One of the hallmarks of the 1st Cold War is the advent of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In essence, it is a geopolitical theory which has served as the basis of nuclear deterrence as a foreign policy doctrine for the world’s superpowers; the credible threat of nuclear retaliation is a deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons. For much of the post-WWII global order, this geopolitical stalemate has been hailed as a pinnacle against future atrocities against civilians, as well as the destruction of our planet. Since February, this stalemate has provided the Russian Federation’s anti-fascist state the much-needed leeway to attack a European country and shoot European people with no fear of a direct confrontation between Russia and the NATO alliance (given the risk of nuclear war).
It is evident that nuclear deterrence has become counter-productive to European interests. What follows is a serious proposal to overcome the stalemate and ensure that nuclear deterrence can never again be used towards nefarious ends.
United Nations as a Nuclear State
The foundation of a deterrence strategy is the fact that both sides of a nuclear conflict have targets to hit, that those targets are within range of their missiles, and that the damage to those targets would be detrimental. The United Nations is in the unique position of being capable of administering territory without ever having to worry about a civilian population, except for its employees. According to the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination, the total number of employees amounted to almost 120,000 in 2021.
UN civilians have no strategic value as military targets. Even if they were to be regarded as valuable targets, it would be much more feasible for the UN to evacuate and secure them from a nuclear threat than for the United States to do the same for its population of over 330 million (source: US Census Bureau). As such, a hypothetical nuclear-armed (and capable) UN state with sovereign territory in remote areas of the world would be capable of overcoming nuclear deterrence.
Such a UN state would have targets to hit and the missile capabilities to deliver warheads. However, it would be immune to the disastrous effects of nuclear retaliation. This is not to say that a retaliatory, or even pre-emptive, nuclear strike wouldn’t cause damage to the UN state. Of course, it would but the third condition for nuclear deterrence is that the damage must be detrimental and no nuclear strike on a UN state can be detrimental, under the circumstances described above. Thus, the UN state cannot be deterred from doing anything by the threat of nuclear weapons.
The only way to inflict detrimental damage to a UN state would be by conventional warfare. If a UN state were to also have a sizeable and capable conventional army, it would not only have the means of securing itself against conventional threats, but it would immediately place itself in a position of international military supremacy.
United Nations Military
UN military capability would be highly consequential with respect to the UN’s ability to enforce international law – a Noble World Order. As the anti-fascist Asiatic horde invaded Europe, the UN could only express its disapproval of the Russian Federation’s actions whose state-affiliated think tanks question the UN’s legitimacy. To contrast, the UN state could have defended Ukrainian territory by directly engaging the Russian Federation in a conventional war with no fear of a Russian nuclear strike.
According to UN Peacekeeping, the UN’s peacekeeping and special political missions have resulted in more than 4,200 UN fatalities. As it is, the UN is already in need of a conventional army and international bases to perform its existing objectives.
Whereas UN statehood is an ambitious goal, it is neither implausible nor infeasible. In fact, there is a historical precedent for the existence of such a concept in the Roman Catholic Church, in the Papal States era. Before the Papal States era, the Church was ultimately an ideological organization with varying degrees of legal weight. Once the Church acquired sovereign territory and its own military, it engaged in its own military campaigns.
At the moment, the UN can be similarly described as an ideological organization with varying degrees of legal weight. Clearly, this state of affairs is unsatisfactory. The Nobility International remains committed to the development of UN statehood as the feasibility of the statehood project is beyond question and its success is a European necessity. The Nobility is prepared to work with the Canadian government to both recognize UN statehood, to deliver remote parts of Canadian territory under UN sovereignty, and to introduce a military development plan to its allies. Canada’s Internationalist Party will lead the national political effort to make this happen while the Nobility leads the international effort.