WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS

Humanity Desperately Needs to Renew a Common Vision

Dreaming of Peace, Steve Karro

Phuket, 16 April 2026

Summary

The post-WWII and Cold War order has collapsed into anarchy, with the current US-Israel assault on Iran and the Gaza genocide dominating a grim landscape. The UN is paralyzed by three veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, the US, Russia and China, blocking action on wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Iran and the Strait of Hormuz in particular. We are all responsible. Our collective complacency enables today’s psychopathic leadership and senseless conflicts. We stand by while an Israeli/US genocide in Gaza continues and then watch as they launch a war on Iran. Humanity has the power to change this. We can bring about reform of the UN Charter, achieve more democratic global governance and end these endless wars.

The US/Israeli attack on Iran and its counterattacks rage on, with the Ukraine war faded into the background despite casualties that will soon total two million. Other countries' wars, such as Sudan's horror where 14 million people have fled, are also offstage.(1) We wait to see what will happen next in the Middle East. We learn what a loony US President has said today, despite the absurd unreliability of anything he utters. It seems the successor arrangement to the post-Cold-War era is anarchy under a failing, flailing, US hegemony.

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada was widely praised for saying at Davos this year that the past order has been ruptured and is not coming back. Without naming the USA, he called for middle powers to band together to protect themselves from superpower predators. That is welcome advice, but it is merely a coping strategy for a dark time.

Collectively, we do make history together through our myriad choices: How we shop, what we watch or read, how we vote, what we say to each other, when we speak out, when we finally go out onto the streets with placards to protest and — most tellingly — when we remain silent. Faced with the most bullying superpower leader since Adolf Hitler, our collective behaviour has been tragically disappointing. Nearly the entire world has acquiesced to his outrageous, criminal behaviour, flattering him obsequiously, making absurd investment promises and agreeing to abusively asymmetric trade deals.

Our collective passivity is enabling truly psychopathic behaviour including an agonizing genocide in Gaza, now well into its third year. Trials were held after other such modern genocides. In Nuremberg after World War II, 12 defendants were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. In Arusha, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted 62 defendants, sentencing them to up to 30 years in prison. Alas, despite the UN finding of 'overwhelming evidence' Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza (in accordance with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), with US complicity, there is little prospect justice will be done. Nor is the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes including deliberate starvation, likely to be carried out.

In Venezuela, the kidnapping of a country's President (whatever you may think of him), killing 100 others in the process, is another major violation of the UN Charter. Encouraged, the US President then joined Israel in an illegal war of aggression against Iran. When Iran responded by counter-attacking US bases and other infrastructure in the countries hosting them, the Gulf States universally condemned Iran, some even calling its attacks 'unprovoked.' Not one Gulf state pointed out that the USA and Israel had illegally attacked Iran first, and for the second time in less than a year.

Around the world, the extent of tepid push back was the refusal by a few countries to allow the USA to use US military bases on their territory for illegal attacks against Iran, nor to join the war. However, apart from 7 countries, Spain, China, Italy, Egypt, Türkiye Russia and Brazil, governments remained meek in the face of Trump's crimes. The action of one crazed man, should the Strait of Hormuz remain closed for 6 months or more, will reduce global GDP by 2 to 5%, thus possibly causing a global recession, yet the governments of over 180 states remained silent.

United Nations Reform

Most citizens of the world fault the United Nations for its failure to maintain peace, lacking an understanding that the UN is but a forum for states themselves to come together and collectively practice international governance. It is not only UN staff, not even the UN Secretary-General, who determine how well it functions. Above all, it is member states. They chair the committees and General Assembly, set the agendas and vote. Their Embassy staff also sit on the Boards of each organization of the UN, deciding budgets and policies for its staff to execute. They under-finance the UN, and largely through voluntary contributions which they commit only for short periods and often whimsically withdraw. The United States is especially fond of withholding its obligatory financial contributions (illegally), and is perennially billions of dollars in arrears.

Control resides especially with the three great powers still wielding their vetoes, the USA, China and Russia. The United Kingdom and France have not used their vetoes for over 36 years now, since the end of the Cold War. If only the other three veto holders, especially the USA and Russia, would follow their example. Historically, China has also shown remarkable restraint (see Donut Chart).

In the photograph below, the General Assembly voted nearly unanimously to lift all sanctions on Cuba. Amazingly, despite 187 votes in favour and only 2 against, the resolution was not passed. This is because the vote of the USA (representing just 4% of the earth's population), is sufficient to block the will of the other 96% (the other vote against was Israel's.) The results are the same every year, shown in the photograph below in 2023.

Scarily, the exercise of the veto is increasing. The seven vetoed draft Security Council resolutions in 2024 were the most since 1986. In 2025, there were four vetoes: two by the US on a draft resolution on the war in Gaza, and two by Russia on amendments to a draft resolution on Ukraine.

Anticipation of the exercise of the veto also creates a perverse incentive to deliberately draft resolutions unacceptable to another great power, to force them to veto it and then point a finger. Most recently, China and Russia vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution on re-opening the Strait of Hormuz. Russia's Ambassador explained that the resolution presented Iranian actions as the sole source of tensions while attacks by the United States and Israel were “not mentioned at all”. China's Ambassador said the draft “failed to capture the root causes and the full picture of the conflict in a comprehensive and balanced manner.” (2)  Clearly, the UN Security Council is not functioning properly if the majority of its members vote in favour of a resolution regarding a war without even mentioning who started it — studiously overlooking who flagrantly violated the UN Charter and attacked another country in the first place.

Renewing Humanity's Common Vision

I have discussed in a previous article in 2024 some of the tactics member states might use to pressure great powers to reduce their use of and eventually give up the veto, giving our world a promising new era of "One Law for All".

The current international disorder and dominance of great power privilege is embodied in a dominant school of international affairs theory known as 'Realism,' which cynically accepts the status quo of wars as inevitable consequences of great power politics. We can and must do better than this self-defeating doctrine, through a forward-looking 'internationalist and multilateralist' theory of international relations aiming to build a better, more peaceful world. There has not yet been a single year in recorded human history without war. Are we really resigned to that? Could we not aspire to the goal that one day, our planet finally passes a year without war?

To achieve 'the first year without war' we will need much better enforcement of the laws against armed aggression and of crimes committed in internal armed conflicts. Provision was made in Article 109 of the UN Charter for its modification as necessary, beginning with the calling of a conference (which cannot be vetoed). Such a conference can recommend changes to the UN Charter by a simple 2/3 majority vote (which again cannot be vetoed.) Permanent members must then agree to and ratify the changes, which is the major hurdle to overcome as they can then exercise their vetoes. But they will have do so in the face of world opinion.(3) Even a failed first attempt to revise the Charter, vetoed by a recalcitrant permanent member of the Security Council, would serve a purpose — underlining our aspiration for a fairer world and the recalcitrance of the offender.

There is an active coalition to reform the UN charter, now called Article 109. At its most recent meeting, the keynote speech was made by former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. Shamefully, their activities and ambitions — critically important for all the world — are almost uncovered in Western mainstream media, perhaps because they have now dragged on for an even more shameful 40 years.

The Charter has been modified four times, in 1963 to expand the Security Council to its present 15 members; in 1965 and 1968 to adjust Article 109 slightly, and in 1973 to enlarge the membership of the Economic and Social Council. There have, however, been no more amendments in over half a century, a poignant illustration of the state of world affairs and a major factor in growing global instability.

With a modified UN Charter curtailing use of the veto and revising Security Council membership to make it more representative of the world, the UN could function more as was originally intended 80 years ago. Instead of anarchy, there could be more democratic global governance, often actually resolving matters of burning global importance through voting. Ideally, only a 2/3 majority would be required to pass a resolution whether in the General Assembly or in the Security Council, without any vetoing.

States that illegally attack other states, even great powers whom we lack the armed might to confront militarily, could be reigned in by collective pressure designed to create internal pressure for peace within an aggressor state. Just brainstorming, one example that illustrates how we might possibly do this might be a global suspension of the issuance of tourist visas or visa-free entry for nationals of countries committing the crime of aggression (allowing for humanitarian exemptions). If a government is illegally waging war, then its citizens have work to do at home first before they go on holiday abroad. This example would of course only be appropriate for some countries, mostly upper income. Other measures could be crafted in different circumstances.

'Might makes right' could be severely curtailed if not eliminated. But to do that, there must be no more cowardly acquiescence. People the world over must demand leaders that will stand up for what is right, no matter how great the power they confront and the risk of retaliation. A country, any country, guilty of armed aggression — wantonly killing — must be ostracized by other nations in thundering unison.

A more democratic and peaceful world is an ambition humanity set out to achieve 80 years ago when it created the United Nations. We will continue waiting for that vision to be realized until we insist that our governments fight for it courageously. Take to the streets in our millions if we must. We have the power to make peace happen. Because we are better than this.

———————————————

1) The International Sudan Conference was held today in Berlin but Sudan now receives little international attention outside of the international aid and diplomatic community. Fourteen million displaced people have been largely forgotten.

2) https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/04/1167261.

3) Article 109 of the UN Charter

1. A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any nine members of the Security Council. Each Member of the United Nations shall have one vote in the conference. 2. Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations including the permanent members of the Security Council.

3. If such a conference has not been held before the tenth annual session of the General Assembly following the coming into force of the present Charter, the proposal to call such a conference shall be placed on the agenda of that session of the General Assembly, and the conference shall be held if so decided by a majority vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any seven members of the Security Council.

——————————

Contact:

Email: billpaton@qq.com 

WeChat: bmpaton

WhatsApp: +66 6 344 844 34

Line:  bmpaton