[Sigaba]

Good stuff, SnT.

Originally Posted by Surf n Turf

The UN started on 24 October 1945 – Don’t ya think that a 65 year “bird’s eye view” of American exceptionalism would be adequate to understand our “values”, and use them in forming more Constitutional Republics across the globe ?

Where to begin? I'll start at the beginning by seeing your rhetorical question and raising you!

1. How much of the first sixty five years was spent using the U.N. as a stage for the American-Soviet rivalry and inhibited America's ability to maximize its leadership in other areas unrelated to the Cold War?
2. How long did it take the United States to square away its own values with its practices? (Not for nothing did contemporaries refer to the Second Anglo-American War and then the American Civil War as the "second American Revolution.")

Originally Posted by Surf n Turf

Who might be leading the “fight” for a one-world Government, Fighting for a “tax” on all international stock / money transactions --- if not the United Nations. It would appear to me that the UN is set to attempt the destruction of sovereign state, and replace it with ----you guessed it – THE UNITED NATIONS.

My reading of Our Common Future, the UN's blue print/road map for/to its idealized end state for international relations is that the sovereign state would remain the central actor in international relations, and that liberalism (and I don't mean American liberalism) and capitalism would be the driving forces for global change. Some advocates of the Green movement would like to think (and would have us think) that a single world government is the end state, I think this view works best if one is unfamiliar with that document. YMMV.

Originally Posted by Surf n Turf

Comments on the debate over the relative merits of a collective security versus a spheres of influence approach to international relations.

Here, I think I may have not made my point clearly. IMO, the UN does not represent an "either/or" approach to international relations -it merges sensibilities of both collective security and spheres of influence. The fact that the UN is tilted more along the lines of collective security than many would like does not mean it can't be tilted back the other way. (And if the U.S. is not a member, it will be tilted back by the French, the Russians, and the Chinese--if not also the British.)

Originally Posted by Surf n Turf

Again, the UN was started in Oct 1945 (65 years ago) – don’t ya think we have tried “active discussions” to ”advance America’s interest” – failed missions in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, East Timor.

To your list, I would add the UN's failure in 2002/2003 to take Iraq to task for its leader's refusal to comply with existing resolutions mandating that he prove that he had dismantled his WMD projects. And then I would ask two (rhetorical) questions.

1. How does one balance the UN's many failings with its successes during the Korean War and the Second Gulf War?
2. Does the fact that the UN got it right on two instances where, from America's perspective--if not also the world's--failure would have been catastrophic raise the possibility that, at least until the Korean War officially ends (an armistice is not a peace treaty)--to say nothing of GWOT, it may be more useful to America's interests to stay in the U.N.?

Originally Posted by Surf n Turf

Comments, analysis, and quotes on the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty

With respect, I think you may be misreading either my (deliberately vague) reference to Versailles (by which I meant the proceedings of the negotiations and not just the treaty) or Professor Winter's remark as he and I share the same view. (And I'm sure he'd be soooo fracking relieved to learn that I agree with him.)

The received wisdom of diplomatic historiography--which has moved well beyond Keyne's's contemporary account (which actually supports my position in part)--is that Versailles was a disaster because its war guilt clause and punitive economic measures reflected the 'triumph' of a spheres of influence approach to foreign relations. (Also, the interpretation that Versailles led directly to World War II is a political argument that has not borne up well to historical inquiry. War, even when necessary, is always a choice.)

Moreover, because the United States declined to cooperate in its own scheme for collective security and then took a spheres of influence approach to international relations via "isolationism," America undermined its ability to moderate the impulse among many member states to return to the business as usual practice of "spheres of influence" diplomacy. Consequently, efforts to revise Versailles and to take additional confidence building measures towards collective security were compromised by the absence of America's leadership as a great power AND the perception held by some members--especially Japan--that the U.S. itself was practicing a "spheres of influence" approach to foreign relations. (Oh crap. Flashbacks to studying my least favorite interval of modern American diplomatic history.)

The subsequent turn to "autokracy" and the ongoing insistence that Germany pay for World War One enabled radical elements in Germany to beat the drum of "the stab in the back" and helped to set the conditions in which the din resonated within more and more Germans.

To be clear, I have been and shall remain a critic of the United Nations. The organization needs reform. If it doesn't, the U.S. should think about leaving. But I do not think America is at that crossroads and even if it were, the fact that we're presently at war, the decision making process should be particularly deliberative.

YMMV.