QUESTIONS ASKED – DAY-5 (24/07/2013)
1)” The seeds of the World War II were sown at a peace treaty held in a grand Palace in France.” Elaborate.
2) Has UN been successful in maintaining the world peace in the post cold war scenario? Critically discuss.
RESPONSES:
KEERTHI NARAYAN
1.
The first World War came to an end in 1919 with the defeat of Germany, Austria Hungary, Italy to the England-France-Russia-USA alliance. A post war treaty called the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the palace at Versailles near Paris.
The treaty of Versailles was basically an unfair treaty. It fixed the sole responsibility for the first World War on Germany. It was basically the intention of France and England to punish Germany to such an extent that it would never cause trouble again. The treaty consisted of harsh conditions like:
Demilitarisation of Rhineland
Loss of resource rich Alsace Lorraine to France
Loss of territories in the east to Russia
Loss of Germany’s African colonies to the League of Nations
Germany was not supposed to build any more war ships
Germany’s military strength is to be confined to 100000
Huge war indemnity of 6600 million pounds was imposed on Germany
Germany should not impose compulsory military training upon its citizens
All these conditions were imposed to ensure that Germany has to undergo moral humiliation and economic, military subordination to the Anglo-French.However, the intention backfired. The very conditions imposed on Germany forcibly was the major reason for the rise of German nationalism under Hitler. German people were so humbled that Hitler’s every move against the Treaty of Versailles was welcomed by the German public with great cheer.
Thus, the Treaty of Versailles, with which peace was supposed to be established in Europe planted the seeds of hatred among German minds leading to the second world war.
2.
The United Nations Organisation is an international body whose primary responsibility is to maintain world peace. it was with this primary objective that it was formed post the second World War.
To assess the success of the UNO in maintaining world peace it becomes necessary to define the term “world peace” in the present context. During 1900-1950 the world witnesses two major and horrible wars which resulted in a innumerable loss of lives and property. The world is a different world now. Concepts like democracy, development and international trade have gained roots and invasion of territory, missile power demonstration, spy network superiority have lost ground. The world has become more civilised now politically. Hence dangers to world peace are not exactly invading of nations by a powerful nation anymore. So in the present scenario, the UN’s success should be assessed by how far it has been successful in maintaining the world nations’ sovereignty.
1. UNO has been successful in preventing large outbreak of territorial wars.(mostly because countries have understood the ill effects of a full blown war)
2. The post cold war era has seen invasion of many nations’ sovereignty by a superior nation and the UN has failed to prevent such events.
Eg. In the name of eradicating terror cells of Al Quaeda, the US entered Afghanistan post 9/11 attacks.
In the name of ousting dictatorship and establishing democracy the US entered Iraq.
In the name of removing an autocratic regime (though it is democratically elected), the US is supporting the anti-Syrian forces in Syria.
So if viewed in terms of avoiding major wars, the UN has been successful. However, the fundamental edifice of modern polity called sovereignty of a country and its people has been forcibly breached many a times by the prime funder of the UN and the UN has appallingly failed in this regard.
ASHA GOUD
1.
The given statements refers to the Treaty of Versailles signed after the World War 1. Imperial Germany with Austria lost against the allies countries. With the fall of imperial power in Germany parliamentary government was established which signed the Peace treaty at Versailles.
The treaty put the entire responsibility of World War 1 on Germany and Germany was now asked to pay for the destruction during the war to the Allies. The treaty did not go down well with the German people who considered it unfair and German government failed to maintain people’s support. 13% of German territory was occupied by Allies, its resource rich regions like Rhineland, Ruhr and German colonies too were taken away. Germany was demilitarized.
These harsh provisions of the treaty lead to an economic slow down and condition of hyperinflation along with large scale unemployment in Germany. People had lost faith in the government. In such situation of political and economic instability, Hitler was able to raise his Nazi party to power and turn into dictator. He gained the support of people by bringing the economy back on track. He declared the German people as the higher race and restored the lost dignity of the people.
Therefore Hitler was able to win support of German population and he acquired such powers that no one could oppose him. He justified his acts as an attempt to regain the lost dignity to his people.
2.
In the Post Cold war scenario characterized by absence of the persistent danger war between the conflicting powers. The nature of conflicts is now majorly ethnic and secessionist.
United nations has gained significance an a major platform for deliberations and discussions between nations in with end of cold war. UN aims to achieve and maintain balanced world order and peace. Its peace keeping arm being UNSC which authorizes peace keeping missions to conflict torn regions.
During Cold War neither USA nor USSR supported the UN peacekeeping however with end of cold war USA and Russia readily support peacekeeping. UN currently maintains its peacekeeping missions in various countries and the number of peacekeeping missions has increased post cold war. The nature of peacekeeping is no more only military but has enlarged to include humanitarian assistance.
The failure of UN peacekeeping is that as it requires a consent of UNSC it sometimes becomes difficult to take up issues where the UNSC permanent members put their veto, like the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
With the support of all UN members the peace keeping missions are successful in playing a major role towards maintaining peaceful world order.
ANJALI MOTGHARE
1.
Paris Peace Conference was convened with the aim of restoring peace in World and not to repeat those mistakes which led to World War I. However the very treaty of Versailles one of which concluded in Peace Conference sowed the seed of dissension and draw World to second World War.
At the Paris Peace Conference Germany was not treated in befitting manner.
Because of Treaty Of Versailles she had to loose one eighth of her
of her territories in Europe and 7 million people together with all her colonies, her naval force destroyed and her army was reduced to one lakh, economically her resources confiscated and she had to pay
war indemnity of 5 billion. This treaty was a dictated peace so after some time German nationalist started violating it.
Italy and japan was also discontented with the paris peace treaties. Italy joined the revisionists and Japan adopted expansionist policies.
France wanted to reduce Germany to a state of extinction but Britain wanted to see her prosperous nation able to maintain balance in Europe,. Thus Germany got an opportunity to violate the conditions of treaty of Versailles and she took the full advantage of that and took up arms against allied powers to seek vengeance. Thus started a second world war.
2.
With the end of Cold War, a World become a unipolar and U.S.A. remained sole super power contributing nearly 25 per cent of fund to United Nations.
So whenever USA wanted it acted in its own interests flouting UN’s norms, leading to failure of UN.
Though UN has been successful in bringing happiness and prosperity through its welfare measure like education, water, sanitation by its various arms but it failed on major issues, which are as follows.
1. UN ineptly handled Somalia crisis, the war torn country is yet to recover.
2. In Rwanda genocide, UN itself admitted it failed to safeguard the peoples lives.
3.UN failed to prevent second Congo War where eight nations and twenty five groups were involved and million civilians perished.
4. UN also failed in Sudan were more than five million people killed in civil war of independence.
5.UN’s failed to prevent genocide which took place in Srebrenica, a
place in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
6.The US war on Iraq in 2003 showed that a powerful nation like the US
could simply wish aside global opinion.
7. UN failed to bring North Korea and Iran on a path of non proliferation despite of many sanctions.
8. Recently in Syria UN has not been able to bring reconciliation between government and opposition and war is continue for more than a year which lead to more than 60,000 civilian deaths and much more become refugee.
RE SINGH
2.
UN is the brain child of the western world that evolve after the second world war which purposes are make a world peaceful where international issues are bring at a place and resolve them peacefully and also resolve all concern of the newly independent states.
After the end of world war new version of war were emerged a proxy war (cold war). At this scenario UN also plays an important role and after 1990,at the end of the cold war, UN and its agencies makes world peaceful and brings world to be more globalized.
UN and its agencies plays important role in the economic oriented new world where each countries are economically depend to one another. UN works for more liberalized the world and take action against conservatism.
UN sending its secretaries and agent to the conflicted areas of the world and trying to resolve the problem with conversation between rival groups.
It also sending peace army to the conflicted zones and disaster affected areas and also supplying resources to the poor and poverty affected areas.
Its security council are playing important role to stop the terrorism and nuclear expansions through keep banning on research and development on nuclear.
UN have doing so many grateful and successful jobs. But along this jobs it also criticizes for its leanness to the western country. security council is mostly criticized for its leanness to developed world.
After the cold world war new economies were emerging then they start demand for making UN more open and stop biased activity. Developing countries are demanding for expand security council and also liberalized nuclear policy for power generation. And new demand for more responsibility and transparency increases.
this is a brief story of UN but the requirement of the globalized world is more so there are so many changes are required in the right direction through which the world become more peaceful.
AUGUST PEGU
2.
Since the end of the cold war,there has been a dramatic shift in the number of peace keeping operations as well as maintaining world peace.The UN has contributed to the settlement of numerous regional conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War, the South African presence in Namibia, the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia.
UN has provided a framework for the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait
.Second, given a choice, states contemplating the use of force beyond their borders often prefer to do it in a multilateral, especially in UN, context.
UN or multilateral approach helps to neutralize domestic political opposition, increases the opportunities to acquire useful allies, reassure the international community that operations have limited and legitimate goals and reduces the risks of large-scale force being used by adversaries or rival powers.
Third, the UN has some notable advantages over regional organizations in tackling security problems threatening world peace: UN is universal now; it has a reputation, even is it is now under threat, for impartiality; and it has a more clear set of arrangements for making decisions on security issues than do most regional organizations,including even the powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Since the end of the Cold War, the evolution of UN peace operations has created some consequences for the organisation. In some cases it has shown itself unprepared to adapt to change, while in other instances it has found itself having to deal with situations seemingly beyond its control.
Yet we have to admit the fact that UN has been more or less able to maintain world peace at numerous instances.The most important being preventing the world from a nuclear third world war.
RAHUL
1.
The end of World War I led to the signing of the treaty of Versailles, where the Allied powers led by Britain, France and America forced Germany to sign the peace treaty. Germany was forced to surrender a major portion of its territory to the Allied countries. Moreover, they could not keep aircrafts, navy and the number of soldiers were limited to 1 lakhs. Germany was humiliated and extremely harsh conditions were imposed on her.
The signing of treaty of Versailles led also to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Austrian, Russian empires and creation of a set of weak independent countries. The first WW was ‘a war to end all war’’. However, the treaty failed to achieve this. Many victories countries also felt cheated as their hopes were not fulfilled. Imperialism, in fact did not end with the signing of the treaty although it led to the creation of the Leaque of Nations.
The reparations that the defeated nations had to pay as per the treaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Germany. It was at this time that the Nazi party, a nationalist party took the advantage to form a base in Germany and ultimately form the government under Hitler which rejected many post war changes.
CPP CONTROL
2.
Post cold war, the UN has recalibrated its traditional field operations into complex multi dimensional enterprise. It has also enlarged its base ; interstate conflicts to civil wars. Un peacekeepers are presently undertaking various missions from to build sustainable government institutions, to monitor human rights violation, to security sectors reforms etc.
However, its record in peacekeeping missions to Rwanda, Somalia and former Yugoslavia were criticized as it failed to adhere its peacekeeping mission or the peacekeeprs were themselves not provided better resources or political support. As civilians causalities rose, the reputation of the UN peacekeepers also dipped considerably. The setback during those missions led to the Security council to limit the number of peacekeeping missions and begin a process of self reflection so the mistakes are not repeated again.
With continuing crisis in a number of countries the essential role of peacekeeping was soon reaffirmed although a major exercise followed to initiate reforms. The UN peacekeepers were deployed in countries like Burundi, Liberia, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Haiti, East Timor etc. They were stretched like never before in remote locations, uncertain operating conditions, volatile political contexts and many more operational challenges.
LAKSHMI PRASANNA
1.
World war l was the major shock for the world. It left Europe in debt and victors looking for revenge. That was the victors’ downfall at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The delegates of allies made a treaty called treaty of Versailles signed on June 28 1919 aiming specifically to weak Germany.
The treaty includes:
Distribution of German territory to other countries to cause loss of resources industries and breaking unity of people, restrictions on transport to effect trade and commerce, giving German ships to allies targeting mercantile marine, restrictions on military and importing war materials and reparations injuring German economy caused inflation.
Allies succeed in troubling Germany with all these restrictions.
Treaty resulted unemployment, poverty and famine among people of Germany. People got anger and outraged against treaty and government for accepting it.
From this outrage Hitler emerged as leader who took measures to effect consequences of treaty and started uniting German territory. He started Nazi party which got support from people He invaded Poland; two days later World war ll began. Therefore treaty of Versailles was major cause of World war ll. If the delegates of allies had been more concerned about future of Europe rather punishing Germany, World war ll may have never occurred.
