Joh [...] But it has been shown that they are unable to achieve their goal of preventing wars because they only produce hot air instead of taking action. I think the best thing will be for the UN to dissolve [...]
I am dissatisfied with the way the UN works, too. Yet, firstly, I'd like to remind us that the UN has also a lot more official bodies besides the security council. Discussing each of these bodies might fill libraries; probably this is already in progress among political, sociological and other researches. As a laymen I carefully would consider that these "civilian" branches more or less work. At least a lot better than the security council... The security council, however ... well right, it is constituted in a way that makes it impossible to act against the positions of even a single one of the permanent members.
Which brings me to the second point. We are dissatisfied about this dealing. Agreed! Yet we could turn it around again and consider: The dissatisfaction only has a base when we expect the security council to be able to act against the big permanent members. Contemporary complains sound like frustration, even resignation over the last decades. Yet I hypothesize: Peoples' expectations have actually risen since WWII.
Why? Well, at the time the UN was founded in the last days of WWII, no one would have reasonably expected it to act against the 4 superpowers of the time (in alphabetical order: British Empire, China, Soviet Union, USA). Which directly or indirectly via their successor states are still the same as today, plus France who was admitted as a fifth member. Actually, the UN was originally designed by Roosevelt and the leaders of the other powers - Winston Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, and Joseph Stalin (what an illustrious round table ...) - so that these powers should be the world policemen having complete military dominance over all other nations of the world. Effectively dividing the world among themselves. They had even planned that no other besides them should have any significant arms any more, although that condition was dropped later. See for instance the wikipedia article on the Four Policemen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Policemen ).
It was never designed that one of the 4 could be overruled. And if the 4 (5 later) got in conflict with each other, it was all clear they would be in direct conflict; the new international organisation was not meant to handle it. Well besides providing a platform for regular talk. Concerning the policeman, this is actually what the UN has been doing since those days, "successfully" ... The "only hot air" was not a defect but intended. And whenever "hot air" would not suffice to deal with a matter between the policemen, it was clear it would be hot fighting again.
IMHO, it's a very interesting background story, which despite all history lessons at school and significant interest in history from my side was unknown to me for a long time.
So it all started from roots I'd call rather imperialistic than idealistic from todays perspective. Our expectations have simply grown. We are not longer content with single superpowers shaping the political world as they please. Which leaves open the question: How can we improve the situation?
