The whole point of the UN is to avoid a major war between nuclear states. It is not a reward for countries that happen to share our values. The UN was designed to permanently cement the post-WW2 powers as the major powers, and to provide a forum for them to resolve major differences rather than feel like they have to resort to lobbing atom bombs at one another. Everything else the UN does - from the participation of small states to the very important humanitarian initiatives - is of secondary concern.
That’s backwards. Russia didn’t gain military power to invade Ukraine from UN, it is in UN because it already possessed the military power.
Now, you can say that UN failed to prevent the invasion and do its job, but expelling Russia means you’re left with no forum for dialogs and negotiations. Contrary to the scenes made out of the sabre-rattling in public, it all comes down to money and power - and those things get negotiated in private in these forums.
> Russia didn’t gain military power to invade Ukraine from UN, it is in UN because it already possessed the military power.
Russia has no real military power, as the last 7 months have shown us. It was not even a founding member of the UN Security Council – the Soviet Union, a real world superpower, was.
> Now, you can say that UN failed to prevent the invasion and do its job, but expelling Russia means you’re left with no forum for dialogs and negotiations.
That's exactly my point: the UN failed to prevent the invasion, because the invading country had a veto right in all of its decisions.
Any dialogs or negotiations with Russia are an illusion of naive Western powers who don't understand how Russia really works: it doesn't care about or respect any international agreements it signs.
> it doesn't care about or respect any international agreements it signs.
If it doesn't really care then I don't see how it's a failure of the UN.
The UN only works if its members are willing to allow it to work, the only power that the UN has is derived from the willingness of its members to cooperate.
It's a forum for discussion not the solution for everything bad in the world.
If Russia wasn't a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UN Security Council could have made decisions that prevented the invasion of Ukraine without any agreement from Russia.
What's the concept of the security council? Russia loses a war to Ukraine so it loses it's seat? Does it go to Ukraine? Or maybe it should go to Afghanistan because of the failed Soviet invasion.
The seat doesn't belong to Afghanistan nor to Russia, but to the USSR. Ukraine was as much a member state of the USSR as Russia. If the UN decides that Ukraine is a more legitimate representative of the USSR than Russia is, it can decide to let Ukraine fill the seat.
The seat obviously does belong to the Russian federation, as they have been sending representatives for thirty years and the other members have always recognized that representative.
That's the thing: it does not. It literally, explicitly belongs to the USSR. Russia has been allowed to fill the seat by agreement. The article points out that that agreement could change, and gives an example where that has happened before.
Well, Taiwan also had a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, had been sending its representatives for more than 20 years, and other members had no objections. But one day that seat was taken away from them and given to China.
There was always objections since inception. ROC tried to exclude PRC from any UN representation (how turntables have turned), USSR protested exclusion of PRC in the 50s, host of "third world" PRC friendly nations petitioned for ROC to be replaced by PRC in the 60s. Was succession in 71 (76 for, 35 against, 17 abstain). Seeing how global south is indifferent about RU's invasion of UKR, doubtful there's going to be coordination to form plurarily bloc to vote RU out even if that's technically possible.
Russia has plenty of military power, it is just that Russia may not be able to handle its own military power.
The idea that Ukraine can resist the fully mobilized Russian Federation - military and industry is plain silly.
The reason that this has not happened so far is because the people at the top
fear that putting the entire country on war footing will result in internal instability will be the end of those people.
> Russia has plenty of military power, it is just that Russia may not be able to handle its own military power.
For instance, like loosing more than 70% of all its tanks since the beginning of invasion[1]?
> The idea that Ukraine can resist the fully mobilized Russian Federation - military and industry is plain silly.
The idea that amateurs with zero military training could achieve more than 235,000 killed or wounded professional Russian soldiers achieved in the last 7 months sounds pretty unbelievable to me.
It's just a question of time when tactical nuclear weapons will be used in Ukraine, if Ukraine continues with the successful offensive[1].
Also, Russia is not even a world superpower: neither economically, nor militarily. It could easily be replaced by India as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Personally I don't think it IS just a matter of time before nukes are used. Putin is not a nice guy, but he isn't a comic book villain. Plus this is a ground war, so any nuke ruins the land they're fighting over and kills as many of their own troops (who aren't exactly equipped for basic fighting, let alone fallout)
Russia has enough nukes (almost 6000, and the ability to deliver them) to annihilate any other country, and put the whole planet into nuclear winter. That makes them a super power, even if they cannot win a ground war with Ukraine. For reference, India only has 160
Also, given it's history of annexing it's neighbours and conflicts with China and Pakistan (both also nuclear states) India is a very poor candidate for Security Council membership (at least as a "better" substitute for Russia).
The thing is, he might have no other choice: he is a strongman, and for any strongman loosing a war would mean the end of being in power.
> Plus this is a ground war, so any nuke ruins the land they're fighting over and kills as many of their own troops (who aren't exactly equipped for basic fighting, let alone fallout)
If you know the history of the Soviet Union, you know that they don't care about the lives of their own people, at all.
How many Soviet soldiers died in WWII? About 10M.
How many Russians soldiers died in the past 7 months alone? Between 50-80K.
> Russia has enough nukes (almost 6000, and the ability to deliver them) to annihilate any other country, and put the whole planet into nuclear winter. That makes them a super power, even if they cannot win a ground war with Ukraine. For reference, India only has 160
Many analysts point out, that all the Russian nukes are from the 1960s-1980s, and given the state of all their military equipment during the invasion there is an extremely high likelihood of complete failure to deliver any threat at all.
You didn't say casualties, you said deaths, which is the number the Ukrainian government gives too.
>If there’s so few casualties of the initial invading force it makes absolutely no sense for putin to start mobilisation, which he did.
Russian army doctrine is different to US army doctrine. Russia always had a conscription heavy army and needs vastly more manpower than the US to fight a war. I imagine they were expecting the Ukrainian army to collapse like the army in Georgia did in 2008 which is why they weren't prepared for an actual fight.
This is the first real war between advanced economies since Desert Storm. It is a painful lesson that second rate powers can again standup to first rate powers on the ground since military tech now costs pennies on the million.
I _really_ hope the West is taking notes because if we're not than we're in for a surprise just as unpleasant as the one the Russians are getting.
> I find it kind of astonishing people are citing Ukrainian numbers as anything short of blatant propaganda, just like Russian ones.
US reports are worthless, because it has no soldiers on the ground.
The extremely high Russian casualty rate has been reported by multiple independent sources from inside Russia.
For instance:
> "Everyone went to the SVO," Astashov told RFE/RL, using the acronym for "special military operation," the euphemism the Kremlin has insisted on using when discussing the war in Ukraine.
> According to Astashov, the size of the brigade when it deployed was about 1,500 troops. The total number of dead, by Astashov's estimate: "At least several hundred."
Also, many huge Russian loses in Ukraine were confirmed by NATO countries with visuals:
> The British defense ministry on Friday said satellite imagery has confirmed that Ukrainian forces decimated a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a series of pontoon bridges over a river in northeast Ukraine earlier this week, a dramatic setback for Russian forces already struggling to make significant progress along the eastern front.
> Russian battalion groups generally have between 700 and 1,000 men.
I would have agreed with you before the mobilization happened. It's an incredibly risky gamble to make, could have sparked immediate massive civil unrest because in one way or another it touches every person living in Russia. Him going this far proves that Putin is all in, he wants to win whatever it takes
Yes let's cut every single diplomatic links and ship as much weapons as we can to Ukraine, this surely will not get out of control
I used to think people is 1910s and 1930s were plain dumb when they all blindly marched towards both world wars, now I see it happening live and it's frightening to see how many of our politicians and journalists get hard at the idea of escalating a conflict
It's no guarantee but cutting one more diplomatic link surely won't help
Anyone really believes they'll just continue to shoot each-other until someone packs up and leave ? This conflict will end like most conflicts, around a big wooden table with a fat stack of paper and a fancy ink pen. Either that or we escalate until we all lose
Clearly, the UN's definition of war of conquest is too limited, and their perspective has intentionally been turned away from the atrocities and crimes the US has commited towards other countries. It does put the UN's credibility into question.
The UN has actually tried to address atrocities by the US, and as a result the UN isn't very popular with the sort of Americans that think the US has every right to commit those atrocities, but that has never had much chance because the US is too powerful and has veto power.
So does Russia, which is why the UN is also not much use at stopping Russia, but Russia currently occupies a seat that's technically not theirs, so it can be taken away.
But ideally, that veto power should never have been a thing.
I agree with you, don't think they did, up until now they seem to have kept their business for themselves and resolved everything with trade and diplomacy. Quite impressive, and interesting how opposite of that the USA/EU/UK keeps forcing themselves on the world
But I was commenting based on mainstream perception, to try to make it easier to understand. And a lot of HN wants to believe China bad
To complete the point of the original comment, if any country that has done something perceived as bad is to be expelled, most would have been
