- Charter of the United Nations (Article 25)
"The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression ans shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security."
- Charter of the United Nations (Article 39)
Now, it is prudential and charitable on my part to warn you of possible spoilers here.
It is no secret that the last two Captain America movies have political undertones. I argue that the messages are conservative in nature, and they relay the message from the positions Captain America himself takes. I suppose the hero's conservative nature is to be expected, being a soldier from the past and all. With all that's been happening, "people might just need a little old-fashioned."
The above quotes are from the Charter of the United Nations. The significance of the Articles is that the member nations are required to relinquish their sovereign powers on certain occasions as directed by the Security Council. By allowing the Security Council itself to determine the threat to the peace, the international actors who are actually involved in some incidents lose their voice. When the ones involved in a conflict may see the conflict as something irrelevant to the international peace, the Security Council has the power to render such an opinion pointless by asserting its own. Many think that this provision is prudential. Some think that such a provision may be counteractive to the goal it is trying to achieve. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America seems to be in the latter camp. This view is exemplified in the latest movie of his Civil War, and a similar one is exemplified in Winter Soldier.
To relinquish individual agency for the sake of better comfort is a liberal trend of thought. The more control the state has over individual security or welfare, the more liberal the state is. The Communist states of the past are prime examples of extreme, or perhaps deviant, versions of political liberalism. In opposition to this mentality, a political conservatism has to do with relinquishing state powers to either the individuals or the local governments. We see this contrast between liberals and conservatives in American politics: hardcore liberals tend to be socialists favoring radical state control and hardcore conservatives tend to be libertarians favoring radical individual agency. With this perspective, it is clear that the Article 39 from the UN Charter is a liberal one. The Article places superior agency to an international institution as opposed to (relatively) local state institutions.
In Civil War, Captain America opposes signing the Sokovia Accords on grounds that the Avengers not being under the palms of the UN would keep the world safer. There is wisdom in this. The bureaucratic nature of an international entity would slow down the decision-making process significantly. If the Avengers have its own will to act, the heroes involved would make a decision on the spot. In the same way, the if the Security Council is to determine what is threatening to international peace, then the decision-making process could slow down, leading to inaction when an action is necessary.
The tragedy of Rwandan Genocide is one such an example. There was a peacekeeping force, UNAMIR, stationed in Rwanda at the time of the conflict. While the Security Council toiled in a river of conversations and investigations and what not, they failed to give an order of action to the peacekeepers. President Bill Clinton went so far as to say that there's no genocide happening in Rwanda. The commander in charge of the peacekeepers, Romeo Dallaire, wanted to intervene. But without the proper order from the UN, he could not. Had he been able to intervene, the situation in Rwanda would probably have been less destructive. To prevent such a disaster by way of giving localized forces more agency is a conservative approach to international politics. Captain America's opinion is thus conservative in favoring the agency of localized or private forces.
Captain America's conservative approach to security can be seen in the previous movie Winter Soldier. The movie, in relation to the hotly debated topic back in 2014, is a clear stab to the NSA. The message is that the power given to secure ourselves can be abused. In a fear-stricken world full of alien invasions and terrorist groups like Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D planned to deploy three helicarriers that can shoot thousands of targets in a short period of time with precision. Such a weapon exists only in the wildest fantasies of Hobbes' Leviathan. To allow such a thing is a liberal trend of thought (as Hobbes is one of the fathers of modern liberal thought). The thought is liberal in relinquishing personal privacy and agency to a government agency. Captain America, as a conservative, is disturbed by the invention. Sure enough, the power given to S.H.I.E.L.D was hijacked by others with less than pure intent, leading to disasters.
From the examples used, then, the conservative nature of Captain America's message can be observed.
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