War is Evil: Is the UN treading the League of Nations Path?
The United Nations has been somewhat absent during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, leaving the response to individual states. Are they risking following their predecessor into irrelevance?
We live in a segment of history which has often been seen as the golden age of internationalism. It arguably started with the foundation of the very first international organisation (as modern minds would understand it) in 1815, the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, an organisation which still functions to this day. The CCNR is fairly typical of the early international organisations. It deals with a specific and defined set of functions, had a limited degree of authority, and has maintained both stability and membership (barring an unfortunate break between 1940-1945) for a significant length of time.
The CCNR was followed by other similarly specific bodies, the European Commission of the Danube for example, which featured as the first organisation to have true administrative, police and judicial powers (though some have argued that this is in fact a mischaracterisation of their true nature as multinational forums instead of true subjects of international law). The early bodies you will note often featured as their subject area rivers, which served as natural borders and internationally important routes for traffic and trade. The first non-regional international body was also created to facilitate flow, though this time of information, with the creation of the International Telecommunications Union in 1865.
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