The Observer tells us that this modern world of ours requires ever more international cooperation. We agree. The Observer then tells us that this means the United Nations is ever more important. We disagree. For there’s cooperation and there’s cooperation.
The Observer view on the world needing the United Nations more than ever
Observer editorial
Seventy-five years after VE Day, the pandemic is a sharp reminder of the urgency of international co-operation
One problem with the second part of their urging, the UN part, is clear from mere observation of what the UN actually does:
The UN is already heavily involved. It has established a multi-partner Covid-19 “response and recovery” trust fund. Agencies such as the World Food Programme and the children’s fund, Unicef, are on the frontline. Guterres is also showing a lead. He has warned of increasing Covid-related human rights abuses and a “tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scaremongering” around the world.
None of that’s greatly useful in either doing anything or getting anything done. Talking shops and the establishment of multi-partners being all very well but where’s the actual action?
More cooperation is of course fine by us. It’s just that there is, over and above using the failed national politicians who go into international politics, another way of doing that cooperation. Which is, you know, people cooperating with each other?
Think on it. What is globalisation if it’s not seven and a half billion people doing ever more of that cooperating the hell out of each other? If you desire to be more specific, Gilead testing remdesivir to treat Covid-19 is 11,800 people working in order to cooperate with those 7.5 billion by providing a drug for the pandemic. German (where 50% of Europe’s special type of paper comes from), Chinese and yes, even Turkish, factories churning out PPE are cooperating with the NHS and, given likely restrictions, everyone who wants to walk down the road in a face mask.
That is, global cooperation does not presuppose nor even require international bureaucracy. In fact, from observation, we can see that it’s the natural state of affairs when people are left free to get on with life as they see fit - they cooperate with each other across those national boundaries. That we call this form of cooperation markets rather than governance doesn’t mean that it’s not happening. Observation also tells us that markets are a more effective manner of gaining that cooperation….