75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UN: HOPES AND REALITIES

Abstract

Examining the history of the UN creation in the first part of the article, the author focuses on an exceptionally significant issue settled in 1945 during the Crimean Conference of the Heads of the Three Great Powers, namely: the order of voting in the UN Security Council. Various appeals to renounce the “veto” of permanent members of the UN Security Council enshrined in the UN Charter have become the main leitmotif of numerous attempts of the United States and their closest allies to revise the UN Charter. Reviewing such proposals, the author notes that populist ideas the essence of which constitutes the call to replace, based on the principles of equality of all States, an international Organization by a supranational structure whose activities would actually be based on the principle of “who has force, has power” have been disseminated in Western political and scientific circles.The author goes on to consider the crucial question: whether the Organization have been able to cope with its main mission: to maintain international peace and security?Listing the outstanding universal documents of our time developed in the bowels of the UN, the author calls the most notable, in his opinion, achievement of the Organization — a real liberation of dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America from colonial oppression. Analyzing the activities of the UN, the author acknowledges that the Organization in many respects is still far from its unifying convergent essence: the US and its NATO allies lead the policy aiming at crashing the system of international relations, based on the central role of the UN in world politics; the US promote a concept that implies the creation of closed alliances to develop and implement measures bypassing the UN. Amid such realities, Russia, seeking to strengthen multilateral principles in international affairs, emphasizes the creation of a self-regulating international system, which requires collective leadership of the leading States that is represented geographically and civilizationally, and exercised with full respect for the central and coordinating role of the United Nations.The article also draws attention to the fact that modern reality identifies more and more intractable problems, which often lead to the “autonomization” of international law: “niches” that are not filled with legal material inevitably give rise to situations where the gaps concerned are governed by particular and special rules based on bilateral or regional foundations, The author sees the empowerment of international law in the approval of principles of intercivilizational communication, the pursuance of synthesis of various legal systems, ideologies, cultures, religions and other spiritual values, which would provide a reliable basis for strengthening the importance and influence of international law.