UN must carry on more reforms to survive

It is generally agreed that wars occur because of the anarchic nature of the international system; states go to war because there is no higher authorities to stop them from doing so. The establishment of the UN in the immediate aftermath of World War II was an attempt to create some kind of authority to set out consensual rules for the international community and make war far less likely.

The latest Gulf war has demonstrated, however, that not only did the UN fail to prevent war among its own members, but, far more important, it failed to prevent the more powerful nations from hijacking its authority and exploit it in a way that served their interests. The crisis of the UN is exacerbated by the fact that the US has become less interested in observing the old rules of international relations. America is no longer willing to play by rules that, while repeatedly violated in the past, are now viewed as preventing it from assuming a hegemonic role in world affairs.

Original founding

The problems the UN encounters today are not new, however, but entrenched in its original founding structure. They can be put into three main categories: constitutional, political and structural. Constitutionally, the UN has failed to outlaw war as a means to resolve disputes between member states.

Instead, the Charter states that members of the UN are not allowed to go to war in certain circumstances; so, as long as these circumstances are not in place, then war is allowed. Politically, the UN has shown consistent impotence in resisting the tendency of the Great Powers to manipulate the system for their advantage. Armed with the power of the veto, which was the major incentive that convinced the US to join the UN, the international organisation has been unable to moderate the insistence of the permanent members in pursuing their own national interests. The structural problem of the UN is reflected in its composition. The UN is still very much a western organisation, despite the initial hopes for a truly world government. The Security Council in particular made it even more Eurocentric and less representative of the international community as a whole.

It must be said, however, that the UN was the creation of its own time and for the entire Cold War it held onto its original structure in which the Security Council was the executive body and other states had relatively little influence.

Hence the real power in the UN was largely determined by the distribution of power among the victors of World War II: the US, the UK, Russia, France and China. While the Cold War institutionalised these structures until they became very fixed, at the end of the Cold War, as part of the radical transformation of international politics, there began to be calls for an end to the dominance by the few that had persisted for so long. But the UN has been very slow in responding adequately to these calls. Instead, it formalised and retained the post-World War II status quo, making it even less representative of global interests as they stand now.

A number of proposals were put forward to reform the UN. One was to increase the number of permanent members of the Security Council, that is, to keep the structure basically as it is but bring more important states into the position of power. The prime beneficiaries of this suggestion would be Germany and Japan. Both countries are represented at the economic level in the G8 and hence they require representation at the political level. But, if Germany and Japan are added, all that it is done is reinforce the current institutionalised power inequality within the UN by adding two more powerful industrialised states.

A second suggestion was to bring into the Security Council one large power from each continent or every major region of the world. But this proposal, which was mainly advocated by Brazil and India, has massive problems. For example, who would represent the Middle East, with all the divisions within it? And how would Pakistan respond if India was its representative voice in the Security Council? And could there really be regional representation this way? Would it not just be that states looking for their national interests rather than anyone elses? An alternative proposition was to increase the number of non-permanent members to 15 so that the Big Five would become a minority. But this would not really change the picture much because the permanent members would still have their power of veto.

The most viable proposal would be to remove the power of the veto so that decisions can be taken on the basis of a majority decision among permanent and non-permanent members.

A more powerful proposition would be to abolish the permanent membership altogether and establish a council elected by the rest of the General Assembly. This proposal may sound admirably democratic, but will certainly be opposed by the Big Five, particularly the US which, in the words of one official, cannot accept countries like Botswana or Zambia deciding what the US should do and what it should not.

Collective withdrawal

The only possible solution left to force reform is for Third World countries to threaten a collective withdrawal from the UN. This may lead to the collapse of the international organisation, but sometimes some things need to be destroyed in order to rebuild them properly. The UN Security Council is the place where much of the world's destiny is decided today by the Great Powers. This situation cannot last indefinitely and a dramatic decision on the part of the poor nations is required to bring about a more equitable, democratic and egalitarian world order. Anything less would leave us at the mercy of the most arrogant and the most powerful nations of the world.

Dr. Marwan Al Kabalan is a scholar in international relations, UK