UN lags behind the present

The 61st UN General Assembly will be remembered by only one skit the speech of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

His behaviour on stage reminded, for those who remember the Soviet times, of Nikita Khrushchev's leader of the USSR who came to power after Stalin speech to the UN General Assembly where he took off his shoe and banged with it on the podium.

But back then the UN was irrelevant stuck in a Russo-American Cold War stalemate. A similar fate seems to be befalling the organisation in 2006. The UN has problems because it remains married to the idea of a nation state-based international order; this comes at a time when the world is growing more complex and interconnected, with the private sector boosting its relevance. We no longer live in 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia ended the 30 years war by replacing the Roman Empire with a nation state-based system of balance of power. We're at the high end of the IT revolution, which has made individuals as powerful, perhaps more, as some nation states.

Countries by and large are struggling to deliver added value to the international system. We live in a world where social responsibility is being outsourced to corporations. Today, military power is for hire and the environment has been turned into a commodities market. Carbon dioxide is being traded and hence regulated like stocks.

Bit of a relic

The UN has failed to heed this shift, which is why it has become a bit of a relic. Scraping it, however, would be a bad idea. It still is the only international forum where everyone meets at least once a year. The objective is to reform it.

The private sector will need to play a more prominent role in the UN system. Their output in terms of sponsoring social development programmes and other global initiatives is growing. Second, non-state actors are becoming increasingly relevant. While we can certainly all agree that certain conduct, such as terrorism, is universally unacceptable, we cannot outright dismiss the role of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Neither is just a military organisation, and certainly, they are not just terrorist groups. Hezbollah and Hamas, like states, administer control over territory and they provide services such as medical care for the ordinary citizens.

The concept of a privatised state, and its possible dimensions, are not be dismissed outright, but debated.

Missing in New York was also a comprehensive discussion on the Middle East peace process and on the Kosovo final status. At least on paper, the UN has a central role in both processes and yet, more was said about the Middle East peace process at the recent Labour Party convention in Manchester than all week during the UN General Assembly meeting.

The Kosovo issue is a case in point as to why the UN is behind time with its reforms. All understand that Serbia has lost Kosovo and that both Kosovo and Serbia will modernise fast and enter the EU quicker if put on two independent tracks.

Most also understand that politically separation will only enable interdependencies to deepen in other areas such as commerce and trade. Yet, the legal definition of non-interference in another sovereign's territory is keeping Kosovo and Serbia in a permanent state of political and legal limbo, which above all is a security liability for Europe and the transatlantic community.

The conclusion on Kosovo is the same: the UN principles need to be reformed. Kosovo deserves independence for at least two reasons.

Integrated

First, only a government in Pristina can effectively govern over the Kosovo Albanians and ensure that Kosovo is being integrated into the global economy.

Second, nationalistic symbolism is not an effective policy and certainly not a pro-active reform strategy. Belgrade would be well served if it can focus its efforts and resources on modernising and Europeanising. It is a fact that states in the 21st century are all growing smaller, sometimes physically and politically.

The EU is an example of a post-Westphalia creation. Countries joining the EU are all becoming smaller in the political sense as most of the decisions passed in the national parliaments are taken on the supranational level or in the private sector. A precondition for competing in a global world is integration, which in its definition means sharing sovereignty. Serbia has a choice to make, it can either accept that the "traditional" state will shrink as it modernises or it can join North Korea, which is certainly sovereign, but also impoverished.

The UN of the 21st century needs a new modus operandi, which will better coordinate the roles of states, private entities, citizens and non-state actors.

Borut Grgic is the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Ljubljana.