Robert Buddan, Contributor
THE DISGUST we feel over the American-led attack against Iraq stems from the harm it does to our idea of international humanity and the notion of an international community of nations. The attack goes against everything we have ever been taught about the United Nations (UN) principles for a just world order. The UN's image has been damaged and its reputation might not recover for years to come. People of developing countries must work to reinvent and restore the UN to its place since it still stands as the best bet for international peace and development. The war against Iraq might actually provide the opportunity to make the UN into a more modern and democratic organisation that serves peace and development better.
During the Cold War (1945-1990), the Security Council of the UN was only modest in its impact. This Council of governmental power elites is made up of five countries the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China. They were the victors in World War II and gave themselves a privileged position in the UN. They made themselves permanent members by giving each a veto to block any decision it did not agree with, including a decision to remove it from the Security Council.
The Soviet Union and the U.S. used their vetoes to block many international actions since each often deemed an action against its interests. The Security Council's only notable actions were sending forces into the Korean War (1950-53), an arms embargo against Apartheid South Africa (1963), dispatching peacekeepers, sanctions against Rhodesia, and a 1967 Resolution for Arab-Israeli negotiations. Otherwise, most decisions about war were made in Washington or Moscow and each side supported combatants through proxy wars.
In the 13 years since the Cold War ended, the UN has found itself in a very new situation. In a unipolar world, the U.S. has become the dominant UN power. The Security Council has actually become more active in the past 13 years. It has authorised missions in a number of countries such as Iraq (1990), Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Albania, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and East Timor. Sometimes these missions have been to supervise sanctions, return legitimate authorities to power (Haiti), restore internal peace (East Timor) or liberate a country from foreign occupation (Kuwait).
What is different about the attack against Iraq is that the U.S. and the UK have gone beyond any right of UN delegated enforcement. The U.S.-British action has ignored the veto powers of permanent members and violated even the convention of a majority decision by those permanent members.
THE OLD ORDER, OLD POLITICS
The UN actually represents the old order that emerged from the Second World War. When it was founded in 1945, the UN had 50 members. Its five permanent members remain the UN's elite even though the UN's membership has expanded to 191 countries from all the regions and cultures of the world; and even though other countries have rightful claims to permanent membership. India (the most populous democracy), Japan and Germany (major economies and contributors to the UN) are among the leading voices calling for their own permanent memberships. Other major countries of non-Western regions insist on permanent representation as well Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa among them.
The UN's structure, topped by the Security Council, has been criticised for being anachronistic, undemocratic, narrow and captive of the industrialised countries. It carried over an imperial mentality from the past. The permanent members were leaders of empires American, British, French, and Soviet. These permanent members had been and remain among the most violent countries of the world.
No major decision about war and peace (on their terms) has been made without them. Being militarily strong and industrialised, they place more emphasis on military might than on the rule of law and the priorities of development that poorer countries have. The eradication of poverty, diseases, illiteracy, debts, pollution, homelessness and hopelessness are not concerns of the Security Council.
These major issues are shunted off to the General Assembly which has much less power; or where the industrialised countries dominate through the UN's specialised agencies like the IMF and World Bank anyway.
Since the end of the Cold War, the UN (defined in terms of its internationalist principles) has been trying to assert itself. However, the old order has yet to give way. In fact, in that old order, the U.S. has been asserting itself more decisively. Its rejection of the UN's position on Iraq is the best example to date. But the Bush administration has also gone against the international community by withdrawing from a treaty to establish an International Criminal Court because it wants peacekeeping forces in actions in which it is involved to be immune from war crimes.
It rejected the Kyoto Agreement on Climate Control so that it will not have to pay for environmental clean-up. The Bush Administration rejected a UN Protocol to prevent torture and allow outside inspection of countries' prisons and terrorist detention centres fearing inspection of its treatment of Taliban and al Queda detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. has used its veto 24 times since 1974 to block Security Council resolutions condemning Israel for violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians. Most damning was the UN vote to remove the U.S. from its Human Rights Commission in 2001 for a number of reasons: support of Israel's human rights abuses, rejection of the Kyoto Agreement; rejection of the International Criminal Court; refusal to make AIDS drugs available to everyone and opposition to a treaty to ban land mines. The American rejection of such important treaties indicates its intention towards unilateralism and militarism, attitudes which have grown worse in the two years since George W. Bush became President.
NEW POLITICS, OLD ORDER
Developed and developing countries have been pressing for reforms of the UN to make it more modern and democratic.
Since the early 1990s, certain countries have been trying to get themselves on the Security Council. Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa are the main contenders. They want the number of permanent seats to be expanded. But there are problems. The UK backs India but Pakistan (an ally of the U.S.) objects. The U.S. backs Japan (but South Korea another U.S. friend, having suffered from Japanese persecution in the past) is not in favour.
Portuguese-speaking Brazil, South America's largest economy, is not seen by Spanish-speaking Latin America to be representative of the region. Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa are jostling for the right for one or two to represent Africa.
Most reform proposals suggest expanding the number of permanent members from five to ten but there is little agreement beyond that. There is no agreement on what the new geographical composition should be; which states should be given permanent membership; whether states should be selected by regions; whether new members should have vetoes; and if the present members should be stripped of their vetoes. The U.S. has been lukewarm to the idea of serious reform.
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND THE UN
In 1993, developing countries began calling for the bodies dominated by the developed countries, such as the Security Council, IMF and World Bank to be more transparent in their decision-making. They also want these bodies to reflect current realities and not the power politics (and economics) of the world order of 1945. Developing countries object to attempts to allocate Security Council seats among major economic players saying that those seats were not for sale.
In its present structure, the permanent members of the Security Council make themselves something like presidents for life. There is a certain tyranny in this. They have a global monopoly on violence and they are not accountable. No one can remove them. The U.S. and Britain can tyrannise and terrorise and we can only watch on TV. These permanent members can prevent reforms that would take away their power.
As a region of small states, the Caribbean has no natural support for one of its members to become a permanent member. No Latin American country can truly represent the Caribbean. Britain and the U.S. do not represent the Caribbean and, in fact, have no specific foreign policy towards the region.
The U.S. can roll up its national debt and huge trade deficits. It can run its economy into a recession. Then it can seize other countries' oil wealth and bail itself out, UN or no UN. Countries like Jamaica cannot do this. We need the UN but a more democratic and conscientious one.
The United Nations has lost face on Iraq because it has backed itself into a corner. It was always an organisation in which the most powerful had the most say. It cannot get over the hump to a new order because reform proposals hang on considerations of power by the strong countries. Probably, the transparent insult to the UN by this war against Iraq will mobilise NGOs and disgruntled states to make new efforts to reform that institution.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: rbuddan@uwimona.edu.jm
