In his timely new book, The United Nations: States vs. International Laws, philosopher-historian Don Wells offers a relatively brief but richly informed survey of the institution founded in 1945 primarily in order "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." No American today needs reminding that the United Nations has not yet achieved this goal. One of the many virtues of this study is that Wells shows clearly and simply why that goal has proven elusive. As Wells demonstrates, the United Nations, basically designed by American leaders at Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, was a work of fallible and self-interested parties, all with their own agendas, hidden and open. In short, it was inevitably flawed even in regard to its supposedly primary goal of preserving the peace. Wells notes that the UN charter, Article 39, affirms that "the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat (of war)," implying that nations were to take any issues to the UN before engaging in war. But, in order to win the nationalistically-driven members' approval of the United Nations, Article 51 was included, which assured each nation that "nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United nations." Wells trenchantly notes, "Nations did not, as a matter of fact, bother to ask the Security Council if their war was, indeed, a matter of 'self-defense.'" No American need ask how simple it is for a nation to proclaim itself under the threat of immediate aggression---no matter how far-fetched and against the evidence--- and thus to justify undertaking a preemptive war of "self-defense." America and the other powerful nations have used and abused the United Nations for their own purposes and that's the unhappy part of the UN picture. But, Wells makes clear, it is by no means all of it.

The UN has long been doing good works globally in health care and disease prevention, in civil society issues, in peacekeeping efforts, in caring for refugees and victims of natural disasters, in preventing wars not involving the big powers, in education, and in laying the foundation for universal recognition of human rights and the rights of women and children, and in support of principles of international justice. One recent commentator noted that "Only the Coca-Cola company has as much a presence world wide as the UN." In separate richly annotated chapters, Wells describes humanity's efforts in "Search for Rules of War: Forbidden Strategies and Weapons;" "The [Unique] Role of the Security Council in War and Peace;" the "Bases for the UN International Criminal Courts;" and "Establishing Justice in the World: the International Labor Organization Versus GATT, NAFTA, and the WTO." Those Americans who decry what they deem the surrender of American sovereignty to the UN need to read this last chapter to discover the true surrender of our sovereignty to irresponsible, antidemocratic and secret tribunals in these trade agreements. Wells closes his study with a "Postlude" that touches upon a variety of critical issues, including human rights in an age of the so-called "war on terror," and a discussion of recent efforts toward "A More Effective United Nations."

Appended to the narrative is a long Appendix of relevant UN documents and developments. There are 435 footnotes to the text: Donald Wells knows his subject. "Unity in diversity; diversity in unity." There is only one human species; genetically, we are all sisters and brothers. Having sprung from Africa and peopled the globe the human family scattered into thousands of pieces. But, today, there is a coming back together, slowly and often painfully. Nationalism is already an anachronism in an economically-linked, nuclear-threatened human world. As Don Wells notes the UN today is not the final or complete remedy or answer to the burning questions involved in our essential unity and to our survival. But it is certainly a good, long first step toward that goal and Americans perhaps especially should know it. Read this book.

Wells (philosophy, emeritus, Univ. of Hawaii, Hilo; An Encyclopedia of War and Ethics) is active in the UN Association of the United States. In his latest work he wants to prove that the UN has accomplished much more than it gets credit for in the U.S. press. Conditions that limit its success, he points out, were often written into its 1945 Charter at US insistence. ... Wells [also provides] prolonged criticism of current and previous administrations for their repeated defiance of international law.