Re: [FH] About the UN again (sorry Beast)

At 4:33 PM +1000 7/19/01, Beth Fulton wrote:
>G'day guys,
>
>During a rather, ahhh, dull meeting this afternoon the only 
>highlight was a talk about the potential strip mining of the deep 
>seafloor (Australia's interest only being that it would be 
>competition to our land based mining). The interesting bit with 
>regard to GZGverse being that as this is a UN governed area (under 
>UNCLOS) the UN will get a percentage (or royalties or something) of 
>all the claims that go on down there. Now this lead me to thinking 
>about the situation in space, a few people have suggested that the 
>UNSC is funded via royalties on activities in space (whether 
>asteroids, other planets/moons etc). What the talk today indicated 
>was that the precedent for this already exists. I know the counter 
>argument of "all have to ratify for it to have power" has been used 
>against this idea in the past, but that too may be covered by this 
>situation. For instance, the US is not a signatory to UNCLOS, but it 
>does abide by it anyway - at least within this mining stuff - as by 
>doing so it ensures other nations who have signed respect its claims.

Certainly the UN could gain additional funds this way, however, I 
wonder how the UN would gain levies for staffing requirements if a 
major power decided that it was not in its' best interest to do so. 
If say the US had pulled out of the Korean War, it would likely not 
have worked so well. The same goes for Britain. The lack of a 
delaying action by the Glosters at the Imnjin alone would have 
changed the course of the war in short order.

Along with this is UN forces engaging other major national forces 
could have a profound affect upon how the UN sustains itself. If say 
the NAC, NSL and FCT all decided that a UN action against the NSL 
promoted by the FSE/ESU power block was not going to happen. The 
sheer number of personnel within the UN forces would likely cause 
serious problems. Add to that other power blocks at odds with the UN. 
I suspect that the UN of 2183 would be slow to decide how to act just 
like the UN of today is due to the committee based organization.

An NAC/NSL/FCT task force with OU support and Israel on the periphery 
would be far more easily used than one with less than nominally 
allied nations involved. (Look at Greek and Turk forces in Korea for 
example...)

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