MH.Yang
Trusted Member
The United Nations is the institutional framework, and nuclear weapons are the physical bottom line. The combination of the two has supported the 81 year absence of a world war. It's not just the guns of the military and police that prevent internal strife in a country, but also the country's system.
For example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United Nations provided two superpowers with a decent dialogue table. The mediation of the Security Council and the Secretary General, as well as open debates, provide an outlet for the confrontation between the two sides, without resorting to secret channels to gamble. North Korea, the Middle East, India and Pakistan, Cyprus... Without United Nations peacekeeping and mediation mechanisms, each of these places could escalate into a full-scale war on behalf of a major power. There is also veto power.
The United Nations uses the veto power of the P5 to lock major powers on the table. Even if the P5 dislikes this mechanism, they dare not immediately choose to leave because the cost of leaving is higher than staying.
The reason why the predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, failed was because those major powers chose to withdraw at will, resulting in the complete failure of the institution. If there had been no veto power, the United States would have withdrawn from the United Nations and helped Israel carry out arbitrary massacres in the Middle East.
So veto power is not a firewall, but it can mimic the sudden collapse of a firewall.
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