Politics

The UN’s Unhappy Birthday

Sep 10, 2020 Richard Haass

As the United Nations turns 75, the COVID-19 pandemic is keeping world leaders from gathering in New York City to mark the occasion and attend the opening of the annual General Assembly. In fact, the pandemic helps illustrate why the UN is not fit to organize and manage the international cooperation that the world urgently needs.

NEW YORK – The United Nations turns 75 this autumn, and if this were a normal year, many of the world’s leaders would gather in New York City to celebrate this milestone and open the annual meeting of the General Assembly.

But this year is anything but normal. There will be no gathering because of COVID-19 – and even if there were, there would be little grounds for celebration. The United Nations has fallen far short of its goals to “maintain international peace and security,” “develop friendly relations among nations’’ and “achieve international cooperation in solving international problems.”

The pandemic helps illustrate why. The UN Security Council, the most important component of the UN system, has made itself largely irrelevant. China has blocked any significant role for the UN’s executive body lest it be criticized for its initial mishandling of the outbreak and be held responsible for the consequences. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization deferred to China early on and has been further weakened by the United States’ decision to withdraw from it. The result is that the major powers get the UN they want, not the one the world needs.

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Richard Haass

Writing for PS since 2000
155 Commentaries

Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author, most recently, of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin Press, 2023).

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 6 Comments on this article

Madurai Padmanabhan Sep 17, 2020

Would the World Bank & IMF also deserve the same status update?

All post war institutions appear to have similar assessments. Perhaps the complexity of global multilateralism is beyond current human capability.

Rules made have become archaic, we claim democratic vision but significant number remain unrepresented, human rights is worshipped in theory but movement of people is discriminatory, imbalances in power, financial clout and knowledge are misused; meanwhile reason is touted even as base human behavior has prevailed that blinds us to our own extinction.

Why are you weeping for the UN, look around the same forces are burning up the space around you. But you may be in the bubble of your own creation.
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Iddoosaa Ejjetaa Banae Sep 15, 2020

At present, there is a looming and imminent chaos in Horn of Africa, Ethiopia; the world seems to witness once again the atrocities committed against humanity in the former Yugoslavia unless the UN takes a swift action now before too late. Many organized and strong-armed forces are emerging in most regional states that threaten the general governance and bring about security crises throughout the country. The 2018 political reform was misused and collapsed by PM Abiy Ahmed.

As we speak, there is collective punishment taking place against the Geneva Convention. Concerned political parties have submitted an appeal to the African Union’s (AU), the UN bodies, EU, and other international communities to urge the Ethiopian government to avert the constitutional crisis, looming, and eminent chaos.

Mainly, “the UNSC who has primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security, should not give a blind eye when one of the second-largest countries in Africa is encountered with political, social, human rights and economic crises and eventually collapse.” This time, I hope the UN shall not repeat a historical mistake once again, and act swiftly to avert looming and imminent chaos and human suffering in Ethiopia and East Africa.
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j. von Hettlingen Sep 10, 2020

As the United Nations turns 75 next week, Richard Haass says the mood will be somber. Under normal circustances world leaders would attend the opening ceremony to mark the occasion, but this year – for the first time in the UN history – they stay away, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They will instead hold the General Assembly by delivering prerecorded messages in a videoconference. Whatever the outcome their absence would hardly be felt.
According to the author, there are “little grounds for celebration” this year. When delegates from 50 states signed the UN founding charter, the world was still grappling with the ravages of WWII. Today, the ideals they signed up to are undergoing an unprecedented stress test. The UN has lost its raison d’être – to “maintain international peace and security,” “develop friendly relations among nations” and “achieve international cooperation in solving international problems.”
Even well before Covid-19 hit, Trump’s “America First” policies had deprived the world body of its traditional leader, the US. Meanwhile rising geopolitical tensions had paralysed the UN Security Council. The pandemic has reinforced these dynamics, accentuating US unilateralism and exacerbating an increasingly heated US-China rivalry. The UN “has fallen far short of its goals” to live up to its stated purpose – to manage conflict and international cooperation the world urgently needs.
Despite frequently coming under fire for its inefficiency and inefficacy, “this is not to suggest the UN is without value. It provides a useful venue for governments to talk, be it to avert or calm a crisis. UN agencies have promoted economic and social development and facilitated arrangements ranging from telecommunications to monitoring of nuclear facilities. Peacekeeping missions have helped to maintain order in many countries.”
The author says, “overall the UN has disappointed, owing to great power rivalries and member countries’ reluctance to cede freedom of action. The organization’s own shortcomings haven’t helped: a spoils system that puts too many people in important positions for reasons other than competence, lack of accountability, and hypocrisy (such as when countries that ignore human rights sit on a UN body meant to uphold them).”
The outdated Security Council has been an object of loathing. Its structures allow any of the five veto powers — the US, Russia, China, the UK, and France — to block any decision with a single vote for their own purposes. Any effort to alter “the composition of the Security Council to reflect the distribution of power in today’s world, would favor some countries and disadvantage others. Not surprisingly, those who stand to lose can and do block any such change.”
The General Assembly, the most “democratic” and representative of the UN’s structures, “lacks teeth and is rendered ineffectual insofar as every country has one vote, regardless of its size, population, wealth, or military might.” The membership dues owed to the chronically stretched UN budget have frequently been used as leverage for other aspirations.
Yet the UN is still considered an indispensable power in an increasingly globalised world. Its organisations play an integral part in efforts to mitigate or resolve various kinds of crisis. The current global crises show that “the need for international cooperation is great. We face not only the revival of great power rivalry but also multiple global challenges, from pandemics and climate change to nuclear proliferation and terrorism, for which there are no unilateral answers.”
Luckily there is always appetite for constructive cooperation among member states, which often “create alternatives – such as the G7 and G20 – when the UN falls short. Coalitions of the relevant, willing, and able can come together to tackle specific regional and global challenges. We are seeing versions of this in trade policy and arms control, and might well see it in climate action and in establishing norms for behavior in cyberspace.”
As we live in an interconnected world of interdependence, “the case for multilateralism and global governance is stronger than ever.” If significant reform of the UN is “not a realistic option,” more and more multilateral issues can be dealt with “outside the UN. In order to be up to the task of tackling upcoming challenges, the world body, “for better or for worse,” needs to rediscover its vocation, the mission that made it so indispensable in the aftermath of wars and during crises. But it also needs to understand its failures, in order not to repeat them.
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Jonathan Engel Sep 10, 2020

Could one tentatively suggest that the UN is actually "without value" (or of negative value) in the sense that its existence makes the launching of alternative or complimentary multinational organisations difficult if not impossible ? The proliferation of catastrophically "inept" (to be polite about it) bodies (the Human Rights bodies essentially consisting of the worst HR violators on the planet, the Women Rights organisation managed entirely by men who deny that such rights might exist, the refugee organisations which spend all their political and financial capital on the tiny group of "Palestinians"); the system whereby there is a majority of non democratic or more correctly anti democratic states in the GA, who tend to be kleptocratic states as well; where "peace keeping forces" get away with violating their mandates, and the women in the countries to which they are sent; where most of the organisations created by the UN are headed by relatives or friends of Heads of State, having no competence whatever for their employment... No, I think that the concept of the UN having negative value can be well defended.....
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Michael Public Sep 10, 2020

Crimea had a referendum. A high 90% legitimately supported joining Russia.
- Yuriy Bondarchuk Sep 21, 2020
  
  The so-called referendum was conducted in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution and did not comply with the rules of international law. Neither the OSCE nor the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe agreed to delegate its observers to the "referendum" calling it illegitimate.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
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