Predatory sharks too tough for Toothless Tigers!
The UN must genuinely desire change; its purpose becomes meaningless, leaving the hopes of billions hanging by a thread, subject in perpetuity to the whims of tyrants and despots
Published: 03:05 PM,May 02,2026 | EDITED : 07:05 PM,May 02,2026
Reflection upon global events and personalities is debilitating, isn’t it? It’s alarming, depressing, and just so difficult to get your head around, isn’t it?
The current Middle Eastern reality, the anxiety for the nations on the doorstep of the Iranian-American conflict, including Oman, is so surreal, because they are all the ‘meat in someone else’s sandwich,’ with so little influence upon what happens next, in their own ‘backyard,’ sleeping uneasily, while the architect of it all, President Trump, sleeps like a baby, safe as houses, snug as a bug, half a world, 10,600 km away...
It is political, social and philosophical madness, but maybe demonstrates how irrelevant the United Nations has become? Although founded with the objective of world peace and giving itself a charter that would enable third party peacekeeping to reduce conflict, it hasn’t covered itself in glory, and is usually seen as a ‘toothless tiger,’ certainly by this cynical generation.
Opinion about the UN has always been diverse, with Iraq’s Mohammed Saeed Al Sahaf during the Iraqi conflict, ranting that the UN sought only to prostrate itself before America, while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran (2005-13), blames the UN for contributing to the issue of Palestinian rights in Gaza not being resolved.
Surprisingly, a former US ambassador to the UN (1999-2001), Richard Holbrooke, from a different perspective, supports reform, feeling that it is “indispensable, but deeply flawed,” due to its reliance on America.
The UN, however, emasculated itself within Article 27 (3) of its original charter, which enables any one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council’s ten nations, being China, France, Russia, the USA and the UK, to veto resolutions being sought demanding action against miscreants.
In doing so, ‘friendly’ nations can, and do, veto sanctions if they have an overriding self-interest. Also, incredibly, those same paragons of security can veto action to prevent punitive action against themselves, as Russia did in 2022, when they were attacking Ukraine.
The UK sought, through First Secretary Phillip Reed, speaking to the UN on April 26, 2023, for them to use the veto “responsibly, to avoid and resolve conflict.”
He also pointed to China and Russia vetoing North Korea’s May 22, 2022, launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and on July 22, 2022, when Russia again flexed its veto, this time to deny humanitarian aid to four million starving Syrians, in demanding responsibility and accountability from the Security Council.
Nepotism, however, in international politics, is a card played cynically by the ‘sharks’ of the ‘top table.’
Otherwise, Emperor Haile Selassie, who led Ethiopia’s emergence until overthrown in 1974, exhorted the UN for expressing “the noblest ambitions of man,” while Kofi Annan, its secretary-general from 1997 to 2006, said that mankind, needing “a common destiny,” was the reason for the UN. Maybe the current leader of the UN, Antonio Guterres, has the right attitude, agreeing that the world faces conflict, inequality and intolerance, says, “we have the tools, and the wealth... all we need is the will.”
And that is where I find myself.
The United Nations must genuinely desire change; its purpose becomes meaningless, leaving the hopes of billions hanging by a thread, subject in perpetuity to the whims of tyrants and despots.