Why The United Nations Doesn't Stand A Chance

The United Nations (UN) is the centrepiece o♏f what is touted as the rules-based international order. The entrenched biases in these rules are, however, laid bare by the composition and voting procedures of its most powerful organ, the Security Council. The Council was designed as an alliance of the permane🍃nt five to maintain international peace and security. But these powers became the biggest warmongers who reduced the Council to a showpiece by ensuring that it did not act against them or their protégés. Much worse, the Council became an instrument of their hegemony when, in the brief periods of their camaraderie, it authorised them to take military action on its behalf.

The blame for this lies essentially with the big three—the United Stat🐷es, Russia and China—who are aggressively trying to establish their dominance in world affairs. The United Kingdom and France, much diminished in military strength, play second fiddle to the US.

The UN was the second international organisation formed to provide security to the world. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, sandwiched between the two World Wars, had a fleeting existence. The UN has done little better in saving the world from the scourge of war, but it has one creditable achievement—it has survived. Its main founding powers, the US, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, fell out soon after its formation and their collective security arrangement became unworkable. They could not agree on providing a military force to the Security Council under Art✅icle 43 of the UN Charter, leaving the newborn at their mercy for any military action.

Despite this inauspicious start, the Security Council began with a dramatic military operation in 1950 in the Korean War when the US was able to get a resolution adopted against North Korea. The resolution escaped the Soviet veto because it was boycotting the Council at that time. The US promptly sent its forces to defend South Koꦑrea. Although it included troops from its allies and was called a UN Force, the US kept it under its command and brooked no interference from the Security Council. The Soviet Union learnt its lesson. It hurried back to block any further such action and has never since been absent, no matter how isolated. For the next four decades, the Security Council lay in slumber as the world went through the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars and numerous others. In 1959, it met only five times and adopted one resolution.

During this freeze, the UN tried to stay relevant through the efforts of the Secretary-General to use his good offices to mediate in conflicts. It also came up with the innovative idea of peacekeeping to monitor the ceasefires it had negotiated. Denied an army by the P5 (the permanent five countries), the first Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, raised a voluntary force drawn from neutral and non-aligned countries. The first two were sent to the Middle East and Jammu and Kashmir. Later, when the second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, wanted to send a similar force to Congo, France and the Soviet Union refused to allow it to💧 be financed from the UN’s regular budget. Ha🍃mmarskjöld set up a voluntary trust fund and all subsequent peacekeeping operations have been funded in this manner. These operations gave the Security Council a face-saving role in conflict zones. Successful in parts, peacekeeping is but a tame substitute for the robust military action envisaged in Article 42 of the UN Charter.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to the revival of the Security Council under US dominance. In 1990, the Security Council authorised military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait. Once again, the US led the invasion on its behalf. Its success opened the floodgates for similar action—in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Zaire, Albania, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic. Russia and China did not participate in any of thes𝕴e operations, but they did ꦍnot veto them.

The Security Council also used its powers, under the Charter, to impose sanctions on countries and terrorist organisations. Mild sanctions had been imposed on Southern Rhodesia and South Africa𝐆 during the Cold War. They proliferated afterwards and 14 sanctions-regimes are still 🐼in force on countries and terrorist organisations.

In the heyday of its activism, the Security Council also toyed with concepts like R2P—responsibility to protect—a euphemism for invading countries where the government was unable or unwilling to protect its people. Grand schemes were drawn up by activists in the West to promote democracy and human rights across the world in the belief that this would put an end to internal conflicts. The disastrous consequences of intervention in Somalia and Libya and global inaction during the genocide in Rwanda dampened this enthusiasm by exposing the limitations of military intervention in domestic conflicts. The US also tried its hand at nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, but re💙gime change was all it could manage and chaos ensued in its aftermatജh.

Russia’s revival and China’s rise ended this phase of Security Council activism. The invasion of Libya in 2011 by the Western powers was too much for Russia to swallow and it abandoned൲ its policy of abstaining on such resolutions. Thereafter, it vetoed as many as 18 attempts by the US for military action against Syria. The Security Council slid back into its veto days, but there were few tears for it this time.

This is not to say that the UN does not have achievements to its credit. It has done commendable work in areas such as decolonisation, disarmament, development, humanitarian assistance and the environment, but the initiatives in these came from the General Assembly and other organs of the ꦫUN, not the Security Council. Now, even these have started drying up. The international arms control architecture is unravelling as the big powers backtrack on their commitments. Even though the number of nuclear weapon🐻s has fallen since the Cold War days, they are more lethal and better targeted, making for greater willingness among countries to consider using them. There is also little seriousness among leaders to restrict the proliferation and deployment of new technologies such as fully autonomous weapons.

The new global divide between the Western and Eastern blocs has adversely impacted even pe✤acekeeping operations and the effectiveness of UN sanctions. No new peacekeeping mission has been authorised by the Security Council since 2014, while five have been terminated during this period, bringing them down to 11. Their effectiveness has also been severely compromised amidst f✨oggy mandates and funding problems. No new sanctions regime has been imposed either and the existing ones are getting diluted due to half-hearted adherence by countries.

The Secretary-General’s good offices have become less frequent and effective in the new Cold War environment and the US prefers its own diplomatic efforts in critical areas like the Middle East. China has also tried its hand at it by bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia to a highly publicised agreement. All this has further sidelined the UN🔯 and its Secretary-Genera⛦l.

In the last two 👍decades, amidst increasing wars and threats of war, the Security Council has not been able to take any new action in its primary task of maintaining international peace and security. The vast majority of its resolutions these days relate to Africa and housekeeping matters. All substantive resolutions on conflicts in which the P5 are engaged or interested get vetoed or never come up for debate.

In its 80th year, as the world lurches from one war to༒ another, the UN appears to be reconciled to fading into oblivion. The squabbles of the P5 in the Security Council would seem comical but for the spectre of another world war hovering so ominously. Led by vacuous leaders who repose greater faith in force than cooperation, the P5 have no use for the UN and no respect for the values enshrined in its Charter.

Even in the Global South, whose members had embraced the UN in the early years of their independence, enthusiasm for the Security Council has all but vanished. Two amb💙itious summits—the Millennium Summit in 2000 and the World Summit in 2005—sought to give new mandates to the Council and a fillip to its reform process. While the new mandates remained non-starters, the reform process ground to a halt after going round in circles for years. Four countries—India, Japan, Germany and Brazil—joined hands in their bid for a permanent seat, but each of them is opposed by their regional rivals, including one or more of the P5. Africa also wants at least two seats for itself, but is unable to agree on the countries. An amendment to the Charter requires the consent of two-thirds of the General Assembly, including all the P5 countries.

With the larger UN membership so fragmented on the issue of reform, the P5 enjoys the luxury of paying lip service to it whenever it comes up. High-level meetings continue to be held, including the Summit of the Future 🌼last September, but none has had the participation or the fervour of the earlier ꦜtwo.

India, meanwhile, continues its campaign for a permanent seat, recounting the size of its population and contribution to peacekeeping. With its economy growing, it has also started citing its status as one of the five largest economies. It advocates for the Council to be made more democratic and transparent and more representative of the current geopolitical realities. But the Security Council has never pretended to♒ be a representative body or democratic, and there is increasing realisation in India t♏hat permanent membership is not only impossible, but would also be meaningless in a deadlocked and irrelevant Council. India would likely draw greater support if it were to attack the very concept of the veto and permanent seats.

The two big flashpoints in the world today are the Middle East and Ukraine. The US is deeply embroiled in one and Russia is the invader in the other. Both conflicts have the potential to conflagrate into a larger war that can turn nuclear in a flash. Then there is China, which threatens to invade Taiwan and is bullying countries in the South China Sea. With such master🔥s and guarantors of the peace, the UN stands no chance of fulfilling its mandate of maintaining international peace and security. It has already become as irrelevant as its predecessor was on the eve of the Second World War. The UN has always been haunted by memories of the League of Nations dying unsung in Geneva. This is no longer just an apparition.

(Views expressed are personal)