question. Is the United Nations still up to its job? Welcome Peter. Good to see you. I love the shirt. Thank you. Everybody tells me that including my puppy. Okay. Let me ask you this, what is the job of the United Nations? We might have forgotten what that job is. What is it? Right. Well, it's actually many jobs, which is not to avoid your question. But many of your listeners will think of the United Nations born in 1945. But to great degree, it's really born in 41 with the Atlantic Charter. And the first and foremost goal is to preserve freedom, peace, and security. But that's like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But that's the first and foremost goal. And then associated with it, like with its predecessor, the United Nations, it has health roles, economic roles, etc. So I think when people criticize, and there's been a lot of criticism recently, just as people criticize the League of Nations, we have to think about the various things it does. And in fact, it does some of those very well. So if we're in 1945, and it really boils down to one question, we're in 1945, we've just come out of the most horrendous war in modern history, if probably not all history, it has ended with the explosion of two atomic bombs. And the Cold War has begun. What's the first and foremost goal is to prevent World War Three. And the United Nations has helped prevent World War Three. So to a certain degree, it's first and foremost goal. And when people complain about it, they ought to remember the number of dead and mained, the architecture and infrastructure destroyed. I had a second world war. So that's my answer to you. Now, we can talk about the other things you're supposed to do. Let me ask you to compare it to the League of Nations. It seems like big wars create international governance. And people come out of a big war and say, gee, we don't want that to happen again. Never again, sort of thing. And so the same thing that happened in 1945 also happened in 1918. And Woodrow Wilson gets credit for that, although he brings some negative points into his legacy. But what happened there? Was it exactly the same process or different? How was it similar or contrasting with the United Nations? Sorry, excellent point. Your first point is absolutely correct. That at least in the West, I use expansively, in the last, what is now, almost 600 years, or 500 years, that has been the response. Catastrophic war and catastrophic for the coin in time and people, so very different with modern technologies, you are absolutely right. One of the responses has been to negotiate some conference or treaty and among the goals of that conference or treaty have been to prevent war. So you're absolutely right. When we think about 1945, you are again absolutely right that the First World War and the Versailles Treaty and the series of other treaties. Versailles was just the largest, most well known, but the series of treaties after the First World War also were absolutely right to try to prevent the next war. Now, historians will remind you that's kind of an easy thing to say because it gets back right to what you think caused the war, what you hope to gain by the war, what you'd like your country's role to be after the war, and I'm sure all this will be familiar to any of your listeners. The most direct answer is the United Nations tried to self-consciously mimic what the League of Nations did well and avoid what they perceived to be the League of Nations failures. And I think, again, almost everybody listening and certainly their parents and grandparents will think that the major League of Nations failure was to prevent the expansion of Japan, Italy, and Germany. It also prevented the expansion of the Soviet Union, the argument being that those expansions provoke World War So again, you could argue that, yes, the Cold War essentially settled down to a new kind of domination, but the consequence of the Cold War and the consequences of that bipolarity was not World War III. So in that way, what the UN said is we're going to have a security council, we'll have an assembly, security council, like in the U.S. Federalist certainly has power that the council, that the assembly does not. But I think as a historian, and I hope people out there can correct me, one of the most significant differences, or two I would say, the major powers participate. So many of the major powers did not participate in the League of Nations. By the time we move through the 40s, there's no Soviet Union, there's no Germany, there's no United States, there's no Japan, I can go on, right? And secondly, we were in a prevailing party, we in Britain were the prevailing party, and let me throw this into your mix. It seems to me like history is told through the survivors, and these international organizations are staffed by the people who prevailed in the war, isn't that true? Absolutely, let me just make one more point and I'll get to that, because you asked about relationship between the League of Nations, the United Nations, one other significant difference is that the League of Nations had no weaponry, no army. The United Nations, and I know people like to make fun of it, but we can talk about it, because it is also a success. It has the blue helmet and army. So 1945, people said, look, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, a clear violation of international law, and all we could do was have a trade embargo in Mussolini. So now in 1945, there is an army in our force. Now, as far as your point about the victors, yes, we probably want to remember as well, though, that that was certainly the case in Versailles. But again, after 1945, there was an effort to ensure that Japan and Germany and Italy would return to the family of nations. So that's another lesson. And Germany, as you know, is partitioned. But this time Germany had an army, the rule was, though, until very recently, actually, that the German armed forces could not be deployed overseas. And it was the misguided American nation of Iraq, and the consequences of that in Afghanistan, which prompted NATO, which included German forces, to go overseas. And those people addressed in Japan know that the Japanese diet has been debating the provision of its post-war constitution, was that it could have an army but could not use it overseas. So those are lessons from 45, right? Because Nazis exploited the idea that Germany should not have a navy or an army. And 1945, people paid attention to that for a variety of reasons, including the Cold War, right? If East Germany was going to be armed, the West was going to make sure that West tributes also were. But let me go back to the League of Nations for a moment. It didn't last very long. And before you know it, the Reichstag was burned and Hitler was on a track to create World War II. And it was only 10, 12 years of decline. And then Bingo went back to a pre-war pattern. So what went wrong with the League of Nations that it should fail so relatively quickly and be so inconsequential to the leaders of Europe? Well, I think the direct answer is what I mentioned, that the problems of the League actually did not start with Hitler. The problems of the League started probably in Asia. And no League of Response to the Japanese, the Sino-Japanese War, the second one, they've been one of the 1890s. And after the Marco Polo incident in the early 1930s, neither the US or the League had a response. And Japan wasn't a member. So what do you do? Well, one of the lessons, and this gets to later in the 30s, was, as I mentioned, with no viable military response, those regimes are not going to pay attention. So you could argue that the legitimacy was initially challenged and overturned by the Japanese. Then Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. And all along, Hitler has been expanding. He's usually been expanding into areas which he claims as German areas, like the Sudetenland, et cetera. So you're actually right in 38 with Munich. And the West giving up checks for Laquia and League doing nothing about that. That's when the Hitler card is added, or the Hitler card is taken away, and the Castle of Cards is just destroyed and the League has no legitimacy. But I think that, again, we're back to the first point. That, yes, the League, as we know it, was intended to prevent war. And that way it failed. But the League also helped, to a great degree, addressing human trafficking. They called it human slavery. We called it human trafficking. The League had cultural interaction. The League had health interaction. And so again, we look at the United Nations, right? We have things like the World Health Organization. We have UNESCO. Those are also born of League successes. But I think, perhaps, when people sat down in 45, they recognized that the way the UN is going to work is really just that everybody has to participate. And you have to find a way. And that means the Security Council gets a veto. But to a great degree, the League of Nations was like the medieval Polish parliament, which had over 400 members. And when two decided they wanted to go home, the parliament was in excess. And the League of Nations is the same way. And that's part of international governance, right? If it's going to be shared, it really has to be shared. You all have to buy in. And significant powers not buy into the League. Now, why so, I think, two reasons, again, which make perfect sense to you. As far as expanding, we're talking about four regimes, Stalinist, Soviet Union, which people really knew very little about. Hitler's Germany, which actually, when people were shocked at the camps, they understood expansion. Mussolini's Italy, and the militarist regime running Japan. Now, for better or worse, those are the regimes that caused the Second World War. And they're regimes which had no interest, right, in international order. So you have to convince regimes, right? I mean, China is a, the People's Republic of China is a member of the United Nations. So regardless of what China does, it has bought into a certain degree this relationship. Okay. Secondly, and again, probably everybody out there is too old, but their grandparents will remember, their two very different memories of the First World War. If your memory of the First World War was never, again, you signed on to the League of Nations. But there was an equally powerful memory going into the 20s and 30s. One was the German memory that I really didn't lose the war. You know, Jews and Europeans and social staff, me in the back. So they have no interest really. The Nazis have no interest in joining. The Japanese and Italians both thought that they didn't get what they wanted out of the peace treaties that they had joined with the allies. They were resentful. So you have these very powerful competing. And I think you can say you really don't have that after World War II. You have the Soviet Union who looks at it as a patriotic war. They carved out a significant part of Europe. And it's pretty hard to find anybody in Japan, right, or America really wants, who feel like they missed out on World War II, or that World War II showed a gun differently. So the memory of the war, it's like, it's like the U.S., right? I mean, certain people in the South have a different memory of the Civil War, right, than people in the North. And we're still fighting over that. And I can see the League of Nations is fighting over that in the 20s and 30s. So on the side of those who support League of Nations, there were peace treaties that probably mean nobody who doesn't spend their 24-7s studying European history. For example, a European different that's outlawed war, or a Carnopact. War could not be a legitimate political form. That was kind of built into the U.N. except for a problem with the U.N. And I don't know if you want to get into the problem, because you can eventually. Oh, I do. I do. I do. I want to tell you that when I was a kid, you know, in my preteen years. Before the first law court, right. Thank you for that. Yeah, the battle of Anteba. Our schools, right through school, would arrange trips to go to the United Nations building on the East River. We would have tours. We would look at the General Assembly building, a rather auditorium. We would go and see the offices. We would meet the officials of the United Nations. We were so impressed. And this is all before, say, 1950, 55 like that. When I was a kid, then they would arrange these trips. And so I grew up in school thinking the world of the United Nations, that it was there to save us from another war. It was there to put humanity together as never before. It was the highest, most noble collective of countries and people and cultures and collaborative efforts from all around the world. But little by little, Peter, it slipped. And the geopolitics got involved. They went through changes internally, externally. And there were changes in the countries that were members of the United Nations. And it didn't take too long after I graduated from elementary school to the United Nations to be passive and quiet and essentially going underwater. Next time at the services is in Rwanda, where the blue helmets appear, and then run away. And I think we all looked at that and said, what happened here? They have no clout at all. They have no chutzpah at all. They are not doing anything at all. What use are they? And Rwanda was the hotel Rwanda movie, if you remember. That was a statement that was really scary because what it meant was the United Nations had come to another place and it wasn't the place we hoped. And I think that has continued. It happened before Rwanda, gradually, and then visibly to the world audience. But after Rwanda, it never got better. And so here we are. And Trump beats them up, takes their funding away. Their whole effort on the world health organization seems to be ineffective and politically marginalized. And I'm not sure they're doing a lot these days. I'm not sure that the country's membership is actually supporting them. I think if you look forward to crises, whether it's climate crises or war or geopolitical arguments, you don't factor the United Nations in. Why? Because the Security Council is always arguing with itself and it's highly political. And Russia sees it as a tool. And so does China see it as a tool. And the rest of those guys just stand aside and they're wallflowers through what China and Russia do. And the United States has been ineffective in leadership. It has gradually let go. And it wasn't only Trump. It has gradually let go of its leadership position. So what we have now is a failed, or if you want to be charitable, a failing organization. I might add, before I stop, that there's the atrocities and human rights violations. There's war crimes happening at greater frequency and more places in the world than ever before. There are 65 or 70 million people in camps, displaced camps. And the United Nations is doing nothing about that. It's efforts in dealing with atrocities are really minimal. And the atrocities are sort of getting hold of the situation. And the United Nations is unable to actually have an effect on it. So I pose all that to you in the notion you will disagree with me about most of it. But that's my perception of where the United Nations is now. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about it, because I feel that we are at a tipping point where the United Nations is ready to go away. I will don my Adlai Stevenson heritage and my Keynesian heritage. And as my beloved Libby would say, two things are true. Everything what you said is true. But so are some other things that are true. So let me address those issues. One of the difficulties of any kind of international relationship, be it a treaty collected like the United Nations or Congress, is whether or not members have the right to intervene in another nation's business. And in this way, the United Nations has tried to do what every single treaty has had to deal with. Before the League of Nations, there was a very instrumental 1815 Treaty of Vienna, which lasted until German Extensions in 1870. But one of the principles of that treaty was you had no right to intervene in another nation's business. Now, so before we start talking about what the United Nations should do about war crimes or what they should do about human rights or what they should do about civil wars, because most of these are associated civil wars, I agree with you. The United Nations has not been as effective as it could be, but it is really running up against an existentialist problem. And you can see this particularly with China, right? China claims to be a member and it claims it has sovereignty. The only answer to this has ever been if the United Nations or the League of Nations and the Treaty of Vienna collectively intervene. Now, the Rwandan example is an excellent one of the UN being outnumbered, outgunned, and the communications being misguided and gobbled. And that's not unusual for military enterprise. I could give you Cyprus, where there has not been what everybody predicted, a bloody civil war after partition in the 1940s, and among people keeping the beast are exactly blue elements. Now, the second issue is that the UN has been successful in cultural issues. It's been successful in its food programs. It has often been successful in its refugee programs. What it has not been is perfect in any of those. But we can look at the UN as an outburst of optimistic internationalism or the reverse, an outburst of Cold War westernism, westernization, and both are true. Historians of the 40s and 50s will tell you, Keynes and others believe very much in internationalism and others believe that internationalism was a good way to keep the Soviet Union at bay. So what's happened? The Cold War is essentially over. So if your justification for internationalism was to keep communism back, which certainly was among some people, that's the longer an issue. And we've seen, unfortunately, and you and I and Jean and others have talked about this, the frightening explosion of nationalist populism. And nationalist populism, you know, be it Hungary or Russia, the United States is always against cosmopolitanism, always against internationalism. So the UN is going to have to find a way to negotiate in the post Cold War world, where certainly in the West, many people have chosen Islamophobia to be their new red scare. But half of the United Nations, right, is comprised of Islamic countries who have a full right to be there. So that's not going to work. That drum ain't going to be beaten at all. And I think the United Nations has a very difficult time responding to ultra nationalist leaders. And League of Nations had the same problem, right? I would ask your listeners, though, before you toss the UN down the drain, if you're going to toss the UN down the drain, you're going to toss down the drain, the IMF, the War Crimes Court, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, all these have to go down the drain as well. And I will sit here every Thursday from 12 to 1230 with you in our little hot shirts and tell you the world would be a much worse place without those organizations. Not every refugee has helped, but those who have been helped have generally been helped by the United Nations working with non-governmental organizations. The internationalism of dress and food and language and health owes a great deal to the argument, like the French doctors say, there are no real, there are no borders that matter when it comes to people's health. The problem is there are borders when it comes to people's security. And the UN has not found a way to say if there's genocide as a result of civil war, that violates our 1948 genocide code, and we have the right to intervene. But our army is comprised of members' armies. Remember, if you go look at a blue helmet, so those were Belgian soldiers in Rwanda, which already was a problem because Belgium was a colonial power. And there are plenty of people in Black Africa who don't want to see any European troops, right? If you're on the West Coast, the last thing you want to see probably are French-speaking UN troops. They were there for 100 years, and they didn't do much good in those 100 years. So there are a lot of memories wrapped up in those blue helmets. It's not a popularity contest. How many people, 700,000 people, were killed in the genocide. It doesn't matter what the popularity is, whether they liked them or not. How about living 700,000 people who lost their lives? So my point though is that yes, security is important. And what we have now are these ancillary organizations, which you mentioned, and they have a certain value. But they're not going to prevent a third world war. They're not going to prevent space junk, as we saw last week with Russia. They're not going to help on COP26 or 7 or 8. They're not going to help. And they haven't helped much on COVID either, and now Omicron COVID. And so there are great threats. Navalny, they couldn't help on Navalny. They couldn't help on Xinjiang. They couldn't help on Hong Kong. They won't be able to help on Taiwan. Then all these things are coming down the pike. The United Nations will be impotent. It is impotent in terms of security and world order. So these ancillary organizations are nice, but they're not going to solve the problem or prevent us from a debacle, a catastrophe, a major consequence to humanity, which I think is happening on a slow roll, sort of like the frog in the boiling water. It's happening. So my question to you, you raised the possibility of throwing out the U.N. Well, I'm not suggesting throwing it out. I just don't think it works. So maybe you take all of those ancillary organizations and you put them in one basket, and then you reform the other basket. So then now you have at least arguably a Security Council that works, and you have the United Nations that has an army that isn't worried about popularity, that goes and does the job, and takes the burden off the individual state actors who can't do the job. But my problem is these countries, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and a number of others, they're not going to buy into that. They want to retain, as you said, their sovereignty. They want to retain their power. They're not about to concede anything to anybody. They want to be in charge of their people. Don't come and bother me. You guys have to stay away. What was it? Metternich, right? Stay away from me. Don't get involved in my interpretation. 1815, right? Yeah. So what I'm saying is that the big issue is national, rather, is global security. And that's not just war. It's security against all manner of catastrophe. And I would say, let's see what you say. I would say there is virtually no prospect that the United Nations under its charter and under its experience to date can revitalize itself into an organization that is so altruistic that it can handle that part of the job, which we agree is the most important part of the job, both for the League of Nations and ultimately for the United Nations, 1945. So my question is how, Peter, how do we, the inhabitants of this planet, make an organization that will effectively govern all people, all nations, and avoid catastrophe? We, as citizens of the United States, first of all, make a public commitment to internationalism. That public commitment includes what President Biden is trying to do and send vaccines to places that don't have them. FDR understood, and I think that Americans have slightly revised FDR's view. Again, FDR has its own problems. You recognize that. That U.S. must lead by example. Example means taking U.N. seriously. Example doesn't mean charging U.N. for rent and all these kinds of things, which are populist red meat. It also means, though, looking at the U.N. and recognizing that the assembly serves a very valuable purpose for countries to covech, and coveching in public rather than coveching in public with weapons. It's a very valuable purpose. It's a large, debating society. And believe me, I'd much rather have an angry government come and yell at the U.S. than do other things, which it could very well do. That doesn't need to change. I think the Security Council and one country vetoing it would be a good thing to change, but that's not going to change. So what has to happen is, as it rotates, right, you want to try to get in the new member who's more likely to think about the U.N. in international terms. You're not going to change the Soviet leader, Russian leadership. You're not going to change the Chinese leadership. There are a lot of things about American leadership which don't change. So what you're suggesting is actually very Putin and Trump-esque is your suggestion, because the alternative to United Nations is to go back to the 19th century as to Tocqueville viewed the world, not like Confucius, and he said the world is basically a series of regions. And the negotiations take place among the regional superpowers and each regional superpower, let's see the other one do what it wants. And that's a Trump-Trumpian view, and I hear echoes of it with you as well. You would like to change China and Russia, all right, but if world security that is preventing the Third World War, one of the popular options is just carve up the world, like the 19th century, and don't worry about the little guys, and you can't really worry about what happens within other people's borders. The world is probably more secure internationally without intervention. Look, Iraq is a good example of the unintended consequences of humanitarian intervention. The world is not. Misguided. But you know what, all interventions historically as well-guided and well-informed as they are, and the U.S. should have had a few more Arabic than Pushtan who do speakers, of course, but all interventions, all of them always inevitably, the most well-intentioned ones, they all have unintended consequences. And they all have the tinges of colonialism around them. Yeah, I mean, that's, but let's not throw everything out, please. No, no, I want to tell you what I am suggesting. I am suggesting something. You know, it never worked better as when the United States, as the victor in both of those wars, was the international leader and retained its image to itself and to the rest of the world as the leader. And for as long as that leadership persisted, then things were okay. And things were certainly okay when I was a kid going down to the U.N. The money that built that building is American money. All the staffers and everything that made all that happen, American generated. That's what was going on. But over the years, American leadership has declined. And right now I would say, look at your own life and I'll look at mine. From the time I was a kid until now, American leadership in the world has really, really low. It's had a low point in my lifetime actually. When I see what goes on in Congress, there was a journalist in Ireland wrote for Irish Times. And he said, you know, what we have to feel about the United States these days is pity. You know, and that was picked up by a lot of other journalists, pity. So if we are the recipient of pity, we're not a global leader. We have to find a way to clean up the mess. And it's not just Washington. It's all around the country. We have to find a way to clean up the mess and get along with each other and reverse all these terrible, horrible, evil trends that you see in the newspaper every day. And become a leader, become a world leader. If we are again a world leader, the problem kind of resolves itself. It means that we will have the respect of all these countries. If not the respect and at least some degree of of all anyway, we have to recover. And once we recover, I think the world and the possibility of a world governing organization is dramatically increased. What do you think? I think that's definitely a topic for a future discussion. I would say that you have a very pleasant but benign view of how the world looks at American leadership. Very benign view. So that and that's a good discussion to have. I think an important and an important one to have because I agree with you that American political leadership seems on a downward spiral. American cultural leadership is on an upward slope. And that may be part of the issue that we've been very good about exporting American culture, American products. We haven't been as good about exporting, but at least was built into the text of the Atlantic Charter. And that really is democracy and the ideas of democracy. We've been okay on capitalism. Most of the world is capitalist now. And that's why I would love to have a chat with you and maybe bring in John to talk about American leadership, because I don't disagree with you that the moral and democratic quality, but I also think that the American export of democracy included supporting regimes in various places, which were not democratic. We can't make those mistakes anymore. No, but please remember that if you live in El Salvador and you live in Greece, that's your memory of the US. The memory of the US is not FDR. Your memory of the US is Truman and Eisenhower. And if you live in Iraq, regardless of what you think about it, your memory of the US is a heavy blow to your society. So I agree with you that we need to rethink and revitalize American leadership, but we need to do in two ways, right? We need to revitalize the democratic principles, and we need to address the anger and resentment that people have. Because there is legitimate political resentment towards the United States for supporting a long list of SOVs, a long list. Okay, now it's time for Charles Dickens. It's time for the Ghost of Christmas Future. So I give you the Ghost of Christmas Future, and we are unable, unwilling, as a nation, as a people, to do any of that. And we return further isolationists, further nationalistic. We don't take any role at all. We follow the Trump mandate, the Trump legacy, however evil and useless it is. And we are not on the world stage. We are not trying to reform the United Nations. We are not trying to influence the members of the Security Council. We're not giving them money the way we used to. What happens then in the world of Christmas Future? Well, as an atheist, too. I have no idea, because I don't celebrate Christmas. But, well, let's talk about that as our sixth, seventh, or eighth candle. But I would say you have, let's say, an impassioned description of the U.S. in the 20s and 30s. Because the U.S. did not participate in the League of Nations. But as with the Republicans and the Democrats and Trump, et cetera, isolationism is always selective, isolationism. So part of the exercise in thinking about U.S. leadership is where was it applied? And one of the answers to that is, please remember that FDR had very little difficulty getting the U.S. involved in the war in the Pacific. But there was not a lot of interest in getting involved in the war in Europe, which reminds us that isolation in the 20s and 30s always included some intervention in China and Japan. And there's nobody in Central America who can tell you that America didn't intervene. So we also have to think about what we mean globally, do we really mean globally? That would be wonderful that folks in the furthest centrality in New Guinea have fresh water. That would be wonderful. And that genocidal maniacs are held accountable. But U.S. can't do all that. It either has to have your buddies who don't want to do it, or it has to have the United Nations probably arm itself. And I say that as a pacifist, probably force will be necessary, or at least the pretext of force. And so in your lifetime, you remember NATO and the Warsaw Pact, right? That was an admission that there was a limit to what the U.N. could do, right? So we're going to set up all these regional, and the regional ones are onto the team, right? The U.N. would not so hard. So I don't know, maybe, maybe we're back to a world in which the U.N. does what it does well. And then as far as security, we're back to again regional relationships. I would, I hope we're not, but I can see looking at the news that that's, you know, the areas around China, they're aligned with the U.S. vis-a-vis China, but they don't really care about Germany, right? And NATO is trying to revive itself now against Putin. I think that makes for a lot of smaller armed camps, and it takes one mistake. World War II did not begin in one area. It began in four areas, and then they all converged. I am reminded of Barbara Tuckman, the scenario that, you know, evolved before World War I, where everybody was ready for it, and when anything triggered it, bingo, you had a war. Peter, wonderful discussion with you. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, as always. Let me know what you want to talk about in two weeks. Have a pleasant rest of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, whatever you'd like to celebrate. As long as you can eat, as long as you can drink, that's a good, that's a good holiday. Yeah. Peter Hafenberg. History is there now. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you.