Whatever the outcome of the current feud in the Security Council, one fact already stands out: the United Nations must not continue as it is.
Today, it is often used to delay action to right a wrong or prevent a tragedy. The UN would not have authorized Tanzania to invade Uganda, boot out Idi Amin and break his death machine. Neither did the UN approve when the Vietnamese Army invaded Cambodia to get rid of the Khmer Rouge that had already killed half of that country’s population. Nor did the UN applaud American action to remove tyrants from power in Grenada and Haiti, and restore democratic government.
The former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has had the courage to admit that it was guilty of criminal negligence when it did not act to stop the genocide in Rwanda (some two million dead) or in the former Yugoslavia (half-a-million dead). More recently, the UN has turned a blind eye to the genocidal war waged by Russia in Chechnya where a whole nation is being destroyed. Each time anyone did anything to right a wrong it was outside the UN remit (as was the case in Kosovo).
For much of the 1980s the UN watched, and presumably prayed, as over a million Iranians and Iraqis died in a war triggered by Saddam Hussein. The Security Council ended up by passing a resolution in 1988 that Iraq continues to violate. In 1990, the UN authorized the expulsion of Iraq from occupied Kuwait, and, over the following 12 years, passed 18 resolutions that demanded precise action by Iraq on a range of issues. Kuwait was liberated by force, but Baghdad honored none of its commitments, including respect for human rights inside Iraq itself.
Even during the Cold War, the UN was unable to prevent its members from going to war without its authorization. The Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956, with Israel in supporting role, the French wars in Indochina, The US intervention in Vietnam, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the India-China war of 1961, the four Arab-Israeli wars, and the three Indo-Pakistan wars are just some of the 200 or so military conflicts which the so-called multilateral system failed to prevent.
Today, a world crisis map would show 66 conflicts with various degrees of intensity: dormant, semi-active, and hot. Of these, at least 22 could be described as either active or hot. These range from the genocidal war that Myanmar is waging against Muslim and other non-Buddhist minorities, to the current civil war in Ivory Coast, and passing by the Israel-Palestine conflict. In almost every case, the UN is either absent or used as an instrument for delaying a solution.
The UN is based on the assumption that all members are of equal stature and have equal interests, aspirations and preoccupations. That is a myth. The newest member, Switzerland, is not in the same category as one of the UN’s founding members, Afghanistan. Nor does the Maldives have the same preoccupations as China. A majority of UN members are in no position to develop an analysis of the global situation and are, at best, preoccupied with their survival. This is why they think nothing of giving the chairmanship of the UN commission on human rights to Libya while voting to expel the United States, or asking Iraq to head the UN committee on disarmament.
The situation in the Security Council is even more anomalous. The five permanent, or veto-holding, members represent a balance of power that has long ceased to exist. Today India is a bigger player, in terms both of demography and economic power, than France, Britain and Russia. In terms of economic clout and aid to the developing nations, Japan and Germany are the second and third biggest powers after the US. Even if one goes by regional distribution, it makes no sense that Europe should have three veto-holding seats in the council while Latin America and Africa have none. Together, the veto-holding nations account for less than a quarter of the world’s population. In most cases, however, the council is obliged to approve ambiguous, if not hermetic, texts that, far from solving the problem at hand, generate new problems. One example is the famous Resolution 242 on the Palestinian issue. Another is Resolution 1441. Its sponsors believed it authorized war. But at least four of those who voted for it believed it would prevent military action against Saddam.
Kurt Waldheim, a two-time secretary-general, once described the UN as a mechanism for “lying in support of peace.” Waldheim knew what he was talking about. But nothing of value could be created through lies, diplomatic or otherwise.
