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I live in Urayasu, the city where Tara Cannon teaches at Meikai University. We have in Urayasu a foreign residents association, which organizes events to promote multicultural exchange and understanding, and we invite speakers. It was at one such event that we had invited Tara Cannon to give a talk. So it is thanks to that introduction to Tara Cannon, that I am here today. I would first of all like to thank you for inviting me today to speak to you.
Nearly 30 years ago, the United Nations University brought me to Japan. When I retired about nine years ago, after twenty years of work at UNU, I decided to stay on in Japan. As you will have seen from my background, even before coming to Japan, I had been a UN official and have spent more than 40 years of my life in all working with the UN system of organizations in various countries. That is probably the only qualification that I have to speak to you today about the United Nations. Let us consider together what ails the UN system and what the Organization can do in terms of reforming and strengthening itself in order to regain some of the credibility that it lost as a result of the Iraq war.
To begin with, let us first review the key challenges that confront our world today, in the short and medium term, and particularly since September 11. We would then consider what comparative advantage the UN has, or might have, as a tool of global governance. Global governance does not mean world government or world federalism, but it does mean that our world should have global systems and rules so that the management of global affairs responds to the interests of all people living on this planet, regardless of their nationality, color or religion; that it is guided by basic human values, and that it ensures a sustainable future for the planet as well as for those inhabiting it. Global governance, once viewed primarily as concerned with intergovernmental relationships, now involves not only governments and intergovernmental institutions but also non-governmental organizations (NGOs), citizens’ movements, transnational corporations, academia, and the mass media. States remain primary actors but have to work with others.
Every historical juncture provides an occasion to review and assess the values and institutions that have been used to organize human life on this earth. At the beginning of the new century and the new millennium, the world leaders gathered in New York in September 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit and took stock of key international trends for peace and security, the environment, development, and governance and considered their implications for the world. In their Millennium Declaration[1], the world leaders reaffirmed their faith in the United Nations and its Charter and recognized their collective responsibility “to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level”. They set for themselves Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 and identified eradicating poverty, protecting the environment and promoting human rights, democracy, and good governance, and strengthening the United Nations as some of the key objectives to achieve in order to establish lasting peace in the world.
On 11 September 2001, global terrorism struck in the United States of America and the monuments to American power and prosperity were shaken. The world grieved and suffered and mourned as one along with the Americans. The US built an international coalition against terrorism, thus raising hopes among the countries wary of its unilateralism that it may return to multilateralism on other fronts. So far, that has not happened. For instance, the United States has shown no signs of joining the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and has unilaterally announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court and other international treaties.
There are those in America who think that there is no need for America to have partners in this world any more, that America is powerful enough to assert itself and to conduct its foreign policy and not really care what other nations think. On the other hand, there are others, like Walter Isaacson, President of Aspen Institute in USA, who thinks that it is necessary for America to understand that no nation, however powerful, can go it alone in this dangerous world or is able to conduct its foreign policy without friends and allies and partners. America is indeed most powerful today but there are some things that cannot be done without partners, such as winning the war against terrorism, or preserving the environment or stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
In a world that is dominated by the US as the sole superpower, Iraq is not the only crisis in need of urgent attention. The peace efforts in the Middle East have had a serious setback and almost daily suicide bombings take place followed by retaliatory attacks that kill hundreds of civilians on both sides. In our own Asian region, the North Korean issue continues to cause concern although efforts are underway to find a solution through consultations. There are growing threats of international terrorism and fears of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, creating a sense of instability and insecurity in the world.
The US-led attack against Iraq, without authorization from the UN Security Council, has raised questions about the international order, particularly about the credibility of the UN as the guarantor of all international security actions. This crisis has highlighted some of the basic weaknesses in the present UN system, which must be remedied if the UN is to continue to be relevant in today’s world. The reform of the UN, or rather its complete overhaul, has been the key issue at the world organization for more than a decade now and the US has been on the forefront of this demand for reform.
It is no secret that the UN is confronted by a number of major challenges regarding both the foundations of its authority and the scope of its legitimate role in a rapidly evolving global environment. Today’s institutions and systems are indeed out of date and incapable of meeting contemporary challenges. For example, if the legitimacy of the Security Council has been eroded, it was due not only to the Iraq crisis but also because of its structural deficiencies which we shall discuss later. The basis of the world order, with the UN at the center of the system of global governance, has come under increasing strain and the future and prestige of the UN is under scrutiny as never before.
The UN Secretary-General fears that the Iraq war could set a precedent and states might be resorting to unilateral instruments because of a loss of faith in “the adequacy and effectiveness of the rules and instruments” at their disposal. He said, however, that it was “not enough to denounce unilateralism unless we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral actions”. This is why, he concluded, we needed to take a hard look both at fundamental policy issues and structural changes that might be necessary for the UN to win back and retain the confidence of the peoples and governments.
In his words, “we have come to a fork in the road ……… a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the UN was founded”. Accordingly, the Secretary-General has formed a panel of eminent persons to make recommendations on significant political and structural reforms to bring the UN in line with current threats and challenges to peace and security. (Incidentally, Prof. Sadako Ogata from Japan and Gen. Satish Nambiar of India are on this panel).
The UN was established in 1945 with the primary objective “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”[2]. This was the second attempt to form such an international forum after the failure of the League of Nations. The world was then focused on preventing a third world war and avoiding another global depression. Thus the establishment of a set of international, intergovernmental institutions to ensure peace and prosperity was a welcome development and ushered a new era of international cooperation and governance. Changes came rapidly and on a global scale.
One effect of World War II was to weaken the traditional great powers of Europe – the United Kingdom and France – and it triggered a fundamental shift in the relative standing of powers and the structure of world politics. The collapse of the old colonial order and the emergence of new economic and political powers out of the developing world could be considered as the most important development resulting from this shift. In a relatively short time, countries such as India and Indonesia, Brazil and China became significant regional powers. The immensity of these changes can be judged by imagining the difference between the 51 UN delegates present in San Francisco in 1945 and those who would represent the current 191 member states if such a conference were convened today or how different the Security Council would be if it were created from scratch today.
With the end of the cold war in 1989, the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe extended the movement towards democratization and multilateralism. The world community seemed to be united around the idea that there was a need to assume collective responsibility for a wide range of areas, including security but not only in a military sense but also taking account of the social and economic aspects, sustainable development, promotion of democracy, equity and human rights and humanitarian needs of people.
During the last few decades there has been unparalleled progress in science and technology that presents great potential for advancement. The combined technologies of the telephone, computer, television and the satellites are merging into an information system that permits instantaneous interactions across the globe, thus creating a virtually borderless electronic world. The revolution in communications has quickened the pace of interaction on a global scale. There has also been extraordinary growth in global industrial and agricultural productivity, with profound social consequences, such as migration and urbanization, depletion of non-renewal natural resources, environmental degradation and global warming.
The accelerating changes in communications and computer technology, combined with deregulation, reinforced the movement towards an integrated global market. The changing patterns of economic growth during the last few decades produced two new financial giants, Germany and Japan, two nations defeated in World War II and listed in the UN Charter as enemy states. The European Union has emerged as an economic power matching the United States. The striking performance of the four Asian ‘tigers’ and of China, with countries such as India and Indonesia not far behind, is shifting the world center of economic gravity.
The term globalization has been used primarily to describe some key aspects of the recent transformation of world economic activity. But several other activities, including drug trade, terrorism and traffic in nuclear materials, have also been globalized, and are helped by the financial liberalization.
Global cooperation has eradicated smallpox and has eliminated tuberculosis and cholera from most places, but the world is now struggling to prevent the resurgence of these diseases and to control the global spread of AIDS and SARS.
While some countries benefited from the new opportunities arising from rapid globalization, the promise of prosperity has not touched a vast majority of the world’s population, mostly those living in the least developed countries. The majority of people in these countries live under miserable conditions, and their numbers are still growing. Unfortunately, the sharp decline in ODA during the nineties has put in question the commitment of the richer countries to reducing poverty in the less developed countries.
The links among poverty, population, consumption, and environment and the systemic nature of their interactions have become clearer. So has the need for integrated, global approaches to their management. There is mounting evidence that human activities have adverse – and sometimes irreversible – environmental impacts, and that the world needs to manage its activities in order to keep the adverse outcomes within prudent bounds and to redress current imbalances.
During the last five decades, the United Nations and its numerous agencies have made strenuous efforts to improve the lives of people on this earth, with some of the achievements being in the area of health and eradicating diseases, providing assistance to refugees in distress, reducing illiteracy, and providing technical assistance to developing countries. The UN system also serves to provide regulatory frameworks for other issues of global importance, including post and telecommunications, shipping, aviation, international finance, labor standards, the welfare of children, and education and culture. These activities of the United Nations are not generally well known and the United Nations is primarily judged as a “peace-keeper” in the world.
After the World War II, nuclear weapons came to be seen as a badge of great-power status and a potential shield against a hostile world. All the permanent members of the Security Council felt it necessary to acquire their own nuclear capabilities. Several other countries also invested heavily in developing the ability to produce these weapons: Argentina, Brazil, India, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and South Africa. And there has been a further dispersion of nuclear weapons material and technology following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
At the same time, there have been large-scale sales of conventional weapons, particularly to developing countries, which have become increasingly militarized drawing funds away from vitally needed economic and social development.
The world may, in fact, be on the verge of a new race to acquire weapons of mass destruction. These include biological and chemical weapons in addition to nuclear ones. The new arms race may involve not only states but also non-state entities – drug syndicates, political movements, terrorist groups. There are also the risks of accidental war as the number of countries with these weapons rises.
More than a decade after the US-Russia Chemical Weapons Destruction Agreement of 1992 and seven years after the Global Chemical Convention of 1997 went into effect, the progress on eliminating stockpiles of these weapons held by the two countries has been so slow that neither the US nor Russia – owners of more than 95 percent of the world’s known chemical weapons tonnage – will meet the 2007 deadline set by the Convention for full destruction. In fact, almost certainly, neither country will meet the soon-to-be-extended 2012 deadline.
In addition to the wars between states, a more formidable new challenge to the world community are the conflicts originating within national polities – in Yemen, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, for example, and even Iraq for that matter. The peace and security provisions of the UN Charter were designed to deal with wars between states, and it was not envisioned that the UN would intervene in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. But the United Nations is under public pressure to take action when violent strife within countries leads to extensive human suffering or threatens the security of neighboring countries.
Sovereignty has been the cornerstone of the inter-state system. In an increasingly interdependent world, however, the notions of territoriality, independence, and non-intervention have lost some of their meaning. In certain areas, sovereignty must be exercised collectively, particularly in relation to global commons. Moreover, the most serious threats to national sovereignty and territorial integrity now often have internal roots. The principles of sovereignty and non-intervention must be adapted in ways that recognize the need to balance the rights of states with the rights of people, and the interests of nations with the interests of the whole globe.
The late Alan Cranston, a US senator from California from 1969 to 1993, in a book entitled The Sovereignty Revolution, concludes that the current concept of sovereignty, which is “widely and unwisely thought…to mean only national sovereignty, helped make the 20th century the bloodiest in history, and that humanity will not survive the next century unless we revise our concept of sovereignty to acknowledge the primacy of the individual and emphasize the importance of strengthening transnational organizations and international law”. He did recognize the UN’s distinct potential to cope with global problems but felt that the UN lacked the requisite tools, and that the main tool that the UN needed was a carefully defined share of sovereignty from each one of the member states.
The initial efforts of the United Nations in keeping peace in conflict-prone areas of the world were quite successful but the rapid expansion of complex operations has created serious political and financial difficulties for the United Nations. These difficulties, combined with the tragic failures in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and recently in Iraq, have produced a mood of frustration and uncertainty about future directions. Moreover, the tasks of the peacekeepers have now expanded to include implementation of complex peace agreements, overseeing transition to democratic governance through supervision and operation of elections, demobilization of previously opposing armed factions, rehabilitation of collapsed state structures, provision of broader support to humanitarian missions, including protection of safe areas and escort of relief envoys, and removal of anti-personnel mines from contaminated countryside.
The United Nations currently lacks the capacity and resources to perform effectively all the tasks it has assumed in the area of international peace and security. Anyone who is familiar with the UN peacekeeping operations will recognize the paucity of means available to the UN, whether in the form of well-equipped troops, qualified police officers, or financial resources, to deliver the ambitious goals set by the Security Council.
Not only is it necessary to strengthen the role of the United Nations in this area but also there is a need for an appropriate division of responsibility between the United Nations, regional organizations, national governments, and non-governmental organizations in order to ensure a more effective and comprehensive response to conflict situations around the world in the spheres of preventive action, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace-building.
The UN Charter, in Chapter VIII, recognizes the role of regional arrangements or agencies in dealing with matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security and calls for efforts to be made for peaceful settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements before referring them to the Security Council. While the world is becoming closely interlinked, the unique constraints of each region – differing in history, culture, and geography – and how these factors might shape each region’s prospects must be taken into account in shaping future international policies. The regional organizations can bring about a more balanced economic order within their regions and thus contribute to promoting peace and security in their regions and the world. They should thus be considered an integral part of a more democratic system of global governance.
The three great challenges facing us remain the creation of a world in which people live in freedom from want, freedom from fear and the freedom for future generations to sustain their lives on this planet. This means that the concept of global security needs to be broadened from the traditional focus on the security of states to include the security of people and the security of the planet. The question before us is whether the UN can facilitate the attainment of these goals and in order to do so, how should it be reformed?
In a recent issue of the New York Times, I saw an open letter from a scientist in South Africa under the banner: “The United Nations Committed Suicide”. In the article the writer asserts that by approving retroactively the Iraq War, the UN Security Council destroyed its own conduct of international law, the UN Charter, and thereby, the very basis for UN’s existence. He proposes that people need to build what he calls the Alliance of Nations. Some may consider this to be too radical a view but there are people in this world who think that UN has become powerless, ineffective and irrelevant.
Many have dreamed of rebuilding the United Nations and its system of specialized agencies from the ground up so to speak but this seems to be too ambitious a goal. What is needed is a better coherence among the numerous UN agencies and the willingness of the international community to give them the authority and resources they need. This has been the motivating spirit behind the Secretary-General’s sustained attention to reforms since he took over the post, namely, how best to translate the ambitious mandate into an achievable agenda of action within a realistic time frame, through institutional, programmatic and administrative arrangements. The difficulty, however, is that certain long over-due fundamental structural reforms are not within the mandate of the Secretary-General and these can be put in place only by agreement among Member States.
The UN’s program is both complex and comprehensive, as is to be expected of an organization asked to deal with almost every aspect of international cooperation. The effectiveness of the UN system has to do with the existence of proper instruments, the timeliness of decisions, the adequacy of means to meet the goals. At the end of the day, it depends on the political will of the states and their leaders: their will to respect the commitments they have made, their will to implement the conventions they have signed, and their will to support with resources the institutions they have created. The system cannot succeed without the political, moral, financial and material support and participation of its member states. The UN is not a world government but if it is not given a meaningful role in world affairs and appropriate support, the UN will be reduced to a historic relic.
It is a well-known fact that the UN does not have adequate logistical and military capabilities of its own to maintain collective security, and it is unlikely that it will acquire them in the foreseeable future. Therefore, US political and military leadership is required when the UN is to mount a strong collective security operation. The US prefers to operate a “coalition of the willing” outside the UN framework, although authorized by it. The obvious conclusion is that traditional collective security operations can only be decided by the Security Council and carried out, by common agreement, under US leadership[3].
Preemption is not permitted under the UN Charter as it is not considered within the acknowledged right of self-defense. However, if preemption is not legally permitted but is strategically essential and morally justified, it becomes necessary to review and redefine the existing framework of laws and rules. The urgent matter now confronting the international leadership therefore is not just the UN’s role in the reconstruction of Iraq but, more broadly, the reconstruction of the UN itself, namely that of restoring the confidence in the UN that was lost because the US defied its authority to go to war in Iraq.
The heart of the problem lies with the concept of sovereign equality of all member states, as provided in the UN Charter. In reality states are not equal - militarily, economically, politically or morally. One thorny issue is reforming and enlarging the Security Council whose five permanent, veto-wielding members were selected in the shadow of World War II. The declining role and legitimacy of the Council can be attributed to its ineffectiveness but equally also to its unrepresentative composition. How can Africa and Latin America not have any permanent members? For that matter, how can Asia, home to more than half the world's population, have only one permanent seat? How can Japan, which pays more to the UN than the combined assessments of France, Britain, China and Russia (four of the five existing permanent members), not be a permanent member?
The reform of the Security Council, which is the core of the international law-enforcement system, is viewed almost universally as an imperative if its authority is to be preserved in the new century. The legitimacy of the Security Council as the authoritative validator of international security actions has been eroded because it is perceived as being unrepresentative in composition, undemocratic in operation and ineffective in results.
Although the structural reform of the Security Council has been under review for more than a decade, the member states have not been able to agree on the size of the enlarged Council or the countries which should become new Permanent members and whether they should have the power of veto or not.
In order to make the membership of the Security Council more representative and reflective of the current geopolitical realities of the world, it is proposed that the membership of the Security Council be expanded to a total of 24 Members, ensuring that all the regions of the world are equitably represented, including also the small island countries. Permanent membership should be increased from five to ten in order to ensure representation from the regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America in addition to Japan and Germany. The veto power that was decided more than fifty years ago is not relevant in today’s world and should ideally be phased out. However, since the current permanent members will not be prepared to give it up, it may have to be given also to the additional permanent members but its use should be restricted to enforcement actions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. It should not be used for the election of the Secretary-General.
The Security Council should be able to deal promptly with any request for authority to intervene where there are allegations of large-scale loss of human life or ethnic cleansing. Its Permanent Five members should agree not to apply their veto power to obstruct the passage of resolutions authorizing military intervention for which there is a majority support. Action outside a Security Council paralyzed by veto is less defensible. If the Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time, alternative options are consideration of the matter by the General Assembly in an Emergency Special Session under the “Uniting for Peace” procedure, and action by regional or sub-regional organizations within their own area of jurisdiction, subject to their seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council.
For this purpose and for the UN to be more effective, the General Assembly should be revitalized as a universal forum of the world’s states. Addressing concerns expressed in the past over the insufficient activity of the Assembly, the Millennium Declaration has reaffirmed “the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations”[4].
While recognizing the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states, it is necessary to assert as well the rights and interests of the international community in situations within individual states in which the security of the people is extensively endangered. A global consensus exists today for a UN response on humanitarian grounds in such cases. However, such interventions should be restricted to cases when, in the judgment of a reformed Security Council, the situation involves a gross and extreme violation of the security of the people and requires an international response on humanitarian grounds. It is proposed that the UN Charter be amended to permit such interventions. The Council should be authorized to call on parties to an intrastate dispute to settle it through the mechanisms listed in the Charter for the pacific settlement of disputes between states. The Council should also be authorized to take enforcement action under Chapter VII if such efforts fail but only if intervention is justified on the grounds of a gross violation of the security of people. Even then, the use of force should be the last resort.
The international community must provide increased resources for the UN’s peacekeeping operations, using some of the funds released by reductions of defense expenditures. The cost of peacekeeping should be integrated into a single annual budget and financed by assessments on all UN member states, and the peacekeeping reserve fund should be increased to facilitate rapid deployment. The UN needs to be able to deploy credible and effective peace enforcement units at an early stage in a crisis and at short notice. Moreover, the integrity of the UN command should be respected. In accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, more active use should be made of the regional organizations by involving them in conjunction with the UN in resolving conflicts within the regions.
The international community should reaffirm its commitment to progressively eliminate nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from all nations and should initiate a time-table to achieve this goal in the next ten to fifteen years. All nations should sign and ratify the conventions on chemical and biological weapons. Donor countries and institutions should evaluate a country’s military spending when considering assistance to it. States should undertake immediate negotiation of a convention on the curtailment of the arms trade – including provision for a mandatory arms register and the prohibition of state financing or subsidy of arms exports.
There is another organ of the UN whose functions must be examined carefully, and that is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Efforts to reform ECOSOC have resulted in some improvements but it has not been able to deal effectively with the broad mandate on international economic and social cooperation as specified in Chapter IX of the UNU Charter. The time is therefore ripe to build a global forum that can provide leadership in economic, social, and environmental fields. This forum should be more representative than the Group of Seven (or Eight) or the Bretton Woods institutions and more effective than the present UN system.
It is proposed that an Economic Security Council (ESC) be established, as per the recommendations of the Commission on Global Governance. The ESC would meet at a high political level, and its influence will derive from the relevance and quality of its work and the significance of its membership. It should be established as a distinct body within the UN family, structured like the Security Council, although not with identical membership, and should be independent of it. It will be necessary to ensure close coordination among the principle organs of the UN and to ensure greater policy coherence and better cooperation between the UN, its agencies, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the World Trade Organization, as well as multilateral bodies. There is also the need to give greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and civil society to contribute to the realization of the Organization’s goals and programs.
All proposals for strengthening the United Nations will be hypocritical unless they are accompanied by adequate financial and other resources. It has been proposed earlier that the cost of peacekeeping should be integrated into the assessed contributions that should be legally binding on all UN member states. Moreover, serious consideration should be given to the several proposals that have been made by the various Secretaries-General for innovative methods of financing, such as enabling the private sector to make contributions or taxing international air travel, etc. Options for other public sources of revenue, such as designated levies on the global commons, should also be examined. An innovative but perhaps slightly idealistic proposal was made by Mr. Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic, who suggested that the “United Nations should do everything in its power to see to it that people perceive it as their own organization, not just a club of governments”, and that “people could pay the United Nations directly”. Contributions to the UN would then be contributions of all the inhabitants of this planet, not of governments.
In the last decade several reports, documents and even books have been written on the reform of the United Nations. There are many ideas on the table as to how to reform and strengthen the UN system. There is general agreement among the member states about the necessity and urgency of these reforms but a final decision has not been forthcoming because of self-interest on all sides. With the world body shaken by the Iraq war and the bombing of the its headquarters in Baghdad, the UN needs to redefine its role in the new political and security environment and reform itself to adapt to both the new “unilateral” world of a lone superpower and the spread of terror attacks.
It is quite understandable that the US has to ponder its national interests carefully in a post-9/11 environment, but it is also obvious that without the US support and leadership, the UN cannot become an effective organization. Referring to the US-UN relationship, the Secretary-General has said recently that despite fears of a breakdown in international order, some of which he shares, “[he believes] profoundly that the US and the UN need one another. The relationship must be seen as one of productive interdependence”. He added that it was up to all those who believed in a collective system of security to show that the concerns such as the fear of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction could still be addressed more effectively through collective action. Noting that the US eventually sought and achieved an agreement in the Security Council on Iraq, he believed that it did so because “it recognized the need to engage with others and listen to their concerns…..in a forum whose legitimacy is recognized and where responsibility is shared”.
The Secretary-General also said that there were many other examples where collective action was more effective. “Can any one nation by itself tackle the problem of global warming or protecting the environment? Can any one nation advance the cause of human rights and bring to justice those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Can any one nation by itself win the war on terrorism or prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction or stop trafficking in illegal drugs?”
The UN is our collective instrument for organizing a dangerous world on a more orderly basis but it needs to be reformed so as to reflect the needs and realities of today. With that objective in mind, the Secretary-General appointed an independent and prestigious panel to deal with structural inadequacies and reforms that were highlighted by the Iraq war and to map out a new role for the UN in the 21st century. The world now awaits anxiously the outcome of the report of the panel by the year-end but, more importantly, the actions that will be taken to implement the recommendations of the panel.
Footnotes
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