Formed after the First World War, the League of Nations was disbanded because it failed to prevent the Second World War, demonstrating its inability to enforce collective security against aggression from powers like Japan, Germany, and Italy, exacerbated by the United States never joining and major nations leaving, leading to its formal dissolution in 1946 and paving the way for the United Nations. Now, the UN has demonstrably failed too.

For decades, political observers have noted, and books on international relations have posited that the US does not care to ask the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council whether the situation in another sovereign country calls for a joint intervention by the top five. The Americans have gone ahead regardless: the First Gulf War, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, etc. In the last instance, the US went ahead on the false pretext of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had. But now it is no longer a theory or an expert’s opinion that the UNSC is useless. US President Donald Trump almost said it and also showed the world why and how.

When the US president ordered the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on 3 January, and blocked an oil-laden vessel whose passage to Russia had already been authorised, he and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that they did it because they could, implying Russia wouldn’t dare use its submarine in the vicinity. The same day, the president pooh-poohed his allies’ military power, writing on Truth Social, “Russia and China have zero fear of NATO without the United States," also mocking Europe’s 2 per cent GDP growth. Trump’s candour and rudeness apart, however, he did nothing his predecessors hadn’t.

Of course, the UN does a whole lot of valuable things for humanity, ranging from looking after children through UNICEF to preserving world heritage through UNESCO, from settling trade disputes via WTO to ensuring labour rights using the ILO, from helping financially distressed countries through the IMF and World Bank to caring for people’s health through WHO, but none of these was its primary responsibility. Stopping wars was, and it has failed spectacularly in this job.

While no country will dare take on the might of the US military at the moment, Trump’s in-your-face action has legitimised China’s designs on Taiwan. As the US is busy on its southern coast, Beijing might well seize the opportunity, on the lines of its opportunistic invasion of India in 1962, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis. The partial truth of Russian aggression, based on which NATO threw its weight behind Ukraine, crumbles as well, because, as per the US, if a country as much as perceives a threat from a neighbour, it holds the right to attack that country.

On a lighter note, India may reclaim Akhand Bharat, ranging from Iran to its........

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