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(63,7( the escalation of violence and the endless supply of weapons from the west, mainly the US and Western European countries, the United Nations Security Council has failed to de escalate the Ukraine and Russia crisis, which indicates it is no longer a useful institution when it comes to making peace in the 21st century. There is a clear case for dismantling the council and establishing a new global collective security system.

The images of millions of Ukrainians, and citizens of other countries fleeing the Russian assault at the outset of the war evokes memories of the millions of refugees from the violence of the first and second world wars. The brutality of the Russian attack on Ukraine cannot be Tues tioned and the urgency of a mediation process is self evident.

Failure

Efforts to mediate ongoing and future crises in which one or more members of the permanent five members of the Security Council — Russia, China, )rance, the United States and the United Kingdom — are involved will be confronted by the same systemic failure.

The council’s inability to intervene through mediation and preventive diplomacy has led to the resurgence of power politics and the prolif eration of authoritarian regimes that are prepared to defy the will of the international system of rules and regulations governing the conduct between States.

The founding principles of the UN as the world’s self designated purveyor of international peace and security have become paralysed by the realpolitik of the permanent members of the Security Council, which was already a feature of the Cold War, and which has rendered it impo tent and ineffectual in preventing and resolving violent conflict.

After the subMugation of the fascist and to talitarian powers at the end of World War II, the wartime allies decided to construct a new framework for the post war world order. The UN was the progeny of this endeavour and its primary purpose was to ensure that there was an institutional mechanism that, according to the UN Charter of 1945, would encourage its members to µsettle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that the international peace and security, and Mustice are not endangered’.

ConflICts

What seemed initially to be a resourceful array of mechanisms and processes to resolve conflicts were soon to be confronted by the structural limitations and the egotistical im peratives of the superpowers that dominated the Cold War era. The superpowers the US and the Soviet Union and their client States in the UN framework, formed de facto alliances along ideological lines and institutionalised an oligarchy of power.

This appropriation of global power manifested itself through the dominance of the Security Council in all maMor decisions and meant that the UN’s ability to resolve conflicts and build peace became structurally paralysed. Rarely, if at all, did the interests of the US or the Soviet Union converge. The greatest threat to international peace and security, therefore, arose from the conflict between the Security Council’s most powerful members.

The Cold War period witnessed over 150 armed conflicts which claimed about 25 to 30 million lives. In this climate of East West competition the mechanisms and strategies to manage and resolve conflicts relied on coercive political negotiations in the conte[t of the pre vailing superpower rivalry.

In effect, the involvement of other collective security organisations and third parties was re strained and possible only in conflicts in which