Conflicting Interests: The United Nations versus Sovereign Statehood

Farid Mirbagheri is director of research at the Centre for World Dialogue and assistant professor of international relations at Intercollege, Cyprus. His book Cyprus and International Peacekeeping (Routledge) was published in 1998.

To talk of the United Nations is, in one sense, to speak of man’s ideals in 1945. To explain the reality of the United Nations’ record, however, is to confront the failings of humanity over the past fifty years. For the ideals of equality among states and collective security as enshrined in the UN Charter are essentially incompatible with the nature of international society today.¹ The Machiavellian quality of contemporary international relations is virtually indistinguishable from that of primitive communities formed thousands of years ago.

 

The building block of international society is sovereign statehood. With the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Europeans decided their borders should be inviolable. They thus charted a new course for Western man which was to become the dominant dogma of world politics. The prevalence of religious wars had forced European countries to seek a solution whereby each ruler could determine the internal affairs of his territory free from interference by external powers. Westphalia was a landmark in political history because it introduced a new framework within which international relations could operate.

 

By the end of the First World War, a separate and essentially contrary political doctrine had developed: the notion of collective security. This was an ideal vigorously promoted by Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States. The result was the League of Nations, the first international institution founded to safeguard peace and security. Its maxim was that an attack on any one state should be viewed as an attack on all the others. The intention was to deter potential aggressors and arm the community of states with an effective mechanism for maintaining peace. European powers were, however, sceptical from the outset, and the United States, following Congress’s refusal to ratify the league’s covenant, failed even to join the organisation. Although positive in its utopian outlook, the league had fundamental infrastructural and superstructural defects. These defects were later transferred to the United Nations.

 

At the theoretical level, collective security is incompatible with sovereign statehood. The latter is rooted in the European politics of the past and is closely linked to the doctrines of what, for the past fifty years, has been termed political realism. The realist tradition, whose adherents include Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, maintains that national interests are always paramount. In essence, this means that the state, as the representative of the nation, will always aim to pursue the interests of the nation as defined in terms of power. The scarcity of resources and man’s intrinsic urge to be more powerful than his fellow human beings (equal power, equal prestige or equal security, some believe, are tantamount to no power, no prestige and no security) mean that states inevitably come into conflict with each other as they further their own interests. The realist tradition legitimises the pursuit of national interest as rational for all states, and thus the inevitable conflicts that ensue are also rational. Resolving or settling these conflicts requires a mechanism which inter alia includes war. War as an instrument of policy has never been discarded in an international treaty—in other words war is not an international criminal offence.

International Anarchy

This dominant paradigm in international relations is fundamentally flawed as a prescription for the conduct of world affairs. If the state as a unit in international society is to promote its national interests, and if this is to be a universal prognosis, then what are the limits of “rational” behaviour? How far may a state legitimately seek its own interests at the expense of other nations? Should I sacrifice the interests of humanity for the sake of my nation, or should I benefit humanity at my nation’s expense? These are questions on which realism is at best silent. In the 1950s the eminent realist Hans Morgenthau went so far as to claim that the United States was not “realistic” enough, that it cared too much about the interests of other nations. The absolutism of “national interests” is clearly a very loose and dangerous precept. After all, Hitler believed his policies were rational and that his genocidal programme served German interests.

 

The inevitable interstate conflicts resulting from the interplay of national interests bring into focus the anarchical nature of international society. In order to introduce a semblance of order into world affairs, nations turn to diplomacy and international law. In the process, both become tools to contain the “rational” acts which caused conflict in the first place. This, in itself an irrational proposition, is again problematic. If states are driven solely by the requirement to maximise their own interests, then those with more power will use or abuse diplomacy and international law to their own benefit and to the detriment of others. The scenario that emerges is one of “might is right”, or power politics.

 

The lack of recourse to the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ principal judicial organ, to interpret the UN Charter in times of dispute bears testimony to this. The charter has always been interpreted politically by politicians from the powerful states and not by jurists from the court. Why? Because applying to the court would deprive these states of their power advantage and thus undermine the reality of international relations: the promotion of national interest. Why is it that so many American politicians have stated openly that the United States should end its financial contributions to the United Nations because the United Nations does not always agree with US policies? Why did the United States and Britain withdraw from Unesco? These questions and many others all point to the sad fact that, for as long as the sovereign state is the principal driving force in international society and continues to follow the dictates of realism, there is no alternative to the status quo.

 

A simple analogy may illustrate the point. In civil societies, individuals who break the law are brought to justice and punished for their crimes. An effective enforcement mechanism is a prerequisite for the smooth and efficient running of any civil society. But on an international level there is no, and never has been, such a mechanism. Globally, we seem to operate as primitively as early man, who used sheer brute force to get his way. A court without enforcement powers is a mere talking shop. The multitude of unimplemented UN Security Council resolutions (which are legally binding) is a clear illustration of this fact of international life.

 

The League of Nations failed miserably to prevent the Second World War. After that conflict, the victorious powers, taking the issue of global security more seriously, laid the foundations of the United Nations. But there was essentially little difference between the United Nations and its predecessor. That is not to belittle the much good work the United Nations has done. It has provided a platform for conciliation and multilateral diplomacy, created specialised agencies to carry out wide-ranging humanitarian tasks and undertaken useful global studies and surveys. Its peacekeeping missions, although unmentioned in the charter, have proved useful in containing conflict and maintaining peace. Underlying all this is the unique moral authority the United Nations possesses. In short, the United Nations has functioned as a quasi conscience for mankind. But that hardly makes it what the world wants it to be. The United Nations cannot operate effectively in a contradictory setting that pits the ideal of collective security against the reality of state sovereignty, nor in situations where its own stated principles are regularly ignored or trampled upon. Furthermore, the charter as it stands is inadequate for the challenges the United Nations faces.

The Fetish of Sovereignty

One of the United Nations’ most enshrined principles is state sovereignty. States are viewed as untouchable entities which may do as they please within their internationally recognised borders. This principle, however, is both theoretically and practically problematic. At the theoretical level, the world neither can nor should sit by and watch an oppressive state commit genocide or violent repression. The example of the former apartheid regime in South Africa clearly illustrates the point. The apartheid government continually rejected criticism of its policies as interference in South Africa’s internal affairs. But the international community did not allow the doctrine of state sovereignty to protect the country’s system of institutionalised racism. Accordingly, resolution after resolution by the General Assembly condemned the South African government for its conduct.

 

At the practical level, the world’s growing interdependence increasingly links internal and international peace and security. If the new interpretation of security is stability and growth, as opposed to the traditional definition of military might, then instability in one corner of the world can have a global impact. The phenomenon of globalisation, which is itself at odds with the state system, requires the “desanctification” of borders and a gradual erosion of state sovereignty.

 

The “neurosis of independence”, as referred to by the late John Holmes² (these days “neurosis of sovereignty” might be more apt), is a direct result of the current state system. Independent statehood, that most elevated form of recognition, appeals to an ever-growing number of communities. Part of its attraction is the protection it is believed to offer oppressed minorities. The Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, the Basques in Spain, Chechens in the Russian Federation and many other communities feel it legitimate to demand sovereignty. Yet the very fabric of the international system, which is reflected in the UN Charter, cannot sanction such transformations—at least, not if complete anarchy is to be avoided. In short, the state system cannot answer the very questions it itself raises. The United Nations, working within such a framework, is given the impossible task of producing miraculous solutions for a variety of conflicts which share the same core element.

 

Sovereign statehood and the realist tradition, its inevitable partner, promote a system in which the powerful can maximise their interests while the weak are condemned to a backward “juridical” statehood.³ Perhaps the United Nations can indeed make a better world, as US President Harry Truman announced so proudly at the conclusion of the San Francisco conference on 26 June 1945. But better for whom? Perhaps the United Nations has made a better world for the powerful nations. After all, in the fifty-five years since the founding of the United Nations they have managed to avoid repeating the mistakes which prompted two world wars last century. But it would hardly be plausible to claim, for example, that the United Nations has made a better world for the nearly one million Rwandans who were brutally massacred in the space of three months while the realist world of the powerful and its international agent, the United Nations, stood by and watched.

 

This leads to another crucial observation. Article 1(3) of the charter states one of the purposes of the United Nations as being

 

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion … [italics added]

 

The Rwandan massacres shocked humanity but prompted a woefully inadequate response. The contrast could not have been greater than with the Kosovo crisis, when respect for human rights suddenly appeared to spring back to life. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to the US president, was asked on television to explain the difference in the West’s response to the two situations. His reply was most revealing. Just as in the United States a crime in Harlem would not attract as much official attention as a crime in Beverly Hills, so, too, in international life certain regions receive more attention than others. The West could not ignore Kosovo, Brzezinski said, because Kosovo was in Europe. Perhaps the drafters of Article 1(3) referred to above should have been careful to add “geographical location” to the list of categories supposedly irrelevant to one’s eligibility for certain basic human rights and freedoms.

 

The Rwandan experience was also a failure as far as collective security is concerned. The very concept of collective security entails that the security of all is so interlinked that a breach of security for any one state affects that of all the others. Obviously, no such system is at work today. The Cold War provided a certain ideological motive for each of the opposing camps to commit resources in defence of clients in distant parts of the globe. With the threat to the ideology of the West now removed, threats to life itself do not seem to count for very much. Lives can be lost now that ideology is safe.

The UN Charter

Having outlined the ontological contrast between the infrastructure of the international system and the goals and objectives of the United Nations, we can now compare the principles accepted by the United Nations in its charter with those exemplified in the common practice of politics or, as Kissinger would say, realpolitik.

The True Players

The UN Charter opens with the words, “We, the peoples”. This is a fiction. It should read, “We, the states”. This seemingly phraseological error highlights the misperceptions held by the main founders of the United Nations. Today in particular, with UN membership almost quadrupled, no one can claim that all states are true representatives of their people. The assumption that the international system consists only of nation states grossly misrepresents the contemporary world. Did the apartheid regime represent the people of South Africa? Does the current government of Iraq represent its people?

The Secretariat

A second point relates to the running of the United Nations, specifically the secretariat. The fifteen thousand or so members of the international civil service are, according to the charter, to be recruited primarily on a meritocratic basis. Article 101 of the charter states that the

 

paramount consideration in the employment of staff shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity with due regard … to the importance of recruiting staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.

 

How consistent with this principle has the United Nations’ recruitment procedure been? No insult is intended to the UN staff or to the important work they do when it is observed that factors other than those mentioned in the charter also seem to play a role in recruitment procedures.

 

The difficulty confronting the organisation in this regard is obvious: many states wish to have as many of their nationals as possible in the secretariat. In order to enjoy the confidence of the international community,⁴ the United Nations seeks some semblance of egalitarianism as regards the nationalities of it staff by using a quota system based on the contribution each state makes to the UN budget. It therefore becomes almost impossible to fulfil either of the two criteria—competence and geographical distribution—mentioned in Article 101. First, how can Thailand, for example, aspire to have an equal number of staff as, say, the United States, when the United States pays around 25 per cent of the UN budget compared to Thailand’s 0.11 per cent? Second, the United Nations can ill afford to ignore the continuous flow of recommendations from high-level dignitaries, including heads of state, to recruit certain individuals. Realpolitik is a major contributor to this particular deficiency within the UN system.

 

Moreover, some high-ranking UN posts are unofficially reserved for people from certain geographical areas. For instance, the president of the World Bank is traditionally a US citizen and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund is normally a west European. This conflicts with the principle of state equality but complies very well with the maxim of power politics.

The Secretaryship-General

As for the post of secretary-general, the unwritten rule is that it will not be filled by a national from any of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Of the seven secretaries-general so far, three have come from Europe (Trygve Lie, Dag Hammerskjöld and Kurt Waldheim); one from Asia (U Thant); one from South America (Javier Pérez de Cuéllar); and two from Africa (Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the present incumbent, Kofi Annan).

 

Hammerskjöld, the second secretary-general, is regarded as perhaps the most effective and admirable occupant of the post to date. He claimed an independence for his office which has remained the envy of all secretaries-general since. He once said he believed it was “in keeping with the philosophy of the charter” that the secretary-general should be expected to act without the guidance of the Security Council. His tragic death in a plane crash cut short his term in 1961.

 

The limitations on the power of the secretary-general are illustrated by the case of the sixth incumbent, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a Coptic Christian from Egypt. He was the first holder of the post not to be allowed to serve a second term. Fourteen of the fifteen members of Security Council backed his candidacy, but the United States vetoed it. Boutros-Ghali believes his response to a tragedy in southern Lebanon played a key part in Washington’s decision. Some six months before the Security Council vote, he had released a report which concluded it was “unlikely” that the Israeli bombardment of a UN post in Qana, which killed at least one hundred refugees, “was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors”. Boutros-Ghali has said his decision to release the report “deepened Washington’s animosity toward me” and “had a major impact on the Clinton administration’s view of me”.⁵

 

The present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is the first to have been elected—or selected, depending on how you view the appointment procedure—from within the organisation. (He was previously under-secretary-general for peacekeeping.)

 

The resources available to the secretary-general are extremely limited. His most powerful leverage remains the unique moral authority of his post. Lacking the means to reward or punish, the world’s top diplomat has little manoeuvrability in terms of ending conflicts and maintaining international peace.

The Specialised Agencies

The Economic and Social Council, Ecosoc, as one of the principal organs of the United Nations, has a wide range of responsibilities and functions. Accordingly, the power to be given to the council was defined in the charter, under Articles 62 and 63. Another article, 57, provided for the establishment of specialised agencies such as the International Labour Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organisation. However, it is Ecosoc, according to Article 63, that defines “the terms on which the agency concerned shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations”. Moreover, it states that Ecosoc “may co-ordinate the activities of the specialised agencies”.

 

In reality, however, each specialised agency claims a kind of “sovereignty” for itself and shuns oversight by Ecosoc. Despite occasional co-ordination in times of crisis, such as that in the former Yugoslavia, the trend is towards more autonomy for each agency. The World Trade Organisation and the UN Conference on Trade and Development, for example, seem to parallel the work of Ecosoc. This overlapping of roles was one of the consequences of the Cold War, which hampered the work of the United Nations in general and Ecosoc in particular. Unwilling to cede control to an organisation which might be swayed by anti-Western sentiment, the West established and gave autonomy to agencies which duplicated Ecosoc’s work.

 

The foregoing discussion indicates, then, that the charter is complied with only when it meets the needs of the powerful. The principles of the charter are taken as the basis for action when convenient, as in the war against Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait, but ignored when they do not conform to the interests of the key players in international affairs.

The New Century

The so-called new world order, first proclaimed by George Bush, has proved to be an ill-defined, confused, almost forgotten concept. It was hoped that the rule of law and the supremacy of UN principles would be the basis of international relations in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. The weaker members of the international community soon realised this was wishful thinking. There are signs that the “new world order” is rapidly becoming a “new world disorder”.

 

Globalisation’s guiding principle is “economic efficiency”, and this will determine international developments in the coming decades. The gap between rich and poor will widen and become a further threat to global security.⁶ Globalisation and the increasing disparities in living standards worldwide will only strengthen the likelihood of a possible clash of civilisations.

 

Ethno-nationalist insurgencies will continue to impair international relations. Peoples and communities will expect their aspirations for sovereign statehood to be realised. Historical enmities will fuel such aspirations, and the inadequacy of the international structure to cope with such demands will see all sides resort to violence to gain their ends. The ad hoc application of force by NATO or other actors will prove ineffective in containing the global consequences of ethnic conflict, even if settlements are enforced through use of arms. Nuclear proliferation is almost certain to occur as more countries seek the status and security that the ultimate weapon is deemed to provide.

 

Last, but not least, is the rise of the Far East and in particular China. If the late Richard Nixon is to be believed, and if China’s remarkable economic growth continues, the global system’s current unipolarity will indeed be short-lived. The implications for the world are multifaceted and extensive. As the Far East becomes increasingly prosperous and powerful, the relative importance of the West will decline. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this may or may not be a welcome development. But if competition is said to be so healthy in the economic sphere, then why not in the political sphere as well? Political monopolies can be as unhealthy as economic ones.

 

How should the United Nations respond to these rapid changes? The most notable contribution that the world body can make is with regard to the rise of ethno-nationalism. But to meet this challenge, the international community will have to establish new mechanisms empowering the United Nations to act effectively and efficiently.

 

One such mechanism would be a new political status within international society that falls short of sovereign statehood but provides a significant degree of prestige and protection to communities that have a legitimate need for international recognition. Communities enjoying this new status would be autonomous in matters concerning their internal affairs, but politically would remain within the framework of the sovereign state to which they belong. Offering such communities observer status in the General Assembly, for instance, may be a useful step in this regard. These communities—let us call them polities—would have to fulfil certain requirements and bear certain responsibilities towards the international community. The states concerned would, in return, receive the unconditional allegiance of these polities as regards the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state. Military matters would remain within the jurisdiction of the state.

 

Second, as has been often proposed, the United Nations must have a stand-by army under the command of the secretary-general. This army would be used primarily in cases of emergency, when the delay involved in the conventional ways of assembling an international force would lead to loss of lives. The Military Staff Committee as mentioned in Article 47 of the charter—but which has only ever really existed in name—could be expanded and assist in the formation of such an army.

 

Third, the roles and functions of the International Court of Justice should be enhanced to allow access to non-state actors. This would provide a form of preventive diplomacy and give the international community an opportunity to foresee and prevent clashes ahead.

 

The obstacles to implementing the mechanisms suggested above are undeniably formidable. Many states would see them as infringing the principle of sovereign statehood and therefore oppose them. But the perils of inaction are at least as great as those of action. The fires of ethno-nationalism will rage uncontrolled unless the United Nations is equipped to douse them.

The Need for Change

The United Nations was established in 1945 with the primary task of maintaining international peace and security. However, today’s political orthodoxy sees the role of the state, the main actor in international society, as being to promote its own national interests. The UN Charter also asks the world body to respect the right of states, its constituent members, to pursue their national interests. Nowhere in the charter is it even mentioned that pursuing the “international” interest should also be a primary, or even a secondary, goal of the state.

 

In the continuing interplay of interests between states and the inevitable conflicts that arise, power is the final arbiter. The United Nations was not devised to change or modify this principle, but rather to conform to it. If the nature of international society is itself conflict driven or unable to prevent conflict,⁷ the United Nations—operating within this system and bound by its limitations—cannot be expected to do the impossible. Realism and sovereign statehood are the real culprits.

 

There is also the question of compliance with the charter. Both in terms of appointing the secretariat and co-ordinating the various specialised agencies, there is a considerable gap between the United Nations’ constitution—the charter—and its practice.

 

Addressing the challenges of increasing ethno-nationalism will require scaling down the absolute power of the state and “desanctifying” its sovereignty. Measures include the establishment of a polity status that would fall short of statehood but would secure the recognition that ethnic communities are demanding. In return, they would have to abandon claims to statehood and pledge allegiance to the state to which they belong.

 

Notwithstanding its limitations, the United Nations has performed rather well given the numerous qualitative and quantitative problems it faces: the intrinsic conflict between sovereign statehood and realism, on the one hand, and international peace and security, on the other; the Cold War; financial restraints; and the attempts of states to exploit the world body for their own ends. The United Nations has done commendable work, but it is structurally unable to meet the needs and challenges of humanity.

 

A truly global organisation should not be subject to the national interests of states. The League of Nations and the United Nations resulted from two devastating world wars. Let us hope it will not take another cataclysm before serious efforts are made to establish a more effective international organisation. 

Endnotes

1. Today’s international society is by nature anarchical. See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977).

 

2. See John W. Holmes, The Better Part of Valour: Essays on Canadian Diplomacy (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970), p. 81.

 

3. I.e., independence which has been conferred on states from outside, albeit unwillingly. Many Third World countries may be termed as having juridical statehood.

 

4. By this I mean the true international community and not simply the West, as the term is commonly understood by the Western media.

 

5. See Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A US–UN Saga (London: I. B. Tauris; New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 261–4.

 

6. Here security is taken to mean more than just defence policies and military capability.

 

7. See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).