Tuesday, September 28, 2010

An Astronomical Mistake: The Latest UN Appointment From a Realist's Perspective

The United Nation's appointment of the Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman as the alien contact ambassador is a grave mistake. This appointment will not only lead the UN to become more obsolete as a world player, but will also threaten the state security of each of our world's sovereign states. By appointing an individual that represents a far weaker member state than any of the P5+1 states, the United Nations has ostracized the strongest world players by attempting to limit their influence in future world events and debate. The lack of an outlet for key players to voice their concerns and advocate for their own self-interests will lead to a breakdown of this new UN institution because the world's most powerful and largest states will ignore any United Nations conclusions in favor of their own state security centered agendas. After the United Nations becomes obsolete in the eyes of larger powers, the rest of the world will follow, realizing the UN institution assigned to deal with inter-planet diplomacy is the not the balancing institution they thought it was, which will lead to relative chaos as each state begins to jockey to become the dominant world power. As simple anarchy turns to chaos, the weakness of the world political structure will become evident to any interstellar visitor, which may insight aggression from said visitor. Therefore, although at first glance this new United Nations appointment may appear to be an attempt to balance against the world's greater powers, it will be ineffective because it holds no true authority over and does not attempt to appease the most powerful states, which will cause a breakdown of the institution leaving a chaotic and dangerous world political system with any previously planned action for otherworldly visitors in shambles.

1 comment:

  1. Colin,
    I understand where you're coming from but in a situation where we are dealing with a whole new species, and we do not know anything about them or what their powers are, wouldn't a realist want them in the UN so we could keep tabs and find out more information?

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