Who can save the waning United Nations? Not the US, but China

[superadmin]

• The US cannot save the world by itself, as much as it wants to. America must accept that China, while so different and deeply competitive, needs to pitch in
  
• On China’s part, with a declining population, it must seize the hour if it means to prove it is exceptional
  

Maybe the United Nations – fumbling, hopelessly bureaucratic, partly corrupt and so on – is in fact beyond redemption. Just forget about it: let it career down the slippery slope of mediocrity and geopolitical irrelevance and splash ignominiously into New York’s East River. Let’s just cut our losses and bail out before its collapse pulls the world into a deep and dark abyss.

Maybe the UN was never going to save the world. Without the United States as a member, the League of Nations flopped after the first world war; post second world war, even with the US in the game, the UN is a near-flop.

Maybe, as Princeton University Emeritus Professor Richard Falk provocatively and persistently suggests, a new world order cannot be maintained on the ballast of international institutionalisation but will require an elevated layer of consciousness: in effect, a transformative global psychological breakthrough elevating the human species into the sphere of a true functional community. But – how long might that take?


- More -