The massive failure of the United Nations to effectively resolve the Korean Peninsula crisis after the Second World War brings to question the organization's adherence to its charter. The UN was formed upon the realization that total war was not a means to solve any conflicts be they global or otherwise. The Great War and Second World Wars, caused great loss of life and damage yet no issues were resolved. The UN’s charter indicates that the organization was formed inter alia to ensure that international issues are resolved without having to result in conflict (Goodrich, 1965). Within the perspective of the Korean issue, the UN not only failed to ensure peace but also instigated a war, then enabled its prosecution. This was a monumental UN failure that is augmented by the fact that during the said conflict, the UN and the US became one and the same entity with the latter taking near full control of the former.
The Second World War is one of the greatest disasters in the history of mankind and it would be unfair to say that anyone won, because humanity lost (Goodrich, 1965). This, however, did not stop Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Unions to consider themselves as victors and act as such. The greatest crisis related to this was happened after the war and resulted in the Cold War that was to shape the world during most of the second half of the 20 th century. It would place the so-called three victors on opposing sides and this opposition was already manifesting when they sat down in Moscow to come up with the Moscow agreement. The fate of the world was in their hands. Among the decisions that were arrived at during this meeting was that Korea, which the same parties had gifted to Japan at the end of the Great War, would now be an independent nation. Its path to self-governance would be jointly superintended by the USA and the Soviets (Choi, 1975). These two nations were already belligerents and now a nation had been placed in their joint hands. Allowing this was among the monumental failures of the UN.
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Two wrongs don’t make a right, it was wrong for the UN to allow the fate of the Korean Peninsula to be determined jointly by the US and the Soviets. However, after the decision had been made, the UN could then not intervene in the matter without involving both the Soviets and the Americans. Unfortunately, the UN allowed the matter to be unilaterally referred to it by the US in spite of open objections by the Soviets (Choi, 1975). The UN ignored the Soviet Union and proceeded to discuss the issue of the Korean Peninsula resulting in the passing on Resolution number 112 made on the 14 th day of November 1947. This called for democratic elections in the whole of Korea, followed by the withdrawal of all foreign troops, which in this regard meant both the US and the Soviet troops. This was a massive blunder on the part of the UN and only happened because it was bending to the will of the USA.
As would be expected, the areas controlled by the Soviets did not allow for the UN-sanctioned elections. In another massive blunder, the UN then proceeded to superintend over elections that were only held in the Southern parts of the Peninsula which were controlled by US forces. Once again, the UN was both siding with the US and actively sidelining the then-fledgling superpower , the Soviet Union. Although the elections were held in only one half of the country, the results were used to declare a president for the whole of Korea (Stairs, 1970). This president was Syngman Rhee, a Harvard and Princeton educated South Korean whose close association with the Americans was well known. For an organization specifically created to pursue diplomacy and international peace, this move was not only extremely undiplomatic but also a clear recipe for war. This led to the formation of a secondary government in the Northern part of Korea, which called itself the DPRK but the UN declined to recognize, arguing that the South Korean government under Lee was the Korean government (Choi, 1975). It is a fact that at the advent of the Korean War, it was the North that attacked but the conduct of the UN gave them no alternative.
It would be important, in the interest of fairness, to state that it was wrong for DPRK to attack South Korea and it was also wrong for the Soviet Union to arm them. These are, however, countries that are bound to be aggressive when they feel threatened. It was to avoid such eventualities that the UN had been formed (Goodrich, 1965). In this case, the UN is the instigator and not the peace-maker. The moment the DPRK with Soviet support attacked South Korea, the US took total control of the UN and commenced intervention under the UN name. American forces led by American generals used American equipment to attack the DPRK army. But this attacker called themselves UN peacekeepers undertaking a UN police action, not prosecuting a war (Stairs, 1970). This creates the issue of who would negotiate peace when the Peacemaker was in the trenches of one side, fighting against the other.
Only five years after the formation of the UN, the Americans, calling themselves the UN forces are fighting the DPRK government in the Korean Peninsula. As the US/UN was zeroing in on the DPRK capital, Chinese soldiers using Soviet equipment attacked the UN/US soldiers. This resulted in major casualties leading to the retreating of the UN/US forces with great casualties. When the US General McArthur was able to stem the tide, he started a counter-attack intended to go straight to Beijing. “…… policies that had already been determined in Washington, were merely pumped through the organization’s decision-making machinery to give them pro forma legitimacy’ (Stairs, 1970, P. 303). Definitely, the Soviets would not have allowed it. The organization that had been formed to forestall conflict had, within five years single-handedly managed to bring the world to the eve of another global conflict. The war global was avoided, no thanks to the UN.
References
Choi, C. K. (1975). The Korean question in the United Nations. Verfassung und Recht in Übersee/Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America , 395-406
Goodrich, L. M. (1965). The Maintenance of International Peace and Security. International Organization , 19 (3), 429-443
Stairs, D. (1970). The United Nations and the Politics of the Korean War. International Journal , 25 (2), 302-320
