The Disunited Nations

He was right that the United Nations was destined for ‘total failure’

Since its inaugural meeting, Mr. Armstrong knew the UN would fail miserably at peacemaking.

In 1945, the nations of the world looked over the global rubble brought about by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War ii and declared, “Never again.” They announced their solution to war and injustice in a San Francisco conference: the United Nations. Herbert W. Armstrong obtained press credentials for the event. His verdict: “I do not see peace being germinated here, but the seeds of the next war! … [T]he United Nations conference was producing but strife and bickering, and was destined from its inception to end in total failure. Yet world leaders were pronouncing it the world’s last hope—with the only alternative annihilation of humanity!”

Mr. Armstrong summarized his views of the conference: “Already I see the clouds of World War iii gathering at this conference. I saw it first as it was injected indirectly into every press conference. We learn of it in private talks with delegates in hotel lobbies. The nations can have peace—if they want it. But they don’t want it. They want gain at the expense of others.”

The UN’s failure is a theme Mr. Armstrong would return to in his coverage decades later. In the January 1977 Plain Truth, he wrote: “The United Nations won’t be able to bring peace. The aggressor nations—and we are so gullible we never recognize them until after they plunge the world into another war—will go right on with their scheming and diabolical planning for world rule.”

By the time Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, the UN’s list of failures was long. Communist China successfully pushed UN peacekeepers out of North Korea during the Korean War; the modern oppression of North Korea’s millions still testifies to the UN’s failure. The UN could do nothing to stop or fix the Vietnam War. Neither did it prevent the various Arab-Israeli wars or any of the other major conflicts that have erupted in its 80-plus years of existence.

However, events since Mr. Armstrong’s death have vindicated his words even more. Since 1986, the UN has proved itself not only failing at the purpose of its existence but even contributing to atrocities.

‘First Military Victim of World War III’

As communism fell in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, Yugoslavia plunged into ethnic infighting. Starting in 1991, a decade of bloody war and ethnic cleansing split the country up into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

The United States, Russia, most of Western Europe and the rest of the world originally opposed Yugoslavia’s breakup. Yet in 1991, Germany and the Vatican unilaterally recognized Croatia and Slovenia’s independence. This led the rest of the West to follow suit, culminating in nato interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Today, Croatia and Slovenia are members of the German-led European Union, while Bosnia is governed by a German “high representative” whose authority supersedes the country’s elected officials. (Learn more in Gerald Flurry’s free booklet Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans.)

Yugoslavia was postwar Germany’s first major intervention in a European country. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said “the Germans bear a particular responsibility” for what happened in Yugoslavia. Because of this, Mr. Flurry called Yugoslavia “the first military victim of World War iii.”

The United Nations was formed specifically to stop aggressor nations like Germany from repeating what they did in World War ii. Yugoslavia, as a UN member state, was entitled to UN protection for having its sovereignty violated. Yet what did the UN do? It kept silent while Germany again started conquering Europe under its watch.

Even more: UN peacekeepers enforced Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. UN peacekeepers enforced Bosnia’s integration with the rest of Europe. The UN gave Germany legitimacy for its reprehensible actions in the Balkans.

‘The Worst Foreign-Policy Blunder’

In 2015, the Islamic Republic of Iran was an isolated pariah state because of its rogue nuclear program. In 2016, that pariah status all but evaporated, largely because of the UN.

Iran announced its nuclear weapons program in 1984. Iran’s theocratic regime believes “Allah” obligates it to export jihad and Islamic revolution to the rest of the world. In 1984, President Ali Khamenei, now Iran’s supreme leader, called the nuclear program the “only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel, and prepare it for the emergence of the Imam Mahdi,” the messiah figure in Iran’s variant of Islam.

The world saw how dangerous it would be to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the UN Security Council reacted to Iran’s nuclear enrichment and missile development by limiting its ability to trade with other nations.

But on Jan. 16, 2016, those restrictions evaporated as part of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran agreed to limit nuclear enrichment and dispose of certain nuclear technologies in exchange for removal of UN sanctions.

Mr. Flurry called this nuclear deal “the worst foreign-policy blunder in American history.” Iran’s radical theocratic regime had not changed its goals of perpetual war with the West or of sowing chaos to prepare for its messiah. Even disregarding Iran’s untrustworthy reputation, the agreement had enough loopholes for Iran to continue its program. Examples include the “sunset clause” ending the threat of snapback sanctions, or allowing Iran to close any site it deemed a “non-nuclear military site” from international inspectors. All the while, the removal of sanctions flooded Iran with cash. This allowed it to send millions of dollars to terrorist groups abroad.

President Obama negotiated the deal, but it was the UN that implemented it. It was the UN that removed its sanctions despite knowing Iran’s national character, knowing it would give the nuclear program a lifeline, and knowing Iran would use its new wealth to fund worldwide terrorism. The UN thus helped bring the world closer to nuclear war.

A common theme of Mr. Armstrong’s forecasts revolved around a worldwide catastrophe prophesied by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved [‘not a soul would be saved alive’—James Moffatt translation]: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (verses 21-22). Such a possibility never existed before the advent of weapons of mass destruction. Helping a radical theocratic regime like Iran’s get a nuclear bomb brings the world closer to the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Sacrificing Ukraine

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was a watershed moment for several reasons. It quickly became the largest land war in Europe since World War ii and the world’s first major drone war. The yearslong fighting has been taking place in the same region as some of the fiercest fighting of World War ii and some of the bloodiest crimes of the Holocaust.

The conflict has also exposed the hollowness of the UN’s promise of peace.

The UN has been powerless to stop Russia’s war. As a member of the Security Council, Russia’s veto power prevented the other world powers from even passing a resolution condemning the invasion. All the while, the soil of the Donbas is dyed with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.

While attending the UN’s inaugural conference, Mr. Armstrong spoke with delegates from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic states were absorbed into the Soviet Union against their will; many opponents of the regime were sent to gulags in Siberia. A Yugoslavian diplomat told Mr. Armstrong that similar atrocities were happening in his newly communized country under the Soviet-supported regime.

“Success of the United Nations’ effort for world peace requires complete harmony between the Big Three,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “But if America and Britain are to achieve harmony with Russia, it is already apparent it will have to be at the cost of justice in the smaller Baltic and Balkan nations, and Poland. And if the rights of these helpless millions are to be trampled upon with impunity as the price of peace with Russia, then we still have no peace!”

This exact scenario is playing out now in Ukraine. The UN can only do what Russia allows it to do, and the rest of the world is forced to watch.

Helping Hamas

Hamas terrorists from Gaza attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, demonically butchering 1,200 people in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Much led up to this moment. Israel was in a domestic political crisis and its intelligence services weren’t as sharp as they should have been. Iran had been preparing its proxy Hamas for such an invasion for years. Less known is the UN’s role.

Decades of UN sponsorship had groomed Gaza for this moment. The UN has a direct share in the blame for the October 7 massacre.

The main organ responsible is the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Founded in 1949, unrwa is tasked with caring for refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and their descendants. Today, roughly 6 million people in various countries qualify for their services. In Gaza, over 13,000 UN staff members ran roughly 300 schools, medical clinics, financial programs and other institutions.

Various groups have exposed unrwa’s schools for including curricula that glorifies martyrdom and slaughtering Jews. Geography lessons show maps of the “State of Palestine” as encompassing all the Holy Land. Language lessons teach poetry with verses like: “The enemy is despicable, Palestine is ours. The departure of the occupier from our land is inevitable. We shall oppose the enemy’s tanks with blood and flesh.” Such brainwashing within UN-run schools is well documented.

The UN knows its schools push violent propaganda on impressionable schoolchildren who don’t know any better. Those children grow up conditioned—by the United Nations—to become terrorists. The jihadists who massacred defenseless people on October 7, 2023, learned their hatred.

The UN also provides direct cover for Hamas and has continued to do so. Hamas is notorious for using the Gazan people as human shields: deliberately storing weapons in schools, hospitals and other sensitive facilities so that Israel either avoids striking them or is condemned by the world if it does strike. The UN knows this, yet it still plays along with Hamas’s narrative.

For decades, Mr. Armstrong warned that a major part of the coming global catastrophe would be unrest in the land around Jerusalem (see “Visions of Jerusalem,” page 61). The UN is actively encouraging this unrest.

Clouds of World War III

“Already I see the clouds of World War iii gathering at this conference,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1945. Perhaps some may have thought it extreme to write that at the founding conference of an international system designed to, if nothing else, prevent another world war. But in view of everything Mr. Armstrong said coupled with Bible prophecy, can the UN’s role in pushing the world toward another global war be denied?

Mr. Armstrong summarized the UN’s work in his booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like: “[I]t has failed. The United Nations has no power over the nations. It has no power to settle disputes, stop wars, or prevent wars. The so-called United Nations are not united. This effort has degenerated into a sounding board for Communist propaganda. Man has failed his last chance!”

God said of man’s peace efforts: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59:8). And again: “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). While mankind’s nature remains deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), this will always be the case.

But as Mr. Armstrong detailed in The Wonderful World Tomorrow, God promises to bring peace. One of Christ’s names is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7). “Man wants desperately to save the society he has established upon this Earth,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “But this society—this civilization—can’t be saved! Man, himself, is bringing this world to destruction. God Almighty will soon step in and create a new, peaceful and happy society—the World Tomorrow.”