Talking to work out differences of opinion can give you great results that are acceptable to all parties. It is the premise that the United Nations and even the European Union has been built. That said, all these discussions do take a lot of time, and can be very bureaucratic. Going to extremes, having so many discussions can be used as a tool against one of the parties. This is a manipulation of one party over another. This is where I think the UN has sadly gone so wrong.
As Russia’s Putin began building up soldiers on the Ukrainian border, the UN kept talking. “Give peace a chance” was the mantra. With some people who are psychopaths, there comes a time when you realize that you are not getting results and another method needs to be used. This does not seem to be built into the UN’s social mechanism. As a result, Russia was able to use the UN to deceive the rest of the world, and to delay action against it when it invaded Ukraine.
We would like to believe that in our modern 21st century that we humans have evolved. We should be able to discuss civilly and work out all of our problems. Unfortunately in Russia’s case, this was untrue. Putin was able to use the UN talks as a weapon to delay action against it. The more talk Russia was able to garner at the UN, the more time Putin was able to prepare for their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Once 150,000 Russian troops were on the Ukraine border, it was quite evident that a mass invasion was imminent. Still, talks continued, countries hoped and this caught so many countries off guard. They did not believe that such an invasion was possible in their 21st century. They were wrong, and Ukraine is now paying the price.
While we as a species have advanced, we need to continue to try to understand that human nature is more complex that we imagine. Some people are charismatic enough to fool a lot of others into doing their own evil deeds. Talking about it merely delays action. There is a point of no return that was not noticed in this Ukraine invasion.
The progress we have made in this 21st century is not as large or important as we imagine.
