Editor's Note

Mocked as a glorified talking shop, condemned when its peace missions fail, denounced as corrupt, wasteful and inefficient, the United Nations often makes a convenient scapegoat for the world’s problems. Much of this criticism is grossly unfair. The United Nations is frequently asked to do the impossible, plunged into situations of crisis and conflict yet denied the resources and authority to do the job. And for all its admitted failings, the world body is humanity’s chief barrier against global anarchy. It is the institution which more than any other embodies the principle of the rule of law in international affairs, a frail yet vital restraint against the untrammelled and destructive pursuit by nation-states of their own self-interest.

This issue of Global Dialogue examines the outlook for the United Nations as we enter a new century. Our opening contribution, by Sir David Hannay, Britain’s special representative for Cyprus and a former permanent representative to the United Nations, considers the latter’s place in that disputed entity known as the “international community”. He inquires how far the world is moving from a belief that “might is right” towards “a rule-based, legally bound set of disciplines administered collectively by international organisations”.

How did the United Nations come to be? Jean Krasno, Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System and associate director of United Nations Studies at Yale University, provides a historical survey of the birth of the world body, drawing on fascinating interviews with participants in the founding negotiations and conferences. Her account facilitates an understanding of how the United Nations may need to change in order to survive.

Supporters and opponents of the United Nations unite in one belief: that reforms are needed. Joseph E. Schwartzberg of the University of Minnesota proposes several fundamental structural changes, affecting both the General Assembly and Security Council, to revitalise the United Nations.

A specific reform that has been mooted in recent years is the establishment of a permanent UN peace force. Researcher Georgios Kostakos examines what would be involved in providing the United Nations with its own reliable rapid reaction capability.

Schemes for reform are all very well, argues freelance author Geoff Simons, but they are futile unless they take into account “political power relationships in the real world”. So far as the United Nations is concerned, he says, the chief obstacle to meaningful change is the global dominance of the United States, a contention he supports by reviewing Washington’s dealings with the world body.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of NATO’s air attack on Yugoslavia last year, it indisputably took place without Security Council authorisation. Raju G. C. Thomas of Marquette University believes the Kosovo crisis is symptomatic of the profound marginalisation of the United Nations. The role and responsibilities of the “international community”, he argues, have been usurped by the United States and NATO.

A vigorous protest against such marginalisation is registered by Anatoli and Alexei Gromyko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They defend the United Nations’ continued relevance in an emerging multipolar world and warn that radical revision of the UN Charter or dilution of the veto powers of the Security Council’s five permanent members would be ill advised.

Farid Mirbagheri, director of research at the Centre for World Dialogue and assistant professor of international relations at Intercollege, Cyprus, identifies a fundamental obstacle to the implementation of the ideals of the UN Charter: the doctrine of the supremacy of sovereign statehood. Ensuring global peace and security, he says, will require a “desanctification” of the sovereign power of the state.

The American public is widely held to be hostile to the United Nations, seeing it as a threat to US sovereignty, opposing the payment of US dues and even favouring US withdrawal from the world body. Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay and Philip Warf of the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes cite copious poll evidence to show that American attitudes on each of these issues have been misreported, and that in fact the US public is strongly supportive of the United Nations.

The United Nations’ first secretary-general, Trygve Lie, called the post “the most impossible job on this earth”. Edward Newman of the United Nations University headquartered in Tokyo reviews how Lie’s successors in the post–Cold War era have tried to meet the unique challenges of their position, not least, that of acting independently without running foul of the Security Council.

Peacekeeping is one of the United Nations’ most prominent activities. Unfortunately, several recent missions—Angola, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone—have come to grief. Betts Fetherston of the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, UK, argues that much of the practical failure of peacekeeping is attributable to deficiencies of theory. She recommends that peacekeeping be understood and structured as a form of peacebuilding.

No issue has occupied more of the United Nations’ time and attention than the Question of Palestine. Central to that question is the status of Jerusalem. In our final contribution, international lawyer John V. Whitbeck outlines a condominium solution for the holy city and inquires whether the United Nations has a role to play in bringing it about.

Paul Theodoulou
Winter 2000