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- Dec 20, 2009
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The UN is not a reliable indicator of how many of our allies support us or not, because the United Nations Security Council - the only part of the UN that can do anything - is ****ed up. There are five permanent members - the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China - and 10 nonpermanent members, who cycle through alternating 2-year terms. The permanent members have a veto power that they can use to block any resolution that they do not like but which gains support from the other nations. So all 10 of the nonpermanent members plus 4 of the permanent members can wish to pass a resolution, but the fifth permanent member can simply block it.
This wasn't quite how it worked out with Syria, but our allies - including Britain - supported intervention on the SC. Russia and China didn't, so nothing happened.
Precisely. The argument basically boils down to the claim that we should allow the moral judgement of vladimir putin and the ChiComs to supplant our own.