Weaknesses of the UN

As Paul Kennedy noted in The Parliament of Man (Penguin Books, 2006), one of the key weaknesses of the United Nations laid in its poor financial state.

The UN is trapped in between the twin pressures of rising operations costs "and the unwillingness or inability of major states such as Russia, Japan and the United States to pay their dues on time."

Developing countries rightly complained that as more funds went to conflict prevention and humanitarian relief, less was available for investments in education and infrastructure for poorer countries.

"Right-wingers wanted the UN stables cleansed, the bureaucracy cut, the budgets - regular and peacekeeping - drastically slashed. They were in no mood for generosity. What was the point of the Secretariat urging large and decisive operations, and the Security Council agreeing, when both knew that member states would not pay?"

Accentuating the cash crisis is the increase in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, and the quality of the peacekeeping troops as newer member states were pressed to contribute forces.

"It was one thing to insert a battalion of Gurkhas or Royal Marine commandos into a country ravaged by youthful gangs and see the public violence shrink when the heavy men came in. But to expect ill-equipped and scarcely trained units from many newer nations to perform under pressure far from home was too much to hope for; some of their governments had contributed troops simply so that they would get the foreign currency for themselves," Kennedy wrote.