In today's allegedly grown-up world, it is indeed refreshing to see the presumably adult leadership of countries large and small, great and pissant, acting is if they were at some Model UN instead of the real, honest-to-gosh one. The flood of idealistic rhetoric flowing from President Obama, President Sarkozy, and others was sufficient to cost Noah his ark.
Then came the noted humanitarian, Muammar Ghaddafi, with a message which quite unintentionally called the Specter of Rationality back to the Edifice On The Hudson. There can be no doubt that nothing was further from the (poorly) aging Libyan jefe grande's mind than invoking realpolitik in a place which is seldom willing to admit that grim presence.
Gaddafi called attention to a fundamental reality of the UN. Despite the soaring declaration in the preamble to the UN Charter, all nations are not created equal. The basic tension between the ideal of the UN being some sort of Parliament of Humankind and the practical matter that some countries are stronger, more powerful, and thus capable of imposing their will on others was recognized by everyone connected with the process of creating the body.
The UN, after all, had its origins in both the failure of the Wilsonian League of Nations and the need to fight a war in order to clean up the mess which came in the wake of the League's failure. This reality implied several (to Gaddafi and others of a more genuinely idealistic bent) disagreeable features would characterize the UN.
First and foremost, the UN was a creation of the nations which won the war(s) against Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. This reality was embodied in President Franklin Roosevelt's notion of "The Four Policemen." Later raised from four to five in a genuflection to French pride, the "policemen" concept was based on the misperception--or pious hope--that the wartime alliance of convenience would extend into the peace.
Although the necessary breakup of the shotgun marriage between the Soviet Union and the Western nations was foreseen by Winston Churchill types, the dark shadows of realpolitik were dispelled by the false dawn of peace. The implication resident in the tension between the Soviet Union and its co-victors meant that the Security Council would be powerless if it sought to take action counter to the self-defined national interests of either of the two diametrically opposed blocs. At the same time, the thinking which had made the Security Council the locus of power in the UN was fully justified in the minds of most by the well remembered total failure of the far more "democratic" League of Nations.
The processes and procedures of the League assured it was unable to take any effective action in the face of a threat to peace. Regardless of the nature and character of the threat, the League was toothless not because the US was not a member but because its charter, its processes, its procedures assured that no genuine threat would be countered by a response other than rhetorical appeals and toothless sanctions imposed as the members saw fit--or not.
The General Assembly was never intended to be more than a talk shop. Like any legislative assembly from village councils on up the food chain, the General Assembly has verbiage as its primary product. The process of talking both in the arena of the Assembly--and in the periphery of the Delegates Lounge and corridors--has genuine utility. But, the Security Council was intended to have the ability--in principle--to take effective action.
Yes, Colonel Gaddafi was right (even if his number was too small) in that the Security Council has been very poor in performing its original intended task--preventing aggressive wars. While it is painful to write so, the Colonel was far more on target with his criticism than was President Obama with his proclamation of UN success in healing countries broken by war.
However, the Gaddafi criticism is irrelevant. The Security Council--in tandem with bilateral acts both tacit and overt--limited the scope of wars. It helped prevent both horizontal and vertical escalation.
Ironically, the Security Council collaborated with nuclear weapons to make the world safe for wars. Limited wars, wars which were often far more internal than external. Wars which had the potential to widen drastically did not do so in part because the Security Council provided a fine auxiliary to the bilateral and inter-bloc efforts at decoupling of war from the nuclear threshold.
For the best part of a half-century, the Security Council, while acting not as a global cop on the beat but rather as a discrete forum for tacit agreement, had a fine record of assuring wars did not rage out of control. This was possible because the Security Council is small, very small when only the five Permanent Members are considered.
As the General Assembly grew ever larger with the proliferation of "new"states, it became even less of a "Parliament of Humankind" and more of a fractious congeries of competing blocs, regional factions, and naked self-interest. Not unlike the parliament of the later Dual Monarchy, the General Assembly became a disorderly house. The problem was not, as Colonel Gaddafi would have it, a lack of "democracy" but a surfeit, an excess of that commodity.
Compared to the activities of blocs, regional groups, religiously based assemblages, and the machinations of Great Powers in the General Assembly over the years, the backroom deals, logrolling, special interest group and corporate lobbying in the US Congress pale into utter insignificance. The votes in the "democratic" General Assembly have been for sale on the basis of foreign "aid," appeals to regional solidarity, and, most recently, calls to religious sodality. This, of course, leaves aside the even more seedy aspects of personal and institutional corruption which have made the General Assembly resemble the worst features of Boss Tweed's New York or Hizzoner Daily's Illinois.
Put simply, Colonel Gaddafi's proposal that the Security Council be stripped of the Big Five, the Veto Powers, and be expanded by the inclusion of regionally allocated seats would be to make the Security Council a clone of the General Assembly. The Colonel's waving of the totem called "democracy" was both destructive and patently self-serving. It would also mean the end of the United Nations as a body having the slightest shred of credibility or potential.
This is not to imply that the UN does not need significant reform. It does. But, not in the way intimated by the speeches of President Obama or his French counterpart. The UN needs to get back to basics.
The organization was established first and foremost to keep the international peace. The primary intent of those who founded and developed the UN during its first fifty years of existence was to prevent and punish international aggression. While its record at this is not the best, it is nonetheless good enough.
When the UN lost sight of its initial, primary function and wandered into intervening in the domestic affairs of member states, it attenuated its focus, lost credibility, and took on the most impossible of missions--restricting the sovereign ability of states to conduct their own affairs.
This mission leap allowed the UN to seek authority over individual regimes. Admittedly many, most even, of these governments were obnoxious, violated the rights and dignity of their own citizens and did any number of throughly reprehensible things. Still, unless and until these regimes violated the borders of their neighbors their actions should have resided outside the purview of the UN either the Security Council or the General Assembly.
The employment of fraudulent mechanisms such as the US supported notion that the issuance of refugees from the ambit of an obnoxious regime constituted a potentially destabilizing situation allowed the UN to take its eyes off the prize of international peace and instead take a jaundiced look at noxious behavior on the part of regimes that some country, some power did not like for whatsoever reason. This sort of hazy view allowed even the travesty committed by the W. Bush administration when it invaded Iraq under the color of UN resolutions.
An increase in "democracy" or an elevation of "ideals" would provide the basis for actions in the future which would transcend even the Bush adventure in regime change. The existence of global problems of economy and environment provide an attractive basis for a further expansion of the UN's self-perceived mission of interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states for some external, abstract reason.
Colonel Gaddafi and his ilk from the so-called "lesser developed world," or as has been dubbed in recent years, "The Global South," know this temptation is part and parcel of the UN in all its many subsidiary institutions. They know it is in the very air of the General Assembly.
Nothing excites the diplomats and leaders of the Global South more than the idea of taking advantage of the Global North. Of gaining power at the expense of the Great Powers of the North. That is what the Gaddafi version of "democracy" is all about. That is why he expressed what so many in the by and large irrelevant minor countries of the world think and say to each other.
Ironically, in his call for "democracy," in his demand for "equality" the Colonel demonstrated just why the Permanent Five are so necessary. He also showed the leaders of the Five just what is at stake should they or their successors ever allow an excess of altruistic or guilt-driven ideals override the dictates of practical realpolitik.
Yep, bucko, that's right. The end of civilization as we know it.
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