Commentary No. 48, September 15, 2000
"The United Nations Millennium"
The United Nations Millennium Summit from Sept. 6-8, 2000 assembled some 150 monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers, each to give a five-minute speech on the present and future of the United Nations. As on every such occasion, we are led to reflect on the efficacy and the adequacy of the United Nations as an institution. What does it really do? Does it matter? Is it merely a showcase for speeches? These questions have been asked from its very inception in 1945.
The usual answer from U.N. spokespersons and enthusiasts is to point to two major achievements: its peacekeeping role, and the specialized agencies and their concrete work in a multitude of functional arenas. As to the latter, there has no doubt been much useful work in fields like health, education, and civil aviation, despite lots of waste and despite obstruction coming from various sources. But peacekeeping? The record seems much more mixed. In a large number of areas, when a truce has been finally and truly achieved by the contending parties, inviting in a United Nations peacekeeping force is seen as a guarantee, largely because it makes visible possible violations of the truce. One shouldn't sneer at this. But if the truce is shaky, contending parties have not hesitated to evince the U.N. or even to attack its peacekeeping units. And there hasn't been too much the U.N. has been able to do about it.
The fact is that the U.N. has little money and no troops of its own, and is totally dependent on the will of the others in order to carry out its tasks, even if these tasks have been duly voted by the Security CoUncil or the General Assembly. In fact, let's be frank. The U.N. has been dependent from the beginning on the good will of the U.S. government. When the U.S. has foUnd the U.N. role useful, the U.N. has obtained the necessary resources and political support to carry it out. And otherwise, not.
Let us review U.N. history from the beginning. The United Nations was the name of the victorious coalition of powers who defeated the Axis powers during the Second World War. It was at the Yalta Conference that the so-called Big Three - the United States, the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R. - made the deal which governs the structure of the United Nations to this day. The heart of the deal was that all important decisions were to be made by the Security Council, and there the Big Three (plus by political courtesy France and China) were to have veto power.
The way this was supposed to work in practice was via the preservation of what was then called Big Three Unity. Well, Big Three Unity broke down in less than a year. Churchill proclaimed at Fulton, Missouri in 1946 that we were in the middle of a cold war, and the U.N. lived in that shadow thereafter. When in 1950, the U.N. refused to recognize the People's Republic of China as the rightful holder of the U.N. seat for China, the U.S.S.R. decided to boycott the meetings of the Security Council. This turned out to be a terrible tactical error. It permitted the U.S. to get a Security Council vote condemning North Korean aggression in South Korea, and putting the U.S.-led military resistance under the aegis of the U.N.
The U.S.S.R. returned to the table immediately, but it was too late to affect the Korea situation. Since they were now back with their veto power, the U.S. knew it could get no more useful votes out of the Security CoUncil, so it launched a program to strengthen the formal powers of the General Assembly, where the U.S. commanded an easy majority. This worked somewhat Until 1955, when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. made their first steps to detente, which included admitting a large series of applicants for membership to the U.N., these applicants having previously been barred by mutual vetoes of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
In 1960, 16 African states became independent - the Year of Africa - and suddenly the voting patterns in the General Assembly changed. The U.S. and its reliable friends were now in a minority. The General Assembly became the playground of the Third World, who could pass all sorts of (unenforceable) resolutions with their votes (and a fortiori if they could also get the votes of the Soviet bloc). From this moment on, the U.S. cooled on the United Nations. It was a slow but steady process - of reducing financial support, of reducing rhetorical commitment, and of general badmouthing of the U.N. not only by the U.S. Congress but by the U.S. press.
U.S. hostility to a U.N. that it could no longer control increased right up to the so-called end of the cold war in 1989. In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and suddenly all five permanent members of the Security CoUncil were willing to vote for (or at least abstain on) resolutions condemning Iraq. The U.S. again organized the military resistance (as sit had in the Korean War), and once more did so Under the aegis of the U.N. Once again, the U.N. was painted favorably by the U.S. government and the press, although the U.S. Congress was less ready to reverse its continuing hostility.
But this momentary pro-U.N. stance faded quickly. The U.S. would discover that it could not count on the continuing support of the other permanent members of the Security Council (except Great Britain), and they began to find the U.N. a constraint rather than a useful tool. When the Kosovo crisis became urgent, the U.S. was allergic to involving the U.N. in any way. Instead, they organized their military resistance Under the aegis of NATO. That they would soon find NATO less than fully reliable is true, but another story.
So here we are in 2000, celebrating the U.N. at the Millennium. Can it do anything important? Not very much. As long as it is critically dependent on U.S. support, and it still is, it is nothing more than a very occasional tool of the U.S. When and if other powers are ready to fund the U.N. adequately and allow it to create some relatively independent military strength, the story might change. Until then, not.
Immanuel Wallerstein
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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