United Nations Positive Role in Counter-Terrorist Policies Essay

United Nations Positive Role in Counter-Terrorist Policies - Essay Example These countries involved in those unilateral actions, even without the UN’s mandate, mainly to counter terrorism, or if, viewed from another perspective, in the guise of fighting terrorism. The UN despite this contemporary challenge of unilateralism is still relevant because these Western democracies themselves give that credibility (however quite belatedly) by involving the UN in the aftermath of the counter-terrorist actions. Apart from this role in various countries, the UN is optimally functioning and contributing as part of global development by involving themselves in various peacekeeping missions, humanitarian programs and other constructive processes. So, this paper will evaluate how the UN is playing a positive role in ensuring that the counter-terrorist policies of Western democracies do not hinder its global development aims. The UN was established after the Second World War as an overseeing international organization, which can prevent any more World Wars and also to take care of the basic issues concerning the world population. However, its spread and influence were restricted or kept at low levels due to the rise of ‘unipolarity’ in the form of American domination of world affairs. After the end of the Cold War, with Soviet Union’s disintegration, the U.S. became the sole superpower due to its military, economic and other strengths. This power status of U.S. started negatively affecting the functioning of the UN. The UN played its role with perfection in many circumstances but was made to ‘under perform’ by the U.S., making it irrelevant on few occasions. Western democracies have involved itself in various counter-terrorist actions all over the world. Although, in certain cases, it was unilateral, in other cases being a victim of terrorism, these countries carried out counter-terrorist activities with UN mandate.