The United Nations Military Staff Committee is a powerful committee within the UN organization whose sole operational purpose is to plan and execute UN military operations and to provide as well as regulate arms. This committee is the most historical committee in the UN and has held a variable, but notable amount of power in the time that it has been active. It is a subcommittee within the UN Security Council, and as such, it is regulated and run primarily by the five power nations that make up the powers of the UN Security Council.UNMSC, a common acronym for the committee, was founded by article 45 of the UN charter and was established along with the rest of the UN in 1945 after the conclusion of the Second World War. It was established in order to maintain world order as the fear of weakness in the face of power of individual nations became a reality in the Second World War. Recall after World War I in the early 1900s, the people of the most powerful nations feared that Germany would rise again. To prevent such a catastrophe, Germany was stripped of its power and military forces were placed in the four established quadrants of the nation. A body was needed to assist in the regulation of these important international affairs, so Woodrow Wilson, in his fourteen points, established, along with other world powers, the League of Nations. When Germany rose again in the Second World War, the League was militarily defenseless, and so any threats it levied against other nations (Particularly Germany, but also Japan) were empty threats that were never real, and so Germany rose to power and a struggle between nations ensued. This was a lesson to the powers of the world. They knew they had to create a powerful global governing body that could mobilize a military force and that military force would need the ability to act swiftly and effectively to end challenges to the peacemaking powers of the UN.
The committee, as of late, has done little to the benefit of the United Nations and the world. In the last “war”, the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, despite the threat of a nuclear holocaust, the United Nations did nothing militarily to stop these two nations from taking their respective fingers off of the triggers. Because both the US and the USSR were members of the United Nations, the body was unable to act either militarily nor diplomatically in favor of either country. The end of the Cold War came and went, but to this day, the UN Military Staff Committee remains a dormant committee of sorts and is relatively inactive when it comes to global affairs.
Sources: Alan Brinkley’s “American History: A Survey”
UN Charter:
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