Should I stay or should I go now?
In an article in the Guardian “Surav Dutt” where he suggested that Great Britain leave the UN as well as the European Union” I Replied.
There is a great deal of truth in all that you say and I am not, strictly, disagreeing with you. It is true that the UN is a “shackled beast” held back by it’s many members opposing views. It is also true that it is rather ineffectual. The same could have been said of the European Union. In all you have said, you are right. Yet I wish to make the point for inclusion in both of those bodies. It is better to talk than to fight.
Some members may retire with a bloodied ego after a debate but that is better than a bloodied lip or ten thousand dead on a battlefield. The UN is ineffectual, I agree completely, look at the situation in Myanmar, that has hardly been mentioned. Yet that is the choice of major nations protecting their own interests and financial positions. Perhaps if the UN became stronger, more inclusive, these things could be limited. I am not a Utopian asking for world peace in my lifetime (though it would be nice) but rather accepting of the flaws and divisions of Humanity but do you really wish a return to fractured city states fighting among each other for dominance. Glasgow verses Edinburgh is fine in football terms but do we wish that to happen with guns?
I live in Scotland, a fractured land with many deep divisions. Those that wish to leave Europe and those that wish to remain. Those that wish to leave Great Britain and those that wish to remain. We even have the “Shetlands” wishing to leave Scotland. We have earlier social, wealth and religious divisions some of which still run surprisingly deep and you would add to that ostracizing ourselves further, removing ourselves from the UN. A future where Scotland could become a collection of city states or regions each at war with the other.
Perhaps Northumberland or Cumbria could run for independence, the “home counties” (where all the money is) could eschew the rest of England and go it alone. Wales declare Independence and then Cornwall after all they do have their own identities.
I believe that we should buy in every time, to the European Union, to NATO, to the UN and any other organisation that joins the human race more closely together. We should all learn Esperanto, or whatever the next fad is, we need to be more inclusive not less so. None of those organisations have been great as Surav Dutt says but they are in their infancy, we were just warring city states once. They are a small step forward, these bureaucracies, but they are a step forward. We need to encourage them expand upon them and make them proliferate.