Dare to Dream: A New United Nations plus Transaction & Trading System
United Nations born in 1945 after the demise of League of Nations is now seemingly due for a re-birth. It should be buried to create a New Body from its ashes. Basically, UN is a toothless tool of powerful countries to cajole, coerce and bully weaker and poorer nations to achieve their selfish goals.
UN has failed miserably in all critical areas time and again; be it a war, man disaster, refugees, humanitarian crisis etc. In the new body, no country will be enjoying a veto power. Decisions on critical issues will be based on two-third majority. Though, there will be a Super Body of some twenty countries like the present Security Council of 15 members, but no one will have a permanent membership. The membership will be granted on a weighted average of factors like GDP, trade, population, etc.
The seat in the super body will be reviewed after a 5-year period based on position of each country in last five years such as its contribution to UN or GDP size. Therefore, a country will be included or excluded from the privileged club depending on its position during last five years. Decisions of the new body on critical issues like war and peace will be binding for all members and be implemented by its own forces and various organs supported by additional man power and resources by its members, if needed. Budget for the implementation of its mandate will come from annual contribution by each member; depending on its economic, military size and capacity.
De-Dollarisation: Euro could have been a powerful alternate, but it has often worked unabashedly in tandem with USD and never acted as a substitute. The alternate has to come from a basket or combination of Asian currencies like Chinese Yuan, (perhaps tomorrow) Indian Rupee, Gold and old Barter System. Most promising could to be Digital and Crypto currencies. Efficacy of sanctions has long been questioned, especially their impacts in the long run. They could arguably backfire and impair the country which has levied them in the first place as ingenious human minds have often found alternatives and loopholes.
The new UN body and WTO unequivocally must outlaw the use of third-party sanctions. If US wants to ban a country from being its trading and financial transactions through sanctions, it may well do so. But US should not push other countries (third party) to impose its sanctions on an affected country as Europe has done reprehensibly on Iran. Though, US unblushingly tore apart the signed JCPO Agreement and forced Europeans to capitulate, Iran ended up paying a very heavy price for no fault of her own.
It is a high time move to an alternative mechanism of the present financial global payment system to stop US Dollar monopoly through De-dollarisation. United States has repeatedly and brazenly used USD as a Financial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) to punish and subdue its opponents. Currently, about 60% of foreign exchange reserves of central banks and about 70% of global trade is conducted using USD.
About Mahmood Iqbal
An Economist (PhD). Former Principal Economist, The Conference Board of Canada. Adjunct Faculty Member, Carleton University, Canada. The author of “No PhDs Please: This is Canada.” Besides doing research on serious economic and policy issues for the last 25 years, like to write journalistic pieces on subjects of interest. An amateur Photographer. … Blog appears to be appropriate venue to post my wondering thoughts without any peer pressure and academic review process.
This entry was posted in Opinion and tagged De-Dollarisation, JCPOA, United Nations, USD. Bookmark the permalink.
Originally published at http://ipotpourri.wordpress.com on March 21, 2022.
