February 6, 2006: The United Nations has taken official note of the fact that current peacekeeping efforts often fail. Too often, the UN brokered "peace" dissolves into renewed war or disorder after a few years. This has been pointed out repeatedly, especially since the end of the Cold War. Before that, failed peacekeeping efforts were usually blamed on the machinations of the two Cold War superpowers (the U.S. and the USSR). Colonialism and Western Imperialism, in general, were also blamed. But now it is clear that the problems were rather more local. It's gotten to the point where citizens in some of these non-functional nations wish the colonial powers were back. Those were the good old days. In Africa, for example, most nations have much lower living standards now, than they did when the colonial governments left in the 1960s. That's not going to happen, as the European nations got out of the colony business because they finally realized that, financially, it was a losing proposition. The colonies were also a liability politically and diplomatically. The Cold War had the Soviet Union making a big thing about the evils of colonialism. Russia didn't have any overseas colonies, but had plenty within its own borders. Most of these became independent when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, and those former colonies are now going through some of the same problems the earlier generation of former colonies experienced. One thing most of these former colonies have in common was that they had never been nation-states in the modern sense. Before the colonial powers came along and set up proper governments, these areas had no central government, and were ruled by a mélange of warlords and tribal chiefs. After the colonial powers departed, it wasn't long before the old power centers reasserted themselves. Thus the endless civil wars and general disorder in many of these "failed states."

So the UN is trying to establish a Peacebuilding Commission that will endeavor to reconstruct countries. Unfortunately, the UN is already off the mark. It's not a matter of "reconstructing" most of these failed states, but building one in the first place. To do this, they should study the history of those successful nations that exist today. All the nations of Europe went through a lengthily, and painful, process before they became unified, stable nations. Moreover, they had to suppress most of the multiculturalism in order to make this work. For over a generation, multiculturalism has been touted as a positive thing. It isn't. Multiculturalism is one most destructive forces in human history. That it came to be seen as a positive thing after World War II, should be seen in light of the fact that, at one time, communist and fascism were seen as positive movements.

The Peacebuilding Commission is a noble undertaking, but it is likely to fail because the UN must answer to so many different ideologies and national strategies. Democracy, for example, is unpopular with religious (Iran) and communist (China, North Korea, Cuba) dictatorships. Multiculturalism is still popular among the UN crowd, and the UN has convinced itself that its diplomats, not exhaustion, has ended many wars. What is happening is that many wars don't end, but merely have intermissions. The warring parties, invariably from different cultures, are just waiting to rebuild their strength and have another go at it. The UN solution is to just keep doing what they think works, and this will turn multicultural regions into unified states. It won't, but at least now you know what the Peacebuilding Commission is really up to, even if the people running it don't.

Oh, one more thing. The Peacebuilding Commission also wants to control all the money that is pledged to rebuild these countries. Rather than leave it to the donors or NGOs to supervise the spending of billions of dollars in aid funds, the UN wants to do it in a more efficient manner. With the UN history of corruption and missing money, you can see where that is going.