The Moderate Voice occasionally runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have a weblog or have one and have something special to say here. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its co-bloggers — but they do add to our free-wheeling debate.
In the latest, a writer who wishes to be anonymous but who we’ll call “The All Knowing One” looks at the issue of the United Nations:
The prevailing attitude of too many who wish to see the UN abolished is one based on a desire for retribution in the face of arguable anti-American policies and practices, and punishment for documented corruption and scandal. There can be demonstrable proof that the UN has taken as part of its mission the filling of the counter balance void to American influence created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But in its most simplistic and popular articulation, this complaint devolves into seeing everything the UN touches as rancid. Clearly the UN is beset by myriad problems, most of its own making, but much growing out of its basic structure and at least tacitly supported and enabled by its constituents.
It is just as clear that the US has become a reluctant hegemon, neither able to completely walk away from the community of nations, nor willing to fully accept the mantle of lone superpower. So in a sense, the need for a congregation of nations is both most urgently needed and woefully absent.
In this context, the wisdom of studying the successes and failure of the World Body is better served by a more pragmatic need to dispense with a broken global forum and substitute it with a structure more able to respond to changing realities, which must include the legitimacy that comes with force provided by member states.
In [the] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ray Raymond, a retired British diplomat and current professor of political science at SUNY, pens an important proposal for abolishing the UN. The article is here.
Raymond does not step into the common UN-hatred so popular on the right today, but does acknowledge that although the UN was an innovation, it has outlived its usefulness. He points to two developments that signal the impotency of the UN:
This summer we have had two reality checks which underscore how our security threats have worsened. The first was that in the Middle East Hezbollah proved that it is a professional modern army with the discipline, the command and control, the tactical intelligence, the weapons and the will to thwart the Israeli armed forces attempt to disarm them.
The second reality check was in Britain where the thwarted terrorist plot showed how elusive Islamic jihadists remain ready, willing and able to commit mass murder on an unprecedented scale to achieve their aims.
Raymond reiterates what many observers have already noted. Namely, that in the face of conquest from non-state actors, global political structures set up to deal with nation-states must obviously fail. Raymond is not engaging in frothing anger at the UN (although the name Kofi Annan is curiously absent) but pointing out that no matter what one’s side vis-a-vis the UN one might be, it has become a categorical failure:
At last September’s summit, for example, it could not even agree on a definition of terrorism. And whether you supported or opposed the Iraq war, the U.N. Security Council failed. If you supported the war, the United Nations failed to enforce its own resolutions against Saddam Hussein so the United States and Britain had to act to enforce collective security. If you opposed the war, the U.N. Security Council failed because it was unable to restrain two members from invading Iraq.
Raymond also argues that the doctrine of preemption must be rescued from what he calls the “morass of Iraq.”
How true.
If Iraq has exposed the ineffectual nature of the UN, it has also proven that no nation has the capacity to go it alone, no matter what the administration’s fans insist.
Unlike may diplomats who are firstly concerned with retaining privilege and the status quo, Raymond (perhaps because he is a “former diplomat”) argues that institutions must not be allowed to calcify and that we should be ready to toss out those structures that are no longer relevant, much like FDR, Churchill and Truman did post WW ll. Lastly, after a polite and brief indictment of the UN, Raymond makes a modest proposal:
The time has come to dismantle the United Nations. It should become three separate bodies with accountable CEOs, rigorous accounting and ethics standards and open, competitive recruitment.
The core would be a treaty-based global security organization of like-minded nations modeled on NATO with national forces dedicated to it. Its mission: enforce collective security and prevent terrorist attacks by preemptive use of force where necessary. The other two agencies could focus on global health/humanitarian issues and the global environment.
Only by embracing radical reforms like these can we meet the very different threats of the 21st century.
This is a good start, and it comes from someone with enough credibility to get noticed. But we don’t get treated to a plan. Yet.
Maybe Raymond is floating a trial balloon, or counting on someone to notice, but his proposal is unlikely to get much traction while the current administration remains in power.
Conversely, there is little evidence that those nations and factions that have benefited from the malaise at Turtle Bay: namely, state sponsors of terror, the terror groups themselves, and those nations with shady business connections to them, would be eager to give up their greatest cover. We will likely have to wait for an administration with cleaner hands and perceived purer intention before we can begin to contemplate a world without the UN.
The details would be difficult to establish.
For instance, how do we dispense with the current structure wherein closed societies are accorded equal respect to that of open democracies and still encourage reform?
How do we innovate away from what amounts to a closed club of mega-nations (the five permanent UNSC members) without engendering chaos? What from would a new “security organization of like-minded nations” take? Are Russia, China and the US like-minded enough?
I don’t think that this is a veiled call for World Federalism, but it is calling for all nations to accept the primacy of a global system of governance.
There are many other questions to ask and objections to make, but this is a serious account of why, in Raymond’s words, the “world is such a mess” and a possible remedy to our current nonworking model.
–The All Knowing One
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.