Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. It is a heavy day here in Jerusalem. If you have been following the news, you know we are currently on day three of the latest escalation between Israel and Iran, with the United States now actively involved. You can hear the distant rumble of the Iron Dome intercepts even from our neighborhood. It is one of those times where the theoretical topics we usually discuss feel very, very real. This follows the total collapse of the third round of nuclear talks in Geneva just last week.
Herman Poppleberry here, and yeah, Corn, it is intense. We are sitting here in the living room with our housemate Daniel, who actually sent us the prompt for today's episode. He was listening to the latest statements from the United Nations regarding the strikes on the new Pickaxe Mountain facility near Natanz, and he was, well, pretty frustrated. The Secretary General is calling for restraint, while the intelligence suggests the threat is already at the doorstep.
Frustrated is putting it mildly. Daniel's prompt basically asks: when is the United Nations actually going to acknowledge that sometimes there is no other option but the use of force? He is looking at the current situation where the United States and Israel are acting to prevent a nuclear breakout, and then he hears the United Nations calling for a return to the negotiating table. It feels like a total disconnect from reality.
It really does. And Daniel wanted us to dig into the hawkish perspective on the United Nations. Is it unfit for purpose? Does it have a baked-in bias against Israel? And what would the world look like if the United Nations just stayed out of security and world order entirely? It is a massive question, but considering we are watching the fallout of these decisions in real time, I think it is the most important thing we could talk about today.
Let us start with the immediate context. We have talked in previous episodes, like episode eight hundred ninety-five, about the technical side of the Iranian missile program. But the reason things escalated three days ago was the intelligence regarding the breakout period. Herman, for those who might not be deep in the weeds on this, why was the timing so critical that it bypassed the usual United Nations diplomatic channels?
Right, so the term breakout period refers to how long it would take a country to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear device. For years, that timeline was months. But according to the reports that dropped last week, Iran had moved their centrifuge arrays into a configuration that shortened that window to mere days. We are talking about highly enriched uranium, enriched to ninety percent. Once you have the warhead ready to be mated to a missile, diplomacy becomes a suicide pact if the other side is not acting in good faith. The United Nations is still talking about monitoring, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has had almost no access since the June twenty twenty-five strikes.
And that is where the United Nations fails to come in. Daniel mentioned the statement from Secretary General Guterres. He was urging the parties to return to the negotiating table. From a hawkish perspective, that sounds almost delusional when the centrifuges are literally spinning toward a bomb. So, let us look at the rules. Herman, under what circumstances does the United Nations Charter actually authorize the use of force?
This is where it gets legally dense. The governing framework is Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter. Specifically, Article Forty-two. It says that if the Security Council determines there is a threat to peace, it can authorize air, sea, or land forces to restore international security. But that requires a vote from the Security Council. And we know how that goes with the five permanent members. Any one of them, like Russia or China, can veto a resolution, leading to a built-in paralysis.
But there is also Article Fifty-one, right? The self-defense clause?
Yes, and that is what the United States and Israel are pointing to right now. Article Fifty-one says nothing in the Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs. The hawkish argument is the concept of anticipatory or preemptive self-defense. If you wait until the nuclear missile is in the air, you are already dead. The United Nations, however, tends to have a very narrow, legalistic view. They often rely on the Caroline Test from the nineteenth century, which says the necessity for self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means. Hawks argue that in the nuclear age, waiting for that moment is a death sentence.
It seems like the United Nations is designed to prevent nineteenth-century style land invasions, but it is totally unequipped for twenty-first century nuclear threats. If the body cannot acknowledge that force is sometimes the only way to prevent a catastrophe, does that make it, as Daniel suggested, unfit for purpose?
There is a very strong argument for that. Realist scholars often point out that the United Nations is an idealistic veneer over a world that still operates on power dynamics. When you have countries with horrific human rights records sitting on the Human Rights Council, the credibility of the entire institution bleeds out. In fact, while the United Nations is debating a ceasefire here, they have been largely silent on the reported execution of over thirty thousand protesters in Iran just this past January and February.
Let us talk about that bias Daniel mentioned. He specifically pointed to the bias against Israel. This is something we see constantly living here in Jerusalem. There is a statistical reality to this, is there not?
Oh, it is a matter of record. If you look at the United Nations General Assembly resolutions, Israel is condemned more than the rest of the world combined. In twenty twenty-four, there were seventeen resolutions against Israel and only seven against the entire rest of the world. That means more resolutions against Israel than against North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Russia combined. And then there is Agenda Item Seven at the Human Rights Council.
Tell the listeners about Item Seven. That is the one that really gets people.
It is the only permanent agenda item dedicated to a single country. Every single session, they are required to discuss Israel's alleged misdeeds. No other country—not even those committing active genocides—has a standing item like that. It is institutionalized targeting. Hawks argue this bias makes the world less safe because it forces countries like Israel to act unilaterally. If the referee is biased, you stop playing by the referee's rules.
So, let us take the next step in Daniel's thought experiment. What if the United Nations just stopped? What if we lived in a world where the United Nations did not get involved in security or world order at all? No more peacekeepers, no more Security Council resolutions. What would that look like?
It is a liberating idea for some. You are basically talking about a return to a pure Westphalian system, or a Concert of Powers model. In that world, security is managed through shifting alliances and regional blocks that actually have teeth. Instead of waiting for a resolution from New York that will never come, countries with shared interests would form mutual defense pacts.
Like a formal Middle East Treaty Organization evolving from the Abraham Accords?
Precisely. The argument from the hawkish side is that this would actually be more stable because it is based on reality, not on the polite fiction of international law. It moves us toward minilateralism—smaller groups of like-minded democracies, like the D-ten or the Quad, taking specific actions without needing permission from autocratic regimes.
But wait, wouldn't that just lead to more frequent wars? If there is no referee, doesn't every disagreement just escalate?
That is the big fear. But a hawk would counter that the United Nations didn't prevent World War Three; nuclear deterrence did. The United Nations just took the credit. In a world without the United Nations, you might have more small, decisive wars, but fewer long, drawn-out frozen conflicts.
That reminds me of the Give War a Chance argument that Edward Luttwak made back in nineteen ninety-nine. He argued that by forcing ceasefires before one side has actually won, the international community just ensures that both sides will stay mobilized and angry until the next flare-up.
Exactly. Luttwak's point was that peace only comes when belligerents are exhausted or one side has decisively won. By stepping in with a humanitarian pause, the United Nations often just allows the aggressor to rearm and regroup. We are seeing that right now. A pause today would just let Iran reload their remaining ballistic missile launchers.
So, is the United Nations actually a hindrance to a safer world? If it provides a sense of something being done through diplomacy while the threat is actually growing, then it is effectively acting as a shield for the aggressor.
That is the most cynical, yet perhaps most accurate, hawkish critique. Time is the friend of the proliferator. Every day spent in a United Nations subcommittee is a day closer to a nuclear-armed regime. It reminds me of what we discussed back in episode one hundred ninety-four regarding the secret economy under our feet. Things are happening in the dark, in the tunnels, while the surface-level politics is all about speeches.
And that gap is where people get killed. Think about Rwanda in nineteen ninety-four or Srebrenica in nineteen ninety-five. The United Nations had peacekeepers on the ground, but the bureaucracy in New York refused to allow them to use force to stop the massacres. That is the ultimate example of the United Nations being unfit for purpose. They want the moral authority of being a security provider without the messy reality of actually providing security.
Which brings us back to pragmatism. If an organization cannot recognize when force is necessary, it is not a security organization; it is a debating society. And there is nothing wrong with a debating society, but we shouldn't pretend it is the thing standing between us and chaos.
So, if we moved to a world without the United Nations involvement in security, we would basically be moving back to a Coalition of the Willing model for everything.
Yes. And the argument is that this would be more honest. You wouldn't have the United States or Israel trying to twist the arm of a diplomat from a small island nation to get a vote that everyone knows is meaningless. You would just have the powers that be acting on their interests and their values.
But what happens to the smaller nations? Doesn't the United Nations provide a voice for countries that don't have carrier strike groups?
In theory, yes. In practice, the United Nations voice is often a whisper when the world needs a shout. A hawk would say that a smaller nation is better off in a clear alliance with a major power than relying on the collective security of a body that hasn't proven it can actually protect anyone. Just look at the liquidity crisis the United Nations is facing right now in twenty twenty-six—they can't even afford to publish the reports they've commissioned, let alone enforce them.
It is a very cold-blooded way of looking at the world, but when you are sitting in Jerusalem and you hear the sirens, cold-blooded realism feels a lot more comforting than warm-hearted idealism that doesn't stop the missiles.
I think that is the crux of it. The United Nations is built on the hope that humans have evolved past the need for war. The hawkish perspective is that humans have not changed at all, we just have better weapons. If you build your security system on a hope that isn't true, the system will fail when it is tested. We are seeing that test right now with the strikes on Natanz and Fordow. Those were not authorized by the Security Council. They never would have been.
So, if the most important security actions happen outside the United Nations, what is the United Nations actually doing? Is it just a relief agency?
And that is where most hawks would say the United Nations should stay. Be the world's Red Cross. Handle the vaccinations, the food aid, the environmental monitoring. Those are soft power areas where global cooperation is actually possible. But when it comes to hard power—to the question of who lives and who dies in a war—the United Nations is an artifact of a post-World War Two optimism that the twenty-first century is currently burying.
I want to push back a little on the bias against Israel part. Some would argue that the reason there are so many resolutions against Israel is because it is a democracy that claims to hold itself to a higher standard. How does a hawk respond to that?
They would say that is a massive double standard. If you spend eighty percent of your time criticizing the only democracy in the Middle East while ignoring the concentration camps in North Korea or the mass executions in Iran, you aren't holding a democracy to a higher standard. You are providing cover for the world's worst regimes by distracting everyone with a single, obsessive focus. It poisons the concept of human rights.
So, let us look at the path forward. If we accept the hawkish view that the United Nations is a failed security experiment, what should be the new world order?
The path forward is likely a return to strong, values-based alliances. Not a global everybody is invited club, but a we actually agree on the rules of civilization club. It is about moving from universalism to minilateralism. For a country like Israel, the takeaway is: don't wait for permission to survive. Use the United Nations for what it is—a place to talk—but never, ever outsource your fundamental security to it.
I think that is a very sobering conclusion. It means the world is a much more fragmented place than the blue-and-white United Nations flags would suggest.
It is. But as we often say on this show, knowing the reality is the first step toward managing it. Pretending we have a global government that keeps us safe is a dangerous fantasy.
Well, on that heavy note, I think we have given Daniel's prompt a pretty thorough exploration. If you are listening to this and you are wondering why the world feels so chaotic right now, maybe it is because the institutions we were told would prevent this chaos are simply not up to the task.
And hey, if you find these deep dives helpful, please take a second to leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It really does help other people find the show, especially when we are tackling these complex, real-world issues.
Yeah, we really appreciate the support. You can find all our past episodes at our website, myweirdprompts.com. We are also on Spotify, of course.
We want to thank Daniel for sending this in. It is a tough topic, especially this week, but it needs to be talked about with some honesty.
Stay safe out there, everyone. Especially our neighbors here in the city. This has been My Weird Prompts.
We will talk to you soon.
Alright, Herman, I think that covers the hawkish side of things. It is funny, even as we were talking, I saw a notification on my phone that another round of intercepts happened over the north. The United Nations is currently debating a humanitarian pause, but the military reality is that the batteries are being reloaded.
It is the perfect illustration. A pause right now would just mean the Iron Dome gets a chance to cool down while the other side repositions their launchers. In a world of high-speed warfare, diplomacy can sometimes just be a tactical delay.
I wonder if we will see a major reform of the United Nations after this war is over. Every major world conflict usually leads to a new international body. Maybe the Iran-Israel war of twenty twenty-six will be the catalyst for whatever comes next.
I hope so. Because the current system is clearly redlining. We need something that recognizes the reality of nuclear proliferation. A League of Democracies might be the only way to actually enforce a rules-based order.
But then you have the problem of defining a democracy. It gets messy so fast.
It does. But messiness is better than paralysis. I would rather have a messy, functioning alliance than a polished, paralyzed bureaucracy.
Well, I think we have given the listeners a lot to chew on. I am going to go check on the supplies in the safe room.
Good idea. I am going to see if I can find the latest satellite imagery of the Fordow site. I want to see how much of that mountain is actually left after the strikes.
Always the optimist, Herman.
Just a realist, Corn. Just a realist.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back next week, hopefully with something a little lighter.
Keep those prompts coming. Daniel, thanks again.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Goodbye from Jerusalem.
Take care.
One more thing before we go—I was thinking about our episode on smart sewers, episode five hundred sixty-six. Remember how we talked about how much information you can get from what people flush?
Yeah, the chemical signatures of a population. Why?
I was just thinking that if the United Nations really wanted to be useful, they should be monitoring the metabolic health of cities in conflict zones. Instead of just counting bodies, they could be tracking the actual physiological stress of a population through the infrastructure.
That is a very Corn-style suggestion. High-tech, slightly gross, and actually practical.
Hey, if the diplomats won't listen to the experts, maybe they'll listen to the sensors.
Don't count on it. The United Nations is not exactly known for its rapid adoption of cutting-edge tech. They are still using fax machines in some offices, I bet.
Sad but probably true. Alright, for real this time, goodbye everyone.
Bye!
