The Hindu : Is the United Nations relevant?

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Thursday, Mar 13, 2003

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Is the United Nations relevant?

By C. Raja Mohan

The debate on Iraqi disarmament has masked a deeper crisis. It is about basic differences among the great powers on the nature of the new threats to international security.

AS THE Gulf crisis deepens, the future of the United Nations is as much at stake as that of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. If the great powers of the Security Council fail to come to an understanding on Iraq in the next few days, the U.N. might become less relevant for international security. It is an outcome that no one would seem to want. But it also appears inevitable. If the United States goes to war without the support of the international community, as it well might in the next few days, the idea of collective security that underlies the U.N. system would also become irrelevant. The Gulf war could well engineer the demise of the current international order and launch a new one.

The U.N. debates have made it clear that the differences between the U.S. on the one hand, and France, Russia and Germany on the other, over Iraq now seem irreconcilable. Even Britain's Tony Blair has now gone wobbly as he desperately seeks U.N. cover to sustain his shaky support to the U.S. The U.S., in its determination to pursue the war against Mr. Hussein, stands in virtual political isolation. It certainly has the support of key neighbours of Iraq to enforce a regime change in Baghdad. But that has not been of much use in shaping the international debate on Iraq.

The U.S. President, George W. Bush, has to decide in the next couple of days whether he will continue with the diplomatic dance at the U.N. or go the unilateral route. That will be a momentous decision that could alter the structure of international relations for a long time to come.

The U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, indicated on Tuesday that America was prepared to go to war even without British participation. Although he modified that statement later, Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks reflect the mood of the hardliners who were never enthusiastic about going through the U.N. to effect a regime change in Iraq. The White House itself has dismissed the absence of international support as inconsequential.

The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, argued earlier this week that the U.N. alone might not speak for the international community. "There are many ways to form international coalitions," he added. "The United Nations Security Council is but one of them." This is the first time that the White House has elevated the potential role of the "coalition of the willing" as an alternative to the U.N. As the prospect of a war outside the U.N. framework appeared real, the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, was quick to warn against the dangers of undermining the world body. If the great powers "fail to agree on a common position and action is taken without the authority of the Security Council, the legitimacy and support for any such action will be seriously impaired", he argued.

Any potential compromise at the U.N., however, will fall way short of the positions staked out by Washington on the one side, and Paris, Moscow and Berlin on the other. Neither can afford a compromise that smacks of a political defeat and the attendant domestic consequences. Walking back from the war now or agreeing to delay it further will be a huge political blow to Mr. Bush. Across the Atlantic, a decision by the European powers to support an early war will be hugely unpopular as Mr. Blair has discovered. Neither side has left much room for itself to retreat from stated positions nor do they have room to save the face of the other. That precisely is why the desperate British attempt to build a consensus might not succeed.

The crisis at the U.N. is not merely about procedures and timelines on disarming Iraq.

Nor is it about the failure of the Bush administration to make an effective political case for its war to oust Mr. Hussein. Washington has erred badly in its judgment that arguments about Iraqi non-compliance with past U.N. resolutions will be enough to gain international support for a regime change in Iraq. Instead of making a political argument for changing the regime in Baghdad, the Bush administration lost its way, developing a criminal case about the Iraqi programmes for weapons of mass destruction. As a result, the UNSC debate was transformed into a courtroom drama assessing the reports of bureaucrat-inspectors. It has now degenerated into an awful headcount within the jury for a guilty verdict and capital punishment.

The debate on Iraqi disarmament has masked a deeper crisis. It is about basic differences among the great powers on the nature of the new threats to international security. It is also about unbridgeable divergence on when and how to use force against these threats. The U.S. and its former European allies no longer agree on these fundamental questions. They do not share an understanding of the threats posed by global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and the means that must be employed to defeat them.

Collective security systems are based on shared security perspectives among the major powers and a political will to act together. The collective security framework of the U.N., devised at the end of the Second World War, never worked during the Cold War thanks to the East-West divisions. After the Cold War, the U.N. system certainly expanded its role in international security affairs, although there was no coherence to this increased activity. The lessons drawn by the U.S. after the tragic events of September 11 and the course it has set for itself in addressing the new challenges to international security are neither shared by its former Cold War partners, nor by its new friends in Russia. As a consequence, the marginalisation of the U.N. has become inevitable.

Irrespective of the outcome in Iraq, India has no reason to bemoan the collapse of the old international order, for it had such little say in its management. The thundering rhetoric from New Delhi on the importance of the U.N. role in Iraq is hypocritical. After making the big mistake of taking the Kashmir dispute to the U.N. in the late 1940s, India has never really been willing to consider an expanded role for the U.N. in the management of international security. The absence of support in the U.N. did not deter India from taking unilateral military action in East Pakistan in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh. Nor did India take the permission of the U.N. to launch "bread-bombing" of Sri Lanka in 1987.

As the U.N. began to raise its profile in world affairs in the 1990s, India was firmly opposed to its interventionary role. India has devoted considerable diplomatic energies to fob off Mr. Annan's attempts to muscle in on the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. It had firmly rejected the UNSC Resolution 1172 passed unanimously in June 1998 asking New Delhi to roll back its nuclear and missile programmes.

Instead of worrying about the decline of the U.N., India needs to think creatively about new international coalitions that can deal with the challenges from terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction to irresponsible regimes and extremist groups.

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