If the US Civil War Happened Now would the UN Support The Rebels?

The Syrian uprising is not comparable with the Confederacy's attempt to secceed from the US. The Syrian protesters do not control any Syrian territories, rather, they are groups of people protesting against the government.

All hypothetical else being the same, I doubt that the UN would intervene. For the very same reasons that they were neutral then--Britain wanted to maintain good relations with the US and was more concerned with affairs in Europe, and France had conflicting interests in the US--they would remain neutral now.

As the Unionist North has a permanent seat on the Security Council, it doesn't matter what the UN thinks anyway.

HA !

Great Britain also has a seat in the Security Council - so if the UN existed at the time of the 1776 colonial uprising, it might have raised an objection.

I wasn't the one who posed the daft question. If the UN had existed in 1066 we could probably have objected to the Norman Conquest.

Questioning wether we can trust the international community to get it right now that they are so focused on intervention into countries where we dont agree with what is taking place is a very serious question....not that you will ever be perceptive enough to see this....

It's nonsensical. We've had this conversation before. I think I know what you mean, but it's so clumsily expressed it could mean the exact opposite. With your weird logic you could mean anything.

I had a boss once, who whenever he was asked an awkward question, would pass it to his deputy, a man with quite a severe speech impediment. You couldn't argue with what he said, because you didn't know what the **** he said. That is your strategy, talk gibberish.

I appreciate the humor in this thought, of course, but the analogy is awfully faulty.

In the American war between the states it was the so-called Rebels who fired the first shots by bombarding the hell out of Fort Sumter in Charleston (SC) harbor with artillery. After about 48 hours of this shellacking, Maj. Anderson, cmdg., was obliged to run up a white flag of truce and ask for permission to withdraw his troops in a peacable manner. The Union forces did not attack the Rebels; the Rebels either attacked US Army posts (as at Charleston) or simply subverted them and claimed the posts and all materiel (arms and ammo included) for the Confederacy (as in numerous cases in Texas and elsewhere). The British did seriously consider supporting the Confederacy against the Union inasmuch as the British textile mills and garment industry were laregely dependent on Southern cotton.

Had there been such a thing as the UN at the time, its delegates would probably have done nothing, just as nothing was done or declared when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 and some of the member Republics, coerced into joining the USSR after WW II, were scrambling to declare indepence from the Russian behemoth. I found it amusing as hell at the time that Gorbachev recognized the independence of the Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- before then-President G.W.H. Bush would deign to do so. I'm sure it's one more reason why he was a one-term president. He certainly lost my vote and, I'm sure, the votes of amny, many other Baltic-Americans, Polish-Americans and other voters with ancestral ties to Eastern European nations overrun by the Soviets.

In the case of the present situation on the Arab street, I think the UN is just backing the most likely winning horse.

It is not perfect, but it does show that the new International community insistence upon the right to pick winners and losers in armed struggles with-in nations is fraught with potential problems. I myself advocate for a stronger international government, but I dont see how this ever happens when even now what passes for the international government insists upon sticking its nose into places where it does not belong. In the case of Libya it is seen in the UN mandate, the nato military offensive, and also the international court charging Gaddafi.

Do you not see the contradiction in the above? The International Community hasn't so much picked sides, as condemned gross human rights violations. Ideally, what do you think this hypothetical 'stronger international government' would be doing?