I served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam from November of 1967 through November of 1968. I went to war and fought because I believed what I had been taught by others and what I saw as the truth in the original American Dream and the process our forefathers had given us to pursue that dream and make it a reality. After the war when I looked around at America I saw a collection of fifty different countries that had not been to war with each other for over one hundred years. The reason for that one hundred years of peace seemed obvious to me, we had a common system of governance with a common judicial system which held our leadership accountable and to some extent protected our human/civil rights. Belief in that system and hope for improvement in that system gave us a vast majority of Americans that put America first. America first before state, America first before party, America first before religion, America first before color, America first before country of origin,… We are fifty separate countries moving forward as equal partners with one common destiny and that is what has made us a great nation. The Soviet Union failed because it was a system based on dominance, not equality. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have tried to play the role of international police force and we have failed. American dominance is not the answer, it is a trap we must avoid. We can and should proceed as equal partners in a world of peace and prosperity. We can do for the world what our forefathers did for us, develop fair international governance based on the rule of fair and just international law. We have the framework for that government but where do we start and do we have the resolve?
The United Nations greatest weakness is the Security Counsel. In theory, when it comes to resolving International Conflict and threats to International peace and stability the Security Counsel has a great deal of power and a wide range of options. However, in practical terms, the Security Counsel is impotent because of the Unanimous Consent provisions in the United Nations Charter. The five permanent members of the Security Counsel have and will always vote in their own best interests, not the interest of humanity as a whole. It is time to end the unanimous consent (veto power) of the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France and move to a 2/3 majority of Security Counsel members for military action and a simple majority for all other actions.
The world will always have people who seek power and influence by any means possible. People for whom enough is never enough. People who dream of dominance over their countrymen, their neighbors, and the entire world. There are many examples among us today, many at the highest levels of their governments. For peace and prosperity to prevail we need a means of controlling world leaders before the human rights violations lead to crimes against humanity, before international conflict leads to war, and before war leads to war crimes and the slaughter of innocence.
No country on earth can effectively control war crimes, crimes against humanity, international civil crime(wire fraud, internet crime, etc.), international terrorism, or international trafficking in human beings, drugs, or weapons. A limited International Government with an effective International Court System can. We need to develop an international justice system with the authority to investigate and prosecute these crimes and hold rouge leaders and international criminals accountable. It can be done by effective use of the ICJ, expanding the jurisdiction on the ICC and creating an International Court of Human Rights that can investigate human rights abuse before it rises to the level of crimes against humanity and war crimes. For the United Nations to become an effective force for peace and human survival, the decisions of the Security Counsel and the International Court System must to be binding on all nations. United Nations reform is long overdue and essential to our survival.