Week 8 -The United Nations


Week 8 - The United Nations
The United Nations is an instrument of international relations and peacekeeping that has its roots in the principles of liberty, justice, and peace. Thus, some of the practical goals of the United Nations are; maintaining worldwide peace and security, developing relations among nations, and fostering cooperation between nations in order to solve economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian international problems. The issue that is often raised in relation to the UN and its ability to keep peace globally is the question of jurisdiction and the extent to which hard power may be used to maintain global security. Often states will define what is and isn't a security problem based on auxiliary factors, such as, the desire to acquire natural resources in a particular area or an ideological opposition to governments from the area of threat. Thus, 'securitisation' becomes problematic for the UN who is battling against not just physical threats to states but also ideological and political motivations as well. The classic example of this is the US and British motivations for declaring war on Iraq. A recent piece by Gokay in the Conversation explores the close connection that war in Iraq had with the desire to obtain control of the oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait. The economic and political ramifications of a move to get control of these oil reserves makes UN involvement in peacekeeping increasingly difficult as they then face concerns over aiding one state over another, by supporting the US they wouldn't only be attempting to keep the peace they would also be helping to seize control of massive oil supplies for America, and this is well and truly outside the scope of the role of the UN.
References

 Chapter 21 - The United Nations. In J. Baylis, S.Smith, and P. Owens, (Eds.) The Globalisation of World Politics: an introduction to international relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press
 
Gökay, Bulent. Why you can't explain the Iraq War without mentioning oil. The Conversation, 2016. http://theconversation.com/why-you-cant-explain-the-iraq-war-without-mentioning-oil-59352


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