Would the World Be Better Without the UN?

Thomas G. Weiss

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781509517299
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique européenne

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.

Part I
Building Blocks

Part I sets out the main actors and problems around which are organized the illustrations in Parts II and III regarding the three main categories of UN activities – international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. The players are briefly spelled out in chapter 1: member states; international secretariats; and other stakeholders (civil society, the private sector, the media, commissions, consultants, and individuals). Chapter 2 parses four major ailments of the United Nations: unreconstructed state sovereignty; North–South theatrics; atomization; and lackluster leadership.

The shortcomings of the major players and the world body’s organizational dynamics reappear as explanations for unsatisfactory outcomes as well as components for possible and more satisfactory outcomes. Readers encounter the three UNs from chapter 1 and the four problems from chapter 2 throughout these pages.

1
“THREE” UNITED NATIONS

This first chapter unpacks the UN’s most important actors. The world organization is, first and foremost, an intergovernmental organization; and so a major explanatory factor behind the UN’s minuses is the extent to which member states paralyze decision making and impede action. That the governments of its almost 200 member states are part of the problem is beyond doubt, but analytically it is essential to distinguish the “First United Nations” (the stage or arena for state decision making) from the “Second United Nations” (the secretariats whose staff work for the organization and have a certain margin for maneuver).¹ “There’s a fundamental confusion between the UN as a stage and the UN as an actor,” former assistant secretary-general Robert Orr summarizes. “As an actor, there’s so little we can do, and often the people accusing us are the same ones who prevent us from being able to act.”²

No one should be surprised about the realities of the First UN and the Second UN, which provide this book’s focus. After all, member states establish priorities and pay the bills, more or less, thus determining the world body’s agenda. To be sure, international civil servants would not exist without member states; but an institution of member states would not have a presence or impact without the administrative support of a secretariat. Success or failure in changing and implementing policy is not independent of states with their resources and vital interests. Yet there is more room for maneuver and autonomy on the part of international secretariats than is often supposed.

In addition, the “Third United Nations” appears in these pages as a component in some successes and failures, although it is not the focus and hence does not appear in later recommendations about future strategies. Its composition is simply too vast and amorphous to address here. For the sake of completeness, however, the reader should be aware that it consists of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), independent experts, consultants, the media, for-profit corporations, and committed citizens who are integral to today’s United Nations. They often combine forces around UN deliberations and operations. They include scholars, practitioners, and activists who maintain their independence but provide essential inputs into UN discussions, operations, advocacy, implementation, and monitoring. What once seemed marginal now is central to multilateralism. Numerous individuals and institutions that are neither states nor the creations of states (that is, intergovernmental bureaucracies) influence deliberations and decisions by member states and secretariats. The rebalancing of public and private, of states and markets, suggests the need to move beyond Inis Claude’s 1956 textbook distinction.³ Individuals matter – in governments, in the international civil service, and in global civil society.

A word is in order about “international community,” a term that usually introduces confusion into analyses of multilateralism. International lawyers narrowly mean “peace-loving states” – euphemistically, the First UN. Other observers employ the term more expansively to connote not merely 193 member states – along with Palestine and the Vatican as non-member observer states – but also their creations in the form of intergovernmental bodies – that is, the Second UN. Still other commentators use “international community” to embrace not only states and international secretariats but also non-state actors operating internationally – that is, the Third UN.

What is the value of these distinctions? An adage comes to mind – success has numerous parents, but failure is an orphan. States are rarely willing to blame themselves for breakdowns in international society; and secretariats often indiscriminately blame governments for their lack of political will. The First UN of member states has a convenient scapegoat in the Second UN of international secretariats, and vice versa. To repeat, they are the preoccupation here.

Hence, blaming the world organization without distinguishing these separate actors obfuscates rather than clarifies analysis. The boundaries are porous, but properly apportioning the blame for failure or success – what Robert Cox and Harold Jacobson long ago called “the anatomy of influence”⁴ – is a necessary and increasingly complex task that requires identifying the strengths and weaknesses of specific actors. An increasingly crowded international stage finds major roles and bit parts. States are still the marquee actors, and national interests have not receded as the basis for decision making; international secretariats serve these state masters but have more agency than many believe. These distinctions are important in exploring the implications of the counterfactual cases in Parts II and III because blanket statements about UN “success” or “failure” have little meaning without apportioning responsibility.

Member States and Secretariats, the First and the Second UNs

Unsurprisingly, the First UN has long been the focus of scholarship. After all, member states – fifty-one in June 1945 and almost four times that number today – determine what the world body does or does not do. Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore distinguish five roles for the First UN: “as an agent of great powers doing their bidding; as a mechanism for interstate cooperation; as a governor of international society of states; as a constructor of the social world; and as a legitimation forum.”⁵ States pursue national interests from “high politics” in the Security Council to “low politics” in the boards and governing councils of UN funds and specialized agencies. States caucus in regional groups for the General Assembly and in smaller groups for numerous issues. Notions of the First UN find a home in virtually all theorizing about international relations: for a realist emphasizing self-interested states within an anarchical system; for a liberal institutionalist focusing on the costs and benefits of state cooperation; for a proponent of the English School analyzing the development of shared norms and values in international society; for a constructivist concerned with ideational change and identity shaping; and for a pragmatist seeking to legitimate specific values and actions.

The Second UN is also distinct, consisting of career and contractual staff who are paid through assessed and voluntary contributions. The international civil service is a legacy of the League of Nations, whose characteristics are enumerated in Article 101 of the UN Charter. A leading advocate for an autonomous Second UN was the second secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld. His May 1961 speech at Oxford does not ignore the reality that the international civil service exists to carry out decisions made by states; but it emphasizes that UN officials pledge allegiance to striving for a larger collective good rather than defending the interests of the countries that issue their passports. That senior UN posts are set aside for high-level officials approved by their home governments undermines the integrity of secretariats. Moreover, a shadow today hangs over the UN Secretariat as a result of events ranging from corruption in the Oil-for-Food Programme to sexual exploitation by peacekeepers.

Nonetheless, a basic idealism has animated the best of the Second UN. Autonomy and integrity are not unrealistic expectations for international civil servants. Today’s professional and support staff number approximately 55,000 in the UN proper and another 25,000 in the specialized agencies. This number includes neither temporary staff in peace operations (about 125,000 military, police, and civilians in 2016) nor the staff of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank group (another 15,000). These figures represent substantial growth from the approximately 500 employees in the UN’s first year at Lake Success or the 700 staff employed by the League of Nations.⁶

The Second UN typically receives little attention from analysts. But staff do more than carry out marching orders from governments. UN officials present ideas to tackle problems, debate them formally and informally with governments, take initiatives, advocate for change, and turn general decisions into specific programs of action and implement them. They monitor progress and report findings to national officials and politicians gathering at intergovernmental conferences and in countries with UN operations.

None of this should be a surprise. At the national level, it would be strange if civil service staff ...