The charter's focus should widen from international peace and security to'human security', writes Noel Dorr
The United Nations as an institution which superimposes a rule of law on the relative anarchy of international relations is now more than 50 years old. How well has it functioned?
There is much on the positive side. Its membership has expanded nearly four-fold. It is now truly universal - the first such organisation of states in history. It has become the centre of a family of other, more specialised organisations which promote international co-operation; and it has set norms for many areas of international life.
For over half a century it also provided the framework for decolonisation for up to 100 states. Each aspired to UN membership as the symbol, and the guarantee, of its newly won independence. Each committed itself to the charter which is now universally accepted - though not always observed - as the code of rules for relations between states.
In such ways the UN has been a success. There is a good record too of UN peacekeeping where Ireland has played its part.
But the Cold War split, in conjunction with the veto power of each of the five permanent members, meant that, for half a century, the core organ of the collective security system, the Security Council, never functioned as originally intended as an effective world authority.
When the Cold War ended it seemed the council would at last begin to play that role. For a time, it became more active in addressing conflicts and the veto was seldom used. It also acted innovatively to establish tribunals to try people accused of war crimes or genocide in Rwanda and in former Yugoslavia.
But it soon became evident that in the euphoria after the Cold War, the UN had taken on more than important member-states were willing to support or pay for. More seriously, its ineffectiveness - or worse - in averting genocide in Rwanda and war crimes in the Balkans was widely criticised, not least in reports commissioned by the Secretary-General.
The war in Iraq, however, highlights two more fundamental criticisms of the concept of an organisation such as the UN.
One is that it is pacific but not pacifist. We know now that sanctions against a tyrant can hurt his innocent victims; and enforcement action authorised by the Security Council involves real bullets. Éamon de Valera told the Dáil in 1946: "You have to face the waging of war in order to prevent war. It seems a strange thing . . ." To this one can only answer that force has always been a feature of international life. The UN Charter seeks to reduce it by limiting it to two cases: action by the council to avert or end conflict and self-defence.
The second criticism is the unrepresentative, or undemocratic character, of many UN member-states. Look for example at the present composition of the Security Council. Does entrusting authority to such a body not mean "handing great moral - and even existential politico-military decisions - to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France", as Richard Perle put it contemptuously in a recent article?
It is true that many UN member- states which serve their turn as members of the Security Council are not democracies; and some show little regard for human rights. So the UN today reflects very imperfectly the ideals of a charter which begins: "We, the peoples of the United Nations." But it does reflect the world as it is. Even if many of its governments are less than representative of their peoples, for better or worse the UN is representing the world in all its messy diversity.
But Perle has another agenda. He wants to end "the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions".
He sees "coalitions of the willing" as the best hope for a new world order; replacing the UN as a universal organisation with ad hoc combinations organised by one or other major power prepared to use force to ensure its own security.
Some of this thinking is evident in US policies in Iraq. The disarmament issue has been subsumed in a policy of regime change for which there is no council mandate; and force has been used to avert, not an imminent attack but a perceived future danger. President Bush said explicitly on March 6th that September 11th had changed his strategic thinking. "We must be prepared to stop rogue states . . . before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the US . . . If we need to act, we will act and we really don't need United Nations approval to do so."
Saddam's regime is melting away. As it does, horrifying evidence of his brutality and torture may well emerge. Will this vindicate the policy of pre-emptive action and encourage a similar approach elsewhere? Will the US which invented it abandon the UN, as Perle proposes, in favour of pre-emptive action by "coalitions of the willing"? If so, the 21st century world will indeed be a dangerous place.
It is true that the world has changed greatly since the UN was founded, perhaps more than in all previous history. Humanity is now divided into some 200 separate "sovereignties" but it is also united and interconnected as never before through globalisation; and September 11th lit up a new landscape where fanatical terrorism with global reach endangers all states.
So the UN needs to be reformed. A first step would be to stop speaking of it as an entity detached from its member-states. It is best seen as a structure available to them to use.
The five states which have permanent seats on the Security Council have a particular responsibility. What they do creates a kind of spiral: if they support the UN in a sustained and consistent way, they will strengthen it over time but whenever they turn away and by-pass it they weaken it further. Fifty years ago they drafted the charter. They should now undertake sustained negotiations between themselves and offer their proposals to the wider UN membership. They might look first at four specific points:
First, they should agree to a limited enlargement of the Security Council and a new allocation of permanent seats to reflect more closely the real distribution of power in the world today.
Second, they should agree to limit their use of the veto to decisions on enforcement action on which they are prepared to state a direct national interest.
Third, there should be some modification of the principle of state sovereignty which would allow the Security Council to act to stop the kind of large-scale atrocities which occurred in Rwanda.
Fourth the council's capacity to act might be strengthened by creating a limited standing UN force of say 7,000 which could be sent in quickly in such a case.
There are other changes to consider. The aim should be to widen the charter focus from "international peace and security" to a larger concept of "human security". This will not be easy. But we will continue to need the UN. The universal acceptance of its charter is our best hope of averting a "clash of civilizations", where a "crusade" on one side calls forth a "jihad" on the other.
- Noel Dorr is a former secretary-general of the Department of Foreign Affairs and from 1980-83 was Irish permanent representative at the UN.