The U.N.'s future political role

By P. S. Suryanarayana

THE RISE and decline of the United Nations as the world's premier institution, especially so in the early 1990s, have already defined a truly dramatic cameo during the ongoing phase of post- Cold War uncertainties in global politics. It is no less significant that the fluctuating fortunes of the U.N. can indeed be traced to the changing attitudes of its principal member and prime architect, the United States. A poser now is whether the required reformation of the U.N. will be catalysed in a proactive manner or merely tolerated by the U.S. under the younger Mr. George Bush's administration. Relevant to a difficult answer to this puzzle is the manner in which the U.N. Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, has sought to uphold the mystique of the organisation. During a recent tour of South Asia, Mr. Annan would not call for specific reforms even while carrying out a reality check attuned to the emerging ethos of the 21st century.

The U.N. had in fact acquitted itself well at one critical stage in the early 1990s during the ongoing period of globalising politics. The organisation, in particular the Security Council, voiced the call of the collective international conscience in a highly complicated political ambience. The context of the call was determined by the many different events that shaped the origin as also the outcome of the 1991 Gulf War. A later-day perception, entirely non-American in scope, about the same context remains equally telling today. It is now widely recognised that the U.S. was just being clever as it orchestrated the broad security concerns of the international community during the early 1990s. Not surprisingly, a realistic evaluation today will reveal a contrasting picture of the U.N. The forum can be seen to be bereft once again of either genuine traces or even artificial signs of transnational unity.

The U.N.'s present outlook does not presage any serious likelihood of its disintegration like a collapsing star of idealism. Nor do the major powers really want the U.N. to turn into a terrestrial parody of the cosmic `black hole': an infinitely less awesome `virtual reality' of a dense `dead- weight' dotting the international political arena. If the U.N. today evokes negative images of outer space, the reason has much to do with the organisation's chequered evolution since its formation as as a votary of peace over a half-century ago. In the violence-soaked milieu of World War II, peace was an almost ethereal aspiration.

The U.N.'s `peace-and-security agenda' has always been dictated by its five permanent members (P-5 or Big Five). Obviously, the shape of this agenda at any given time is determined by the political equations among the P-5 members. For nearly the first quarter-century of the U.N.'s existence, a grotesque anomaly marred the P-5's credentials. China's seat was occupied during this period by the nationalists, although they were overthrown by the communist patrons of the People's Republic in 1949. The U.S. did not accept an ideological People's Republic of China as a P-5 member until their differing strategic compulsions in the early 1970s required mutual accommodativeness. No such problems troubled the U.S. when the Soviet Union, for long a bastion of anti-U.S. sentiments, disintegrated in the early 1990s. The fall of the Soviet Union, facilitated by a leader who was reaching out to the U.S. in the face of its knee-jerk suspicions, suited Washington's long-term interests. Post-Soviet Russia, therefore, faced no problem in inheriting a P-5 seat. For Washington, this diplomatic denouement contrasted sharply with the defeat of the U.S.-friendly Chinese nationalists at the hands of communists in 1949.

The simple oddities of the P-5 membership will serve as an important reckoner for any U.N. reforms. It is common knowledge today that India, the largest democracy and a strategic player- aspirant on the global scene, wants to be a permanent member with `teeth' - the right of veto now enjoyed by the P-5 over international security issues, the ultimate weapon and symbol of power politics. Separately, Japan and Germany, for reasons of their phenomenal economic success that can spell a revival of their political power, aspire for a similar status. Not really relevant is the status of a current economic slowdown, if any, in the countries concerned.

Mr. Annan's latest thoughts on this subject barely conceal the reluctance of the P-5 to be either politically chivalrous or simply forward-looking. He said in New Delhi on March 16 that he would ``agree'' with ``many nations'' that the Security Council ``must be reformed and brought in line with today's realities''. Its current ``structure is a bit anachronistic'', he emphasised, and his statement can be seen to be a bit courteous to the slow thought process of the P-5 on this issue. Without any reference to Mr. Annan's comment, the P-5's collective inertia, which is germane to a dispensation based on the concentration of powers, can be blamed. Moreover, the oligarchical tendencies of the collective forum, itself an elitist internal club of the U.N. system, are often reinforced by the rivalries within the P-5. So, it requires no incisive thinking to advocate a P-5 reform that should match the proliferation of important state-players in different parts of the world.

The interplay of two contradictory realities will finally determine the new contours of the P-5 and therefore the political future of the U.N. itself. First, the P-5's original mooring - the winner-vanquished matrix of the World War II context - has not made any sense at all since the end of the subsequent Cold War. Despite the togetherness of the P-5 members, the Big Five has not emerged as either a ``pluralist security community'' or a ``security regime''. These two concepts have been generally applied by strategic analysts such as Barry Buzan in respect of ``patterned interactions'' among states in specific empirical settings other than the U.N. By definition, a ``security regime'' consists of states which seek to moderate the threats they might pose to each other. A ``security community'' is an arrangement of states which do not expect or prepare themselves to use force in their interactions with each other. The second critical reality for the P-5's future is that the largely U.S.- centric order of today's global politics makes a mockery of the original principle of power-sharing by the Big Five at the U.N.

Closely linked to the power of the P-5 is the extent to which the Security Council resolutions can be enforced. About the controversial resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, Mr. Annan said during his recent visit to South Asia that ``there are Security Council resolutions which are important but they are not self- enforcing''. In his view, India and Pakistan must ``negotiate''. The two, he said, should ``come together through dialogue to implement whatever agreements are taken, which the Security Council resolutions could bear up''. This formulation leaves the Kashmir-related Security Council resolutions as reference material even if they be not enforceable. For India, which does not like to be disrespectful of the U.N., the poser is whether non-enforceable resolutions cannot be removed from the organisation's `peace-and-security agenda'. An erased resolution regarding aggression against Korea may be assessed as a precedent.The U.N.'s role with reference to non-security matters is also circumscribed by the collective will of key member- states. This can be discerned in regard to a number of human rights issues and the recent failure of the U.N. to prevent the Taliban from obliterating Afghanistan's pre-Islam heritage. On a different plane, the traditional peace-keeping and peace- enforcement tasks will require the U.N. to tone up its mechanisms and coordinate with the various regional organisations and evaluate their security initiatives such as those being envisoned, for example, in Europe now.

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