The UN and the Cold War

That's a mighty big what if... further I would say that the question is pointless speculation. We got through all right, the UN passed the tests it faced. We may or may not have done as well without it... but it hardly matters now.

What matters now is what role (if any) should the UN serve in the world today when the primary threat to world peace is no longer the overt actions of powerful nation-states. I think a group that tries to prevent conflict between the nation-states is still a good idea, since such conflict can be tremendously destructive. However, at the same time any state which allows those outside of the state to dictate acceptable behavior is not sovereign. So it may be something needs to change it how the UN is set up, to make more clear that it does not stand higher than sovereignty.

What tests did the UN face during the Cold War? What did it do? It authorized the Korean War, right? Is that it?

Of all the possible outcomes the best one came about, the Cold War never went hot, it never went nuclear. And the US won... so how we could possibly have been better off without the UN is beyond me.

Could it have happened without the UN, maybe, it's logically possible that without the grease of a collection of international backdoors through which to talk all in one place the same thing could have happened, I tend to doubt it, I suspect without something like the UN things would have fallen apart at Korea, if not when we went in, when China went in after us. Honestly though I freely admit I can't know; God might have a fairly good idea what would have happened without it, but I don't think any lesser being could.

What I do think is that this entire line of speculation doesn't matter, it can produce nothing in the way of meaningful theory or even an educated guess. Why on earth are you persuing it? Its not even like there's blame to go around on the result -- we won, noone got nuked, it's all good.

The Cold War could have ended 20 years earlier, for one thing. No one got nuked, but the Communists did kill dozens of millions of people in the intervening decades, which seems pretty significant to me. Are you arguing that the Cold War played out in the best conceivable manner?

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What about the veto power that the security council had?

Although the UN may have not played a directly significant role in ending or lessening the threats posed during the cold war, it did substansive good in other areas such as decolonisation and social progress. Remember that the Russians were not wholey cooperative within the Security Council, indeed, a resolution aided South Korea after the Northern invasion was only secured in 1950 as the Russians were boycotting the SC after a long period of sustained vetos of other important Resolutions.

I think it is also important to look at the role played by the NPT in terms of arms proliferation. There are now only 8 possibly 9 nations if North Korea is included that possess nuclear arms technologies, estimates in the 1960 is that this number would be of the magnitude of 30-40 if not higher. I think, although not in a good state today, this can be classed as a success of the UN in the cold war context.

Further, I have to disagree that the cold war at not point became hot. Take Vietnam as an example of armed intevention of another state. This of cause had implications to reduce the spread of communism. As Robert Magnimara has said himself the cold war wasn't cold, it was a hot war.