Politics & Power Quote by Conor Cruise O'Brien

There’s a cold, almost parental cruelty in O’Brien’s “comfortable certainty”: the United Nations isn’t just ineffective, it’s reliably so, to the point where disappointment becomes a kind of security blanket. The line is engineered to puncture the moral halo that often surrounds international institutions. He isn’t arguing that the UN is pointless; he’s arguing that betting on it is a form of self-deception dressed up as principle.

O’Brien, a politician and a former UN official, knew the machinery from the inside. That matters. This isn’t armchair cynicism; it’s the kind that comes from watching mandates collide with vetoes, resolutions turn into press releases, and “the international community” become a euphemism for nobody with both the will and the power to act. The intent is tactical: warn smaller states, activists, and idealists that appeals to the UN are frequently a way to outsource responsibility and then act surprised when nothing happens.

The subtext is harsher: the UN’s failures aren’t aberrations, they’re features of its design. It exists to manage conflict rhetorically and procedurally, not to resolve it decisively. “Safely appeal” is the dagger; it implies people use the UN not as a last resort but as a risk-free performance of virtue, a place to be seen pleading for justice while avoiding the messier costs of pursuing it.

In the postwar world that birthed the UN and the Cold War politics that constrained it, O’Brien’s line lands as both indictment and warning label: don’t confuse global theater with global government.