The UN a More Perfect Union Discussion
You will craft individual essays in response to the provided prompts. You must use the current Turabian style with default margins and 12-pt Times New Roman font. For each essay, include a title page and reference page, also in current Turabian format. You must include citations to a sufficient number of appropriate scholarly sources to fully support your assertions and conclusions (which will likely require more than the minimum number of citations). Each paper must contain at least 5
7 scholarly sources original to this paper,
The UN— “A More Perfect Union?”
Considering the readings, video presentations, and your own research, draft a quality 6–7-page research paper on the role, legitimacy, and authority of the UN according to the following prompts, answering in a separate or integrated manner as you wish.
- Identify at least 3reasons that states might defend the intrinsic legitimacy of the UN as a governing authority. In reverse, identify at least 3reasons that states might criticize its legitimacy and authority. In short, make an argument for the limits and possibilities of the UN as a legitimate governing authority in a world of sovereign states.
- What is the relationship of the UN to the current international system of states? Considering the reasons for the creation of the UN after WWII, does it seem driven by political necessity or the political utility? In plainer English, do states need the UN more than the UN needs the states? Or do states both large and small find the UN a useful tool for improving their relative power and legitimacy vis-à-vis other states and global institutions? Is there some position in-between?
- Using other sources and extra-Scholar sources (The commentaries, teachings, other writings, etc.) to inform your own reasoning, comment on the compatibility with the idea of World Government. [Attention: The Instructor does not view the question as rhetorical, nor the answer self-evident. So, reason carefully.] For example, if the logic of collective action under the Articles of Confederation—the logic of state sovereignty—failed to secure American liberties as well as the ‘more perfect union’, the new Constitution established by the Framers in 1787 to replace it, effectively requiring states to cede sovereignty to a larger collective authority, why would the same logic of collective action not justify the UN as a ‘more perfect union’ to replace an anarchic system of sovereign states putting the world at risk in a nuclear age?