birds in the water and fish flying in the air

I am a little embarrassed to say that I almost used one of my free passes tonight for this blog question. How silly of me! This may actually be the easiest question to answer of all the blog prompts thus far. (credit goes to Rachel for insisting this to be true several times – sorry it took me so long to listen!!) I say this because The United Nations spells out the answer for all us World Politics students right in their mission statement. The United Nation’s purpose is, “to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining these ends.” (http://www.un.org/aboutun/basicfacts/unorg.htm) We all know what that reminds us of… dun dun dun… liberalism!

This question reminds me of that analogy PTJ brought up in our last class about how fish have a difficult time talking about water and how birds are nearly incapable of speaking in depth about air. Air and water surround them at all times; it’s what keeps them alive for it’s what they breathe… it’s so much a part of them that they don’t even realize how vital it is to their existence; if it were to be taken away from thm, they would cease to survive. Okay, so maybe I stretched PTJ's analogy a little further than what was said in class, however, it still works! The UN is so obviously a liberal organization that the question is difficult to tackle straight on. We’re used to having to fight to prove our point, but this argument doesn’t really need much persuading. Furthermore, and in keeping with my version of the analogy, The UN holds values directly opposite to those of realism. The United Nations would not be what it is today if it followed in realism’s footsteps. Much like a fish out of water, if we were to subtract liberalism from The United Nations, it would be unable to thrive… and would just die and crumble. Yes, there would still be remnants of non-liberal tactics left behind in the rubble, but the framework would be gone and what would be left would not be nearly enough on which to successfully run an international organization.

            So, basically, it’s blaringly obvious as to which “ism” The United Nations is more akin to, so instead of emphasizing how alike liberalism and The UN’s values are, why not highlight how opposite The United Nations’s beliefs are to those of realism. Probably the most predominant theme that disputes any theory that The United Nations is a realist organization is that The UN is looking after the interest of the international community as a whole rather than one specific state. This is the reason why The United Nations were created in the first place. If The UN had been built upon a realist foundation, I reckon that it would not be called “The UN” but more like something along the lines of, “The It’s-a-Cut-Throat-World-and-That’s-Just-the-Way-It-Is Nations.” Which brings me to my next point: The UN is geared to making positive change rather than staying focused on the past. On the UN’s homepage, there is even a direct link to “UN Millenium Development Goals” which explains the various goals that The United Nations would like to and are actively working to meet by the year 2015. This shows their devotion to improving upon the past and moving forward, rather than relying on past history as a sole source of direction.

I’m sure that when answering this blog, there will be those few fish who wanted to see how it would be to live on land and those few birds who decided it’d be interesting to take a swim, and I commend those of you who did that for you definitely chose the harder route. But nonetheless, I had fun writing this blog and I hope you had fun reading it!