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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Do we need the United Nations? Where would the contemporary world be without its largest intergovernmental organization? And where could it be had the UN's member states and staff performed better? These fundamental questions are explored by the leading analyst of UN history and politics, Thomas G. Weiss, in this hard-hitting, authoritative book. While counterfactuals are often dismissed as academic contrivances, they can serve to focus the mind; and here, Weiss uses them to ably demonstrate the pluses and minuses of multilateral cooperation. He is not shy about UN achievements and failures drawn from its ideas and operations in its three substantive pillars of activities: international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. But, he argues, the inward-looking and populist movements in electoral politics worldwide make robust multilateralism more not less compelling. The selection of António Guterres as the ninth UN secretary-general should rekindle critical thinking about the potential for international cooperation. There is a desperate need to reinvigorate and update rather than jettison the United Nations in responding to threats from climate change to pandemics, from proliferation to terrorism. Weiss tells you why and how.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Notes
Foreword by Kofi A. Annan
Abbreviations
Introduction
Counterfactual #1: The World without the UN and its Ideas and Operations?
Counterfactual #2: The World with a More Creative and Effective UN?
Counterfactuals, the Briefest of Introductions
Part I Building Blocks
1 “Three” United Nations
Member States and Secretariats, the First and the Second UNs
The Third UN
Conclusion
Notes
2 Four UN Ailments
Sacrosanct State Sovereignty
North–South Theatrics
Atomization
Lackluster Leadership
Conclusion
Notes
Part II The World without the UN and its Ideas and Operations?
3 A More Violent World with Diminished International Peace and Security?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
4 A More Repressive and Unkind World with Diminished Human Rights and Humanitarian Action?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
5 A More Impoverished and Polluted World with Diminished Development?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
Part III The World with a More Creative and Effective UN?
Notes
6 A Less Violent World with Enhanced International Peace and Security?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
7 A Less Repressive and Unkind World with Enhanced Human Rights and Humanitarian Action?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
8 A Less Impoverished and Polluted World with Enhanced Development?
Ideas
Operations
Conclusion
Notes
9 Let’s Be Serious – the UN We Want (and Need) for the World We Want
Sacrosanct Sovereignty and North–South Theater: Contemporary Challenges and the First UN
Remedies for the Second UN and International Peace and Security
Remedies for the Second UN in Human Rights, Humanitarian Action, and Sustainable Development
Final Thoughts
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
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Would the World Be Better without the UN?
Thomas G. Weiss
polity
Copyright © Thomas G. Weiss 2018
The right of Thomas G. Weiss to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station Landing, Suite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1729-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiss, Thomas G. (Thomas George), 1946- author.
Title: Would the world be better without the UN? / Thomas G. Weiss.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA, USA : Polity Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019714 (print) | LCCN 2017043448 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509517282 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509517299 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509517251 | ISBN 9781509517268 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: United Nations. | Security, International--International cooperation. | Peace-building--International cooperation. | Human rights--International cooperation. | Poverty--International cooperation. | Environmental quality--International cooperation.
Classification: LCC JZ4984.5 (ebook) | LCC JZ4984.5 .W4595 2018 (print) | DDC 341.23--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019714
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Director Emeritus (2001–14) of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies who was named 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Past president of the International Studies Association (2009–10) and recipient of its “IO Distinguished Scholar Award 2016,” he also directed the United Nations Intellectual History Project (1999–2010) and was research professor at SOAS, University of London (2012–15), chair of the Academic Council on the UN System (2006–9), editor of Global Governance, research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, research professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, executive director of the Academic Council on the UN System and of the International Peace Academy, a member of the UN secretariat, and a consultant to public and private agencies. He has written extensively about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian action, and sustainable development. His most recent single-authored volumes include Humanitarianism Intervention: Ideas in Action (2016); What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It (2016); Governing the World? Addressing “Problems without Passports” (2014); Global Governance: Why? What? Whither? (2013); Humanitarian Business (2013); and Thinking about Global Governance: Why People and Ideas Matter (2011).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I begin with my profound gratitude to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named me a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. The generous support provided two years for the kind of research and reflection that I hope is present on every page in this book. Vartan Gregorian was my boss at Brown University and as a consultant to the corporation when he first arrived in New York. But he has become far more than that over the years, inspiring me to push myself and my thoughts about the past, present, and future of multilateralism and the United Nations. Most charitable foundations and governments invest in institutions rather than individuals and in soundbites rather than research. The Carnegie Corporation under his stewardship has gone against that conventional grain, and so other fellows and I have been the beneficiaries. This book would not have appeared as it has, or as quickly, without the foundation’s generosity of spirit and vision.
The most congenial and productive of my professional homes has, since 1998, been The City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Former president William Kelly hired me when he was provost and consistently and enthusiastically supported my professional activities as well as tolerated my sense of humor. Current president Chase Robinson has continued to build the distinction of the Graduate Center and nominated me to be a Carnegie Fellow, which has made possible a wonderfully rich last two years.
I have benefited over the years from a number of wonderful intellects and helping hands among my advanced graduate students. This volume reflects research by Paul Celentano, who helped fill in some of the holes that existed after I formulated the book outline. Danielle Zach, as she has over the last decade, abandoned her own work as a post-doc to apply a sharp mind and eye to the raw manuscript, improving substantially its structure and content. This book simply would not have been as timely or persuasive without Paul’s and Danielle’s able helping hands.
This volume marks the culmination of career-long efforts, and I repeat a bit of what I wrote in a 2011 collection of essays.1 What has united, or perhaps haunted, my work over the years is what many would deem a curious conviction – namely, that community interests should hold sway but are invariably shortchanged, nationally or internationally. Long before the “America First” of Donald Trump in the United States, the country’s welfare had often been sacrificed on the altar of individualism; but globally those of the commons are typically and tragically trampled by great powers as well as by tin-pot dictators and megalomaniacs. Yet, I have remained steadfast in believing that multilateral cooperation is a way not only to attenuate American and big-power arrogance but also to solve many, albeit not all, thorny problems that defy national boundaries.
My analyses of contemporary world politics might very well “depress Dr Pangloss,” the character in Voltaire’s Candide who believes that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. The gaps are enormous between what happens in the world polis and what is on the books – spelled out in the UN Charter and hundreds of international treaties, as well as in public statements by politicians, pundits, prime ministers, princes, and presidents. Surely, ours cannot be the best of all possible worlds. I remain persuaded that good people and good ideas can make a difference to the quality of both human life and international society.
That optimism needs to be asserted amidst the disturbing populist and inward-looking politics in the West and elsewhere that accompanies the most gut-wrenching humanitarian disaster in recent memory. Our collective conscience apparently was beyond shocking, as a halfmillion Syrians died in real time, including children suffocating from chemical weapons. That said, the bottom line for my last lecture would also resemble that from my first: I’m an inveterate optimist who believes that it is better sometimes to be wrong, rather than a pessimist and always right.
A career in any business, let alone the academy, involves heavy debts accumulated from both deliberate and unintended encounters with too many smart people to mention; but a few nonetheless stand out whose names I would like to register at the outset because much of what follows in these pages draws on collaborative work over the years. I have drawn on joint products and so would like to indicate clearly up front my debt to a number of individuals. I cite our main joint work here and will not repeat them in subsequent chapters, nor will I refer readers to my three previous Polity Press books.2
This book asks an honest question: “Would the World Be Better without the UN?” The answer is “no,” a response that draws on four and a half decades of close encounters of a different (not “third”) kind. I begin with my dear friend and mentor Leon Gordenker, whose own scholarship and unpretentious demeanor have always provided a beacon; as I pulled together the outline and elaborated the manuscript, I became even more fully aware of the extent to which I am indebted to him. Over the years, my remedial education about the world organization has continued through collaboration with David P. Forsythe and Roger A. Coate (and later Kelly-Kate Pease) on eight editions of our UN textbook.3 I have learned much from Sam Daws on two editions of a major handbook about the world body.4 And, on the related topic of global governance and its relationship to the UN, I have always taken away more than I contributed from collaborations with Craig Murphy, Ramesh Thakur, and Rorden Wilkinson.5
I would like to draw attention to my collaboration between 1999 and 2010 with Tatiana Carayannis, Louis Emmerij, and Richard Jolly in the United Nations Intellectual History Project (UNIHP), a long overdue effort to document the world organization’s ideational contribution to economic and social development. The sixteen volumes and oral history are now widely cited, and I am especially pleased with our three “synthesis” volumes whose conclusions penetrate the analysis here.6 Collaboration with Dan Plesch on the UN’s wartime history filled another knowledge gap.7 And research with Stephen Browne helped me return to the development vineyards with the Future UN Development System Project (FUNDS).8
My preoccupation with the humanitarian struggle to protect and help people caught in the cross-hairs of armed violence was formed in collaboration with Larry Minear in directing the Humanitarianism & War Project. Gareth Evans, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur were especially appreciated colleagues during the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which resulted in The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and an accompanying research volume.9 Peter Hoffman went from my classroom to ICISS to helping to introduce me to the theory of new wars and of new humanitarianisms in two books.10 Finally, Michael Barnett and I worked together on two volumes that seek to re-examine humanitarian shibboleths and rethink standard operating procedures and principles.11
I am deeply grateful that former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan agreed to grace these pages with a foreword. I have known and admired this gracious and dedicated man for the last three decades. The world definitely would be a less kind and safe place without him.
I end by dedicating this volume to the next generation, and more especially to my grandchildren Amara, Kieran, and Grace. They and their peers worldwide deserve a safer and more just planet; and a better United Nations could help make that wish a reality.
TGWNew York, July 2017
Notes
1.
Thomas G. Weiss,
Thinking about Global Governance: Why People and Ideas Matter
(London: Routledge, 2011), pp. xiii–xv.
2.
Thomas G. Weiss,
What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It
, 3rd edn (2016);
Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action
, 3rd edn (2016); and
Global Governance: Why? What? Whither?
(2013).
3.
Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate, and Kelly-Kate Pease,
The United Nations and Changing World Politics
, 8th edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2017).
4.
Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (eds),
The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations
, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018).
5.
Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur,
Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey
(Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010); and Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson (eds),
International Organization and Global Governance
, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2018).
6.
Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss,
Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, Louis Emmerij, and Richard Jolly,
UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); and Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss,
UN Ideas That Changed the World
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
7.
Dan Plesch and Thomas G. Weiss (eds),
Wartime Origins and the Future United Nations
(London: Routledge, 2015).
8.
Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss (eds),
Post-2015 UN Development: Making Change Happen?
(London: Routledge, 2014).
9.
ICISS,
The Responsibility to Protect
(Ottawa: ICISS, 2001); and Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert,
The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, and Background
(Ottawa: ICISS, 2001).
10.
Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss,
Sword & Salve: Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); and
Humanitarianism, War, and Politics: Solferino to Syria and Beyond
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
11.
Michael J. Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (eds),
Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Michael J. Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss,
Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread
(London: Routledge, 2011).
FOREWORD
The United Nations was born from the ashes of war almost three-quarters of a century ago. Against that backdrop of unimaginable suffering and collapse in basic values, courageous politicians and citizens sought new institutional ways to deal with the life-threatening challenges of the day, and the future.
Ironically, today, as the number of threats has multiplied, the political mood has inexplicably turned inward, seeking to build walls rather than tear them down. Instead of being more central to global problem-solving, in the current climate of nationalism, the UN’s value-based framework and institutions are not only not accepted by everyone but actively under attack.
In a bold and original way, Thomas G. Weiss uses a counterfactual approach to examine what the United Nations does, what would happen if it ceased to exist, and what can be done to improve it. He does not shy away from lamenting the obvious shortcomings and failures of member states and international civil servants; but he also provides a timely reminder of the crucial normative and operational work undertaken by the world organization. He points out that we can await new unspeakable disasters to prove the need for better intergovernmental organizations and undoubtedly be rewarded with unimaginable calamities. Or we can make fitter for purpose the ones that we have.
My own decade at the helm of the UN leads me to salute this book because it helps us to understand the crucial importance of the world organization in tackling the considerable challenges facing the world today. Tom Weiss has engagingly and honestly asked a very tough question found in the book’s title, Would the World Be Better without the UN? His negative reply is an indispensable guide for anyone worried about the future of the planet and of the United Nations.
Kofi A. AnnanGeneva, July 2017
ABBREVIATIONS
APMBC
Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention
AU
African Union
BWC
Biological Weapons Convention
CAR
Central African Republic
CCW
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
CEDAW
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
CFCs
chlorofluorocarbons
CHR
Commission on Human Rights
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CIEC
Conference on International Economic Cooperation
COP
Conference of Parties
CWC
Chemical Weapons Convention
DAC
Development Assistance Committee (OECD)
DaO
Delivering as One
DHA
Department of Humanitarian Affairs
DPKO
Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DRC
Democratic Republic of the Congo
ECOSOC
Economic and Social Council
ECOWAS
Economic Community of West African States
EOSG
Executive Office of the Secretary-General
EPTA
Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance
ERC
Emergency Relief Coordinator
EU
European Union
FAO
Food and Agriculture Organization
FUNDS
Future United Nations Development System Project
G-7
Group of 7
G-20
Group of 20
G-77
Group of 77
GATT
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GCC
Gulf Cooperation Council
GDI
Gender-Related Development Index
GDP
gross domestic product
GEM
Gender Empowerment Measure
GHGs
greenhouse gases
GNI
gross national income
GNP
gross national product
GWOT
global war on terrorism
HDI
Human Development Index
HFC
hydrofluorocarbons
HIPPO
High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations
HIV/AIDS
human immunodeficiency virus infection/acquired immune deficiency syndrome
HLP
High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
HPG
Humanitarian Policy Group
HPI
Human Poverty Index
HRC
Human Rights Council
IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency
IASC
Inter-Agency Standing Committee
ICC
International Criminal Court
ICCPR
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICESCR
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
ICISS
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
ICJ
International Court of Justice
ICRC
International Committee of the Red Cross
ICTR
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
ICTY
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
IDA
International Development Association
IDP
internally displaced person
IFAD
International Fund for Agricultural Development
ILO
International Labour Organization
IMF
International Monetary Fund
INSTRAW
International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
INTERFET
International Force for East Timor
IOM
International Organization for Migration
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ISEP
International Smallpox Eradication Program
ISG
International Support Group/Iraq Survey Group
ISIL
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
ITU
International Telecommunication Union
JCPOA
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
JIU
Joint Inspection Unit
KFOR
Kosovo Force
LGBT
lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender
MDG
Millennium Development Goal
MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders]
NAM
Non-Aligned Movement
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO
nongovernmental organization
NIEO
new international economic order
NPT
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
OAS
Organization of American States
OCHA
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
ODA
official development assistance
ODI
Overseas Development Institute
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OHCHR
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
OIOS
Office of International Oversight Services
ONUCA
United Nations Observer Group in Central America
OPCW
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
OPEC
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSCE
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OWG
open working group
P-5
permanent five [members of the Security Council]
PAHO
Pan American Health Organization
PBC
Peacebuilding Commission
PBF
Peacebuilding Fund
PBSO
Peacebuilding Support Office
QCPR
quadrennial comprehensive policy review
R2P
responsibility to protect
RC
resident coordinator
RSG
representative of the secretary-general
SARS
severe acute respiratory syndrome
SDG
Sustainable Development Goal
SMG
Senior Management Group
SNA
system of national accounts
SOPs
standard operating procedures
SSDS
System of Social and Demographic Statistics
SUNFED
Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development
TNCs
transnational corporations
UDHR
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UNAMIR
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
UNCTAD
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDOF
United Nations Disengagement Observer Force
UNDP
United Nations Development Programme
UNDS
United Nations development system
UNEF
United Nations Emergency Force
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
UNEPS
United Nations Emergency Peace Service
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFCCC
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNFPA
United Nations Population Fund
UNHCR
[Office of the] UN High Commissioner for Refugees
UNICEF
United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIFEM
United Nations Development Fund for Women
UNIHP
United Nations Intellectual History Project
UNMIK
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
UNMOVIC
United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
UNOCI
United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire
UNRRA
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
UNSCOM
United Nations Special Commission
UNSO
United Nations Statistical Office
UNTAET
United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor
UNWCC
United Nations War Crimes Commission
UPR
Universal Periodic Review
UPU
Universal Postal Union
WEP
World Employment Programme [ILO]
WFP
World Food Programme
WHA
World Health Assembly
WHO
World Health Organization
WMD
weapons of mass destruction
WMO
World Meteorological Organization
WTO
World Trade Organization
INTRODUCTION
A tourist navigating the security barriers separating New York City from the iconic UN headquarters on First Avenue innocently asks, “How many people work here?” The tour guide snidely replies, “About half.” Yet that widespread impression about an inept bureaucracy and its politicized deliberations is often met with another trope: “If the UN did not exist, we would have to reinvent it.”1
Where might we find ourselves in the early twenty-first century had the United Nations not been created at the end of World War II in 1945? After all, the planet totters on the brink of succumbing to a host of life-threatening disasters as preparations begin to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary in 2020 of the founding of the United Nations. Former secretary-general Kofi Annan labeled these menaces “problems without passports,”2 which range from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to pandemics, from terrorism to climate change, from mass atrocities to debilitating poverty. At the same time, few would dispute that the world body and the UN system have helped keep the lid on conflict cauldrons, eliminated smallpox, delivered life-saving assistance in war zones, and spawned useful development ideas and projects.
In pondering whether the UN is a wasteful drain on global resources or, despite its failings, essential to global order, I draw on illustrations of its achievements and shortcomings from the three substantive pillars of activities: international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. While counterfactuals are sometimes dismissed as academic contrivances, they can serve to focus the mind – here, they demonstrate the pluses and minuses of multilateral cooperation. Two “what ifs?” anchor this book: One, where would the contemporary world be without the United Nations? Two, where could it be had the UN performed better?
My conclusion is that, while the world organization that we have leaves much to be desired, it has made substantial contributions. Indeed, it has become such an embedded part of today’s world order that it is taken for granted. “We are barely conscious of the continuing stabilizing role it plays in setting the broad parameters for the conduct of international relations,” Australia’s former prime minister Kevin Rudd points out. “If the UN one day disappears, or more likely just slides into neglect, it is only then that we would become fully aware of the gaping hole this would leave in what remained of the post-war order.”3
I write these lines in the wake of Donald Trump’s contested election as the forty-fifth US president, a man seemingly intent on destroying the rules-based international order of which the United Nations is a keystone, and which the United States has long championed and sustained. With his denigrations of other highly successful multilateral experiments – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) are “obsolete” – the universal UN may be an even easier target. Indeed, one of his opening salvos from the Oval Office was the announcement of two possible executive orders, one calling for a review of ongoing and pending multilateral treaties and another for halting funding to any UN organizations that recognize Palestine as a state.
That myopia makes this book’s argument more not less compelling. The world is, as Richard Haass tells us, “in disarray,” which requires an altered approach to sovereignty and multilateralism. New forces, challenges, and actors indeed require what he calls a “World Order 2.0.”4 However, there is a desperate need to reinvigorate and update rather than jettison the universal organization that was essential to the current operating system.
After briefly introducing the two broad-brushed counterfactuals that anchor my argument, this introduction probes the broad notion of asking “what if?” It ends with a roadmap for the book.
Counterfactual #1: The World without the UN and its Ideas and Operations?
One way of considering the UN’s impact is to imagine where the globe might be without a world body, or with one set up to act solely as an arena for discussions, with no autonomous capacity for generating ideas, norms, and principles or for helping to test or implement them. It would be a markedly different organization even from the beleaguered one that we have. It would have a minimum of staff, presumably composed exclusively of ex-diplomats or facilitators in bringing groups with differences together and helping to resolve them but with few ideas or initiatives of their own. It would be a strange international institution, although not altogether different from the type that extreme critics put forward as what they think preferable. Such a stripped-down UN would be more limited even than its defunct predecessor, the League of Nations.
In this counterfactual world, what might have happened to the ideas that the UN in its existing form has spawned and brought to fruition? And what might have happened to operational experiments to test these ideas or simply to improve human welfare or keep the peace?
First, in the arena of international peace and security, the invention of peacekeeping and the effort to create breathing room for negotiations would be absent or present in a watered-down form; also missing would be the formal and informal settings that are available when belligerents become fatigued enough to talk. The 100,000 soldiers, 10,000 police, and 10,000 civilians currently serving worldwide in peace operations – 80 percent of them in Africa – would also be absent from the international landscape, along with the monitoring capacities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which were essential for the practicability of the Iran nuclear “deal.”
Second, what might be lost in a world without the United Nations is perhaps even more clearly suggested in considering human rights and humanitarian action. Even a world focused solely on economic efficiency and free markets would be under public pressure to invent an institutional capacity to foster some rights and to “twist arms.” The UN, however, embraces a wide range of contested human rights not because of efficiency or political necessity but because of the vision and humanity of its founders. Human rights remain on many agendas because of the continuing concerns that are reflected in the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as in a host of other UN treaties, covenants, conventions, and declarations.
Such vision and idealism are also reflected in the mandates and work of the UN’s specialized agencies, funds, and programs – for instance, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the International Labour Organization (ILO), as well as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Food Programme (WFP). They are also at the core of the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The rights of minorities and indigenous peoples as well as the prevention of torture and genocide figure in many UN job descriptions. Because their mandates put human values ahead of economic concerns and market efficiency, they often clash with the interests of governments and markets, and they call for more political and financial support than governments are prepared to provide. In terms of action, who would have guided the relief directed to victims of the 2004 tsunami or to the half of Syria’s population who fled repression inside and outside the country?
Third, in the economic arena, the need for rules and regulations to facilitate international trade and other economic transactions in the global market would have generated a more limited range of institutions, not so different from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). If the world organization did not exist, it would have been invented, if not in 1945 then about 1960, with the rush of decolonization, or in the 1970s, with the floating of the dollar and the surge in oil prices. A series of ad hoc meetings to cope with wide-ranging issues of such vital economic importance to wealthier countries would rapidly have been exposed as inadequate and something on a more permanent basis would have been created. Cynics might comment that this would be little different from the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the present World Trade Organization (WTO), which have commanded support from developed countries but less enthusiasm and more hostility from the Global South.
However, the WTO alone at present employs some 600 staff, approaching the peak of the entire League of Nations when it disbanded with World War II. Most WTO staff members are economists and lawyers, many engaged in producing research and statistical reports in areas in which the UN is also engaged. But the UN tries to create policy ideas to confront extraordinary situations, whereas the WTO takes the rules of the game as fixed and tries to interpret and enforce them. However, facilitating negotiations rather than contributing substantively – including questioning the fairness of the rules of the game and who sits at the gaming table as well as whether it is level – is hardly a viable or acceptable aspiration for a universal institution, now or in the future.
Some of what the UN does in other areas would also be required and thus need to be re-created; two examples are helpful – the UN’s work in global public goods and climate change. Rule-setting and regulation would be needed for health, food, and agriculture, weather and meteorology, civil aviation, and maritime law. Economists prescribe international public goods for individual countries and their populations and for the efficient functioning of markets. At the same time, they are beyond the capacity of the global market because individual countries lack the incentive and capacity to provide them. To ensure their provision, many specialist UN organizations would need to be reinvented if they did not exist. Indeed, many actually predated the current generation of post-World War II entities. The Pan American Sanitary Bureau, founded in 1902, transformed into the Latin American arm of the WHO in 1948, and renamed the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and mid-nineteenth-century organizations such as the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU, although “T” earlier was “telegraph”) continue to provide essential services as part of the UN system. And the world body’s emphasis on the human environment since the Stockholm conference in 1972 and on the human influence on climate since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1987 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has placed this issue squarely on the public policy agenda, including the Paris Agreement in 2015.
Would the world really be a better place without the UN? If the San Francisco Conference on International Organization had not created the United Nations, undoubtedly other institutions would have been established to help fill the void. That such fictional alternatives would have been more effective and made more significant contributions is not obvious, at least to this author. The counterfactual in our hand is certainly as persuasive as two or several hypotheticals in the bush. That is the first justification for this book.
Counterfactual #2: The World with a More Creative and Effective UN?
The United Nations often fails; and it achieves far less than the visions of its founders would lead us to expect. Part of the reason for UN failures to achieve goals is that these are too visionary, or at least go far beyond where most governments are prepared to go. Another reason is the insufficient resources that governments provide. The old adage that states get the international organizations that they deserve continues to ring true. However, another explanation consists both of the waste and inefficiency resulting from weak personnel, who accomplish less and with less imagination than they might, and of the overlap and competition among the UN’s various moving parts. The UN’s organizational chart refers to a “system,” which implies coherence and cohesion. In reality that system has more in common with feudalism than with a modern organization. Frequent use also is made of the term “family,” which is apt because, like many such units, the UN’s is dysfunctional.
An informed exploration of this second counterfactual suggests possible steps toward a more creative and effective United Nations, which is not only desirable but also feasible. Former UN deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown stated: “[T]he call for reform is likely to grow steadily … the question remains when not if.”5 The last seven decades demonstrate growth by accretion, with more and more moving parts with less and less synergy, as well as higher transaction costs related to coordination for both host governments and UN staff. The results have been too few.
The overlapping jurisdictions of various UN bodies, the lack of coordination among their activities, and the absence of centralized financing for the system as a whole make ferocious turf battles more attractive than sensible collaboration. The UN’s various organizations too often work at cross-purposes instead of in a mutually reinforcing fashion. The system’s entities relentlessly pursue cut-throat fundraising to finance their expanding mandates, stake out territory, and pursue mission creep. Fundamental change, coherence, and integration are not in the bureaucracy’s interest; inertia and competition are.
Consolidation is anathema as officials rationalize complexity and react to incentives from donors to go their own way. Individual organizations focus on substantive areas often located in a different city from other relevant UN partners and with separate budgets, governing boards, organizational cultures, and independent executive heads. An almost universal chorus sings an atonal tune praising decentralization and autonomy; and the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chambers provide the main concert halls for this cacophony.
Recalling the UN’s lofty ideals and significant achievements is no defense for its ineffectiveness. Nor is it a reason for suggesting that the world organization could not have done far better in formulating ideas as well as in ensuring their practical follow-up. “What ifs?” apply to both the ideational and the operational aspects of peace and security as well as human rights, but perhaps it is easier to illustrate here quickly what the world organization could and should have been in the economic and social arena.
First, the United Nations could and should have been more efficient and effective had recruitment and promotion followed the principles of a dedicated international civil service haltingly begun by the League of Nations but spelled out by Dag Hammarskjöld. They should have been independent of governments and with their own identity, ideals, and interests.6
Second, far more work could and should have been done on the conditions to create stability in weak, failing, fragile, and conflictprone states. Even if international inequities were reduced, more robust efforts are required to address inequalities within countries. The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) is an encouraging experiment because sustaining peace has emerged as a priority, but here too performance is dismaying – for instance, all six of the original target countries are back at war or close to it. UN operations continue in all developing countries rather than in the least well-placed and poorest ones where the UN system has a comparative advantage and can provide an incomparable range of services.
Third, better promotion of UN ideas, norms, and principles could and should have helped foster its work. The UN should have pursued far greater outreach for its cutting-edge ideas, for which it has a distinct voice. Such work outside the box of neoclassical economic orthodoxy should have included the encouragement of multidisciplinary efforts in which economic issues interact with human rights, human security, and human development. For instance, the UN could have engaged in debate, publicly and privately, over the weaknesses of the Bretton Woods dogma and the Washington Consensus. Even many who are unconvinced that these approaches are broadly correct now recognize that some of the UN’s past work often led to crucial new insights into the inadequacy of conventional approaches.
Fourth, more creative work could and should have been done on issues of political economy for which the international system has failed. Economic weaknesses in how the global system limits opportunities for the least developed countries is one such area; others include inadequate progress toward the goals of sustainable development and environmental protection; the presence of bias in aid allocations; the lack of coherence in the global trade system and failure to practice public commitments to an open international economic system; and lack of incentives for measures of disarmament and development.
Fifth, more sustained attention could and should have been given to measures to achieve a more egalitarian international system and to pursue national policies that combine redistribution with growth. It may sound hopelessly naïve to utter the acronym “NIEO” (the 1970s call for a “new international economic order”), but the sentiments motivating that clarion call for a more just distribution of global wealth and the benefits of growth can hardly be ignored, as the populist backlash in the June 2016 “Brexit” and November 2016 US presidential votes indicated. With inequalities evident at all levels within and among countries, the glaring and growing gaps in power and income are aberrant and the subject of widespread and growing commentary and disgruntlement.
Counterfactuals in the following pages include proposals that never materialized but still make sense, such as Trygve Lie’s 1947 rapid intervention brigade and Kofi Annan’s 1997 consolidation of UN humanitarian entities. They also include the need to reverse sensible designs that went astray, such as the UNDP as a dedicated central funding organization instead of a supposed coordinator also competing with specialized agencies to execute projects.
That these alternatives would have been sensible, possible, and beneficial is clear, at least to this author. Such counterfactuals are worth pursuing as a thought exercise to make the United Nations fitter for purpose in the next decades of the twenty-first century. That is the second justification for this book.
Counterfactuals, the Briefest of Introductions
The scholarly world of social science is filled with in-depth counterfactuals that aim to be scientific and set up testable hypotheses. While counterfactual reasoning is regarded with skepticism by many observers, and especially by positivists, it is useful and indeed unavoidable when one wishes to draw cause-and-effect conclusions. While historians are appalled about exploring “what might have been” – “an idle parlor game” according to E. H. Carr7 – such reasoning is actually a sine qua non of learning lessons from history. Moreover, as James Fearon points out, social scientists routinely engage in them and thus “should be methodologically aware of what they are doing and should make their counterfactual arguments as explicit and defensible as they can.”8 Moreover, without counterfactual thinking and analysis – through which we may imagine the world as it could have been in order to envision the world as it should be – we are left with a deterministic view of reality in which our past missteps are, perforce, bound to echo into the future.
Much scholarly debate revolves around methodology. The most robust research designs rely on controlled experiments with subjects randomly assigned to variable treatment conditions that investigators can manipulate to determine the causal impact of particular factors.9 Such experiments, of course, are impossible in historical research; we simply cannot study multiple iterations of some phenomenon under variable conditions to determine what factors were relevant in producing an outcome. The confluence of attendant circumstances in any given historical instance never repeats itself exactly. Therefore, we must look to other approaches.
The term “counterfactual” suggests a subjective conditional in which the antecedent is known or supposed, for the purposes of the argument, to be false. That is, a historical fact is altered or omitted for the purposes of judging the effect resulting from altering that single antecedent.10 A provocative illustration of what I hope this book can accomplish is Alan Weisman’s The World without Us,11 which describes the physical world were humans suddenly to vanish. The world without the UN would undoubtedly be less dramatic to imagine than Weisman’s visions of New York’s Park Avenue collapsing, as groundwater eroded the railroad tracks leading to Grand Central Station, and the world being set ablaze as nuclear plants went, well, nuclear.
My aim is considerably less highfalutin and more modest than scientifically testable propositions, but nonetheless straightforward. This book investigates honestly the proposition, held by many, that the United Nations has made a trivial or non-existent or even negative contribution to world order since 1945. I probe illustrations from the last seven decades when the UN has made a generally acknowledged positive contribution. In doing so, I hope to push the reader to entertain seriously the proposition that we should feel indifferent about the existence of the world body – that is, we could take it or leave it. It is crucial to portray a clear-eyed description of the more difficult world that we would have without the multilateral institutions that have grown up as part of the UN system. In trying to imagine their absence from the world stage, the value-added of multilateralism will become explicit along with the consequences for a world without the United Nations. Warts and all, it would be implausible to argue that international society would have turned out much the same or be better today without UN ideas and operations since 1945.
The second counterfactual focuses on removing at least some of the warts. It is less of a stretch of the imagination insofar as it examines how a better supported, equipped, and staffed world organization could and should have made more of a difference. There may be a host of political and economic explanations for having fallen short or having outright failed in numerous instances; but here too it would be difficult to maintain that a better performance is irrelevant. Thus, my second series of counterfactuals provides an equally clear-eyed analysis of the implications of the UN’s major problems. The goal is to think about a coherent agenda for transformational change. In brief, my approach is more heuristic than scientific. Nonetheless, it reveals, in startling detail, the essential stakes and abiding consequences of decisions to establish the current generation of international organizations.
There are many categories of counterfactuals, but the most important for the purposes of this book is what Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin call a “mental simulation of counterfactual worlds.” This type of reasoning involves imagining and working through the detailed implications of another outcome in order to determine if this eventuality would lead to a different conclusion. Perhaps the best way to summarize this approach is with a less cumbersome expression – “thought experiment.” While we do not have the counterfactual knowledge of what would have happened had there been no active UN in the world or norms and operations, the acquis of the historical record is useful to weigh before tossing aside multilateralism’s contributions.
My hope is that this approach to the international political phenomena surrounding the United Nations respects a number of conditions that help prevent taking us too far afield from reality and thereby risking the integrity of the argument. Neither of my two counterfactuals qualifies as hopelessly speculative or self-evidently true. The first condition is clarity in the specification of variables. That is, it must be made clear what variables are under study and how they are defined. There must also be logical consistency. Despite the fact that counterfactual reasoning involves the invention of circumstances to test the impact of an alteration, occurrence, or non-occurrence of particular events, the principles connecting antecedents and consequences must remain plausible and tenable. Finally, there must be a degree of historical consistency in the counterfactual. In other words, proposed antecedents must require the alteration of as few well-established facts as possible. Moreover, counterfactuals should not presuppose unreasonable knowledge on the part of actors, given the time and circumstances in which they were acting.
I have done my best to respect these conditions in exploring the repercussions of many instances for a world without the United Nations, as well as with a better one. The aim is not to overstate the centrality of the UN but, rather, to tease out the implications of the absence of an essential contributor to peace and security, human rights, and development; it also is key to appreciate the potential of a more robust United Nations at a moment when the value of multilateral institutions has come under fire – in the United States, to be sure, but elsewhere as well. The hope is that the world organization’s champions and skeptics alike will be obliged to take my propositions seriously and that the community of UN historians will also engage.
About This Book
The argument unfolds in three main parts. The “Building Blocks” (players and problems) in Part I provide the way to organize the stories that are recounted about the three main pillars of UN activities – international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. Chapter 1 parses the main actors across “three” dimensions of the United Nations: the First UN (member states), the Second UN (international secretariats), and the Third UN (civil society, the private sector, the media, commissions, consultants, and individuals). Chapter 2 explores “Four UN Ailments,” namely sacrosanct state sovereignty; North–South theatrics; atomization; and lackluster leadership. There is no attempt to sugarcoat or trivialize the shortcomings of either the major players or the world organization itself. These problems constitute common threads that explain unsatisfactory outcomes or possibly better counterfactual outcomes in the remainder of the book. Readers encounter the three UNs from chapter 1 throughout the text, although the explicit emphasis here is on the member states and staff; the Third UN requires another volume. Readers also confront the four ailments from chapter 2 throughout the book.
Part II consists of instances in which UN ideas (or norms, principles, standards) and operational efforts have made a substantial and often crucial difference to world order. That is, this part explores the question: “The World without the UN and its Ideas and Operations?” It unpacks examples of ideas and operations that made singular contributions within each pillar of activities. Thus, chapter 3 contains an examination of “A More Violent World with Diminished International Peace and Security?”; chapter 4 of “A More Repressive and Unkind World with Diminished Human Rights and Humanitarian Action?”; and chapter 5
