Has the United Nations failed?

Politics

By the time World War II (WWII) ended in 1945, Europe was in ruins, and substantial parts of Asia and North Africa were decimated. A genocidal campaign of unprecedented proportions had been perpetrated on the Jewish people, a weapon with the capability to wipe out an entire city in seconds had been created, and over 60 million people were dead.

In the face of such catastrophe, the allied victors and the international community at large understood that the “scourge of war” must be wiped from the face of the earth if humanity was to survive.

There was just one problem: The world’s major powers had said this before. Just 25 years earlier, at the end of World War I, an intergovernmental organization called the League of Nations was created “to achieve international peace and security.” On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and it was clear the League had failed.

With the disastrous League of Nations in mind, the major powers set out to try again, by creating the United Nations (UN), an institution whose main purpose was to promote law and diplomacy over aggressive warfare. There has not been another global conflict of the size and scale of WWII since.

And yet, as the UN celebrates its’ 70th birthday this year, we still live in a world of war, where millions continue to suffer and die in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

Has the UN failed in its primary function?

What is the UN anyway?

Contrary to what some commentators in the United States argue, the UN is not a world government that can arbitrarily impose its will on nations deemed to be defiant. The UN has no standing military, no police force, and no mechanism by which to enforce international law.

The UN is more akin to a global club that is really only a sum of its parts. These “parts,” or member states, fund its operations, create its institutional structures, lend it peacekeeping troops, decide its priorities, and staff its bureaucracy. It’s a heterogeneous conglomeration of democracies and dictatorships, developed and under-developed states, and hundreds of languages and cultures.

When impassable geopolitical problems arise, “blame the parts not the whole” might not be a very satisfying answer. But the reality is that the UN is only as effective as its member states allow it to be. If all member states decided that nuclear warheads on the planet must be disarmed immediately, then the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could send experts into the countries in possession of these weapons and disarm them. Without the consent of its member states, however, the UN is powerless to act.

The Security Council

Not all the agencies or “organs” that make up the UN are created equal. The Security Council (SC), which is  tasked with maintaining “peace and security,” is the most powerful organ of the UN. While other organs, such as the General Assembly, can only make “recommendations,” the SC has the sole authority to make legally binding decisions on other member states even without their consent. So if the SC ordered Iran to immediately dismantle all its nuclear reactors—whether they were being used to enrich weapons grade uranium or not—Iran would have to do so or deal with the consequences of violating international law.

Under the current UN framework, the Security Council has 15 members, five of which are permanent members (the P-5); China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Ten temporary members are elected on a periodic rotating basis. The P-5 have a special veto power, which enables any one of these states to block resolutions they do not like. For example, if Russia vetoes a SC resolution authorizing military intervention in the Syrian civil war, there is no legal basis on which the international community can collectively act through force.

The make up of the P-5 reflects the outdated balance of power of the victorious allies at the end of WWII. Seventy years later, Latin America, Africa, and Asia (aside from China) do not have a single permanent seat on the Council.

War and peace

Between the end of WWII and the early 1990’s, the ideological division between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—the world’s two superpowers—and their ability to veto SC resolutions paralyzed the UN’s capacity to intervene in almost any conflict. As the Soviet Union declined in the late 1980s (eventually collapsing in 1991), the UN’s collective security system had an opening to become more assertive. Between 1988 and 2000, the UN took on more peacekeeping missions in ten years than it had in its entire history combined, the number of SC resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased by more than tenfold.

But the nature of war has changed: conflicts now occur far more frequently within the borders of a state (i.e., civil wars) rather than between states. Because the UN Charter was written primarily to address aggression between states, it was ineffective in preventing appalling massacres that took place during the 1990’s within the borders of places like Rwanda and Somalia.

So what’s the verdict?

Much of the criticism directed at the UN is justified: it has been involved in scandals, was unsuccessful in a number of peacekeeping missions, and has some serious organizational deficiencies (such as the composition of the Security Council).

However, for much of the world, the UN remains the dominant, if not only, institution capable of conferring legal legitimacy and providing diplomatic alternatives to waging war. The UN is far from perfect, but it’s the best option we currently have.

Image courtesy of Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock.com 

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