Forgive me for I am very dumb, but what purpose does the UN serve?
Do they just vote on things and everyone just ignores it? Clearly we’re going to take this very seriously over in the US.
theres evil parts (security counci, IMF, world bank) and decent parts (WHO, UNESCO, IPCC). land of contrasts as it can only be when you put the Great Satan in the same org as the Reds
This is the real answer. There’s a load of important shit that would never get done without the UN. Yet there’s also plenty that’s completely captured by the US/NATO (and rarely but occasionally others too).
Never mind the veto, basically the UN is often good at doing things - but those things can never substantially go against US interests.
Pretty much. The embargo functions by banning any ship that docks at a Cuban port from doing business in any American port and blacklisting people and institutions from doing business with America if they’ve done any with Cuba. The American market is so huge and international that this allows us to unilaterally blockade the country just with our economy - and that’s before taking into account things like the US Navy literally committing acts of piracy in order to prevent embargoed countries from trading with each other (as we did with Venezuela and Iran a yearish ago).
Hypothetically, the UN could pass a resolution to embargo the US until we drop the embargo on Cuba, but I don’t see that happening.
And when there is trade with Cuba, it is very expensive because of these rules, so prices are very high in Cuba because of it. For example, for China to trade with Cuba, it has to send a ship that will only go to Cuba but then not the obvious nearby ports in the US, which means they need to create dedicated Cuba-trading-routes rather than using more cost-optimized international ones.
Yeah mostly. Honestly outside of the security council I can’t really tell why it exists at all.
