Obituary for an 80-year-old: At its anniversary, the UN looks more dead than alive

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The institution is showing its age. It is indeed elderly, often sclerotic, and, as with many 80-year-olds, while the thought is not aired in polite society, many are wondering how long it has left. Few would dissent from the idea that the UN needs drastic reform if it is even to fulfil its intended purpose, but there are doubts about whether such reform is achievable, and, if it is, whether such efforts would be sufficient.

The principles on which the UN was founded, as expressed in its Charter, are unimpeachable. The organisation was intended “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind,” “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,” and to forge a new world in which “justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”.

If the purpose was noble and universal, the institutional structure, by contrast, was wholly a product of its time and the circumstances which brought it into being. Its genesis was in a series of agreements signed during the Second World War: the London Declaration of June 1941, the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, the Declaration by the United Nations inaugurated in January 1942 and the Moscow Declarations of October 1943. It was shaped by conferences between the major Allied powers of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, a disparate and unlikely trio brought together by the shared endeavour of defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The events of the years leading up to 1945 are hardwired into the UN 80 years on. The Security Council, established by Article 23 of the UN Charter, has five permanent members, all of whom can veto any decision except a procedural one. The so-called P5 are the United States, the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China and the French Republic — but when the body first met in 1946, the Soviet Union occupied the seat which is now Russia’s, while China’s place was taken by the Republic of China, the Nationalist régime of Chiang Kai-shek, which was ultimately defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communists and exiled to Taiwan in 1949.

From its first years, then, the Security Council was already a reflection of the past. For decades after mainland China had come decisively under Communist control, it was the Taiwan-based Republic of China which held a place on the Security Council. The switch was only made in November 1971, when UN Resolution 2758 removed the Republic of China and assigned the permanent seat on the Security Council to the People’s Republic of China.

The Security Council issue

Today, the gap between the Security Council and contemporary geopolitics remains glaring: if one were to choose the world’s five leading powers, would you select the U.S., China, Russia, the UK, and France? In terms of global reach, economic might and diplomatic influence, the U.S. and China would be included, but the other three would be in doubt.

It is true that all five are states with nuclear weapons, but India could make a case for inclusion in terms of nuclear capacity and sheer size, while economic strength would point to Germany and Japan. It is also noticeable that Africa and South America are unrepresented.

The lack of balance in terms of geography, population, and economic heft is not the most striking issue: it is the veto each permanent member wields. This means that some of the biggest global players can prevent the United Nations from taking any significant action on major crises.

For example, in the three and a half years since Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the Security Council has passed only one resolution specifically addressing what it has habitually referred to as “the Russian Federation-Ukraine conflict.” That did not come until February of this year, when the body agreed on a text virtually devoid of meaning. It implored “a swift end to the conflict and…a lasting peace between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.” Russia has, predictably, vetoed a number of draft resolutions on the war, beginning with a text proposed by the United States and Albania the day after the invasion (on Feb. 25, 2022).

The permanent members’ veto hobbles the Security Council, and therefore the UN as a whole. Yet without it, the UN would not exist — or, at least, it would not function. To take only one member as an example, the United States would not participate in the organisation if it could be compelled to take action it did not want to take. Think of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations. It was devised at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20, and formally established on January 10, 1920. Its founding Covenant declared its purpose to be:

“to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, Just and honourable relations nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments.”

This mission drew heavily on the famous Fourteen Points that President Woodrow Wilson had announced to Congress on January 8, 1918 as a basis for a peace settlement to bring the First World War to an end. In particular, the last point stated that:

“A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

Wilson was one of the godfathers of the League of Nations. However, in November 1919 the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles — the first time it had ever rejected a peace treaty — preventing America from joining the League. There were 42 founding members, and another 21 nations subsequently joined, but the U.S. never did, as the idea of a supranational body limiting Washington’s freedom of action and decision was deemed intolerable.

Paralysis of decision-making

There have been many proposals for reform of the Security Council. One has been enacted: in 1965, the number of non-permanent members was increased from six to ten by amending Article 23 of the UN Charter.

In 2005, Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan formed an association known as the G4 to support each other’s claims to a permanent seat. In 1995, Italy, Pakistan, Mexico and Egypt came together as the “Coffee Club,” and then again in 2005 as a group called Uniting for Consensus, which argued against enshrining new permanent members while coming out in favor of an expansion of non-permanent seats. Uniting for Consensus now has a core group of 12 nations while attracting support from over 100 UN member states. Meanwhile, the African Group, comprising 54 nations, seeks two permanent seats to be rotated within its membership in order to ensure the continent’s representation on the Security Council.

Russia and China have tentatively endorsed the claims of India to permanent membership. So too, at times, has the United States, which is also sympathetic to Japan’s case. In 2014, the United Kingdom expressed support for the G4 countries and two African nations to have permanent seats. Yet there has been no actual change in 60 years.

This is the great Catch-22 of Security Council reform. Each permanent member must agree to any change in membership, and each examines any potential change through a ruthlessly geopolitical lens. China supports India because it seeks allies in the developing and non-Western world, and Russia is now heavily dependent on India as a market for its oil.

The United States and United Kingdom support Germany and Japan because they are staunch economic, diplomatic, and military allies. France takes a similar stance. Still, decades of declarations expressing support have not led to institutional change; instead, they are played off as cards in the great game of geopolitics.

Peacekeeping without peace

This increasing sense that the United Nations is institutionally dysfunctional, that it is unrepresentative and excessively dominated by Western powers, has undoubtedly harmed its reputation and authority as a global body. Its avowed purpose is to protect the rights “of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — without any formal declaration — makes a mockery of that mission, as does America’s unilateral actions extending back through the invasion of Grenada in 1983 (and its sustained and resolute defence of Israel). Meanwhile the shade of the legally questionable 2003 invasion of Iraq still hangs heavy over the United States (and also the United Kingdom).

The UN’s reputation is not always burnished by its peacekeeping activities. The abject failure of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to prevent the horrifying genocide of 1994 — which cost somewhere between 650,000 and a million lives — was a grievous blow to the organization. It seemed to the world that the UN force of less than 2,500 could do nothing more than look on helplessly as Tutsis were raped and hacked to death with machetes.

Elsewhere, peacekeeping missions have often proved ineffective. It is telling that UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, has been deployed for more than 47 years — hardly “interim.” UNFICYP, the peacekeeping force in Cyprus, was established in 1964, and while it did reduce intercommunal violence at first, it did nothing to deter or prevent Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island and the creation of the illegal régime in Northern Cyprus as part of a conflict that appears to be no closer to a resolution.

More damningly still, there have been numerous instances of sexual abuse and human rights violations (including murder) by UN peacekeepers — in Kosovo, Haiti, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, and elsewhere. This is not just the United Nations as an ineffective agent, but as an organization that allows malign predators to operate under its aegis.

Imaginary laws

All of this, however, is secondary to two fundamental truths which undermine the United Nations — and have since its formation in 1945.

The first is the fallacy of international law. The UN Charter refers to “the principles of justice and international law,” suggesting that it is a legal code like any other. Articles 92 to 96 even established the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as its “principal judicial organ.” The vision of the United Nations is of a community which is governed by and abides by the rule of law, just as citizens of nation states are regulated by their own legal codes.

If we are honest, however, we know this is not (and perhaps cannot be) true. In a society which is governed by the rule of law, the legal code is generally accepted. It applies equally to all and can be policed, which means that breaches of it are ultimately subject to sanction by an institution acting on behalf of society. For example, if a man steals from someone else, he is pursued and apprehended by the police, prosecuted in front of an impartial tribunal, and, if convicted, subjected to a penal sentence which may include imprisonment by the state.

Clearly, nothing of the sort applies in the international community. Not all member states of the United Nations accept the limitations or even the concept of international law (see, again, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation), and there is no regular, impartial ability to police international law. Under certain circumstances it can be enforced: for example, in 1990-91, when the United States assembled a coalition of 42 countries to use force, pursuant to Resolution 678, to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But it relies on political leadership, diplomacy, and military power from UN members — especially the permanent members of the Security Council, and they will act only when it is in their national interests.

In short, there is no international police force to deal with every breach of international law equally and fairly. The ICJ is not an impartial judicial institution, comprising as it does judges by rotation from every member state, whether a liberal democracy or an authoritarian dictatorship. And, aside from military action, its punitive sanctions are limited and are dependent on political considerations.

This reality, that international law is a set of aspirational guidelines to which UN member states will pay more or less attention according to their needs, interests, strengths, and weaknesses, flows from a yet more basic illusion which the United Nations must entertain: that all countries are the same.

The illusion of equality

With the exception of permanent Security Council membership, the UN ostensibly treats all members, “nations large and small,” equally. Voting is not weighted according to population, and membership of UN organs, including the ICJ, the Economic and Social Council, and the leadership bodies of institutions like UNESCO, the World Health Organization, and the UN Commission on Human Rights, is open to all 193 member states.

There is a tacit assumption of universal moral equivalence. Article 6 of the UN Charter may provide a mechanism for expulsion for a member state which has “persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter,” but it has never been used. The UN therefore has to operate, at least partially, on the obviously false premise that a free and liberal democracy such as, say, Denmark, is equal within the organisation to an absolute autocracy like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

We know this is false. North Korea is a one-party state, a totalitarian “necrocracy,” as the late Christopher Hitchens called it, in which Kim Il Sung (who died in 1994) and his son Kim Jong Il (died 2011) are “eternal leaders of Juche Korea.” We know that a million people live in slavery in North Korea and that 10,000 people die every year in its prison camps. Yet the UN does not — cannot — differentiate between its members on the basis of democracy, human rights, or freedom. This inevitably ends in absurdity, such as with the election of Iran’s Permanent Representative, Ali Bahreini, to chair the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum in 2023 despite the severe human rights abuses perpetuated by the Islamic Republic of Iran against its own people.

This is the central issue. The United Nations is a political body — inevitably so — which attempts to act apolitically. It espouses ideals of respect for international law, human rights, equality, and self-determination, but it can never enforce them impartially or equally, because not all of its members support them or regard their enforcement as being in their national interest. It is a paradox which was understandably overlooked in the exhaustion of 1945. This oversight allowed the UN to be created — but it is insoluble.

In search of an answer

What is the answer? Clearly, there are possible institutional reforms, especially to the Security Council. There is also a malaise within the operations of the UN, with weak, often ineffective, and sometimes partisan peacekeeping forces, some of which have brought criminality and abuse in their wake.

As an international community, however, we have to think very carefully, very clearly, and with the utmost realism about the concept of an international body dedicated to the upholding of international law. It is hard to see how such a body can viably exist with universal membership which we pretend is of equals. Moreover, when the UN fails or proves powerless, that is not simply a neutral fact; it diminishes the organisation and discredits it, shining a light on the gap between rhetoric and achievement.

The possibility of member states simply walking away cannot be discounted. It would be close to unprecedented, but it nearly happened once before. In January 1965, in response to his enemy Malaysia being elected to the Security Council, President Sukarno of Indonesia wrote to the Secretary General, U Thant, to notify him that “at this stage and under the present circumstances” his country was withdrawing from the United Nations. Twenty months later, however, in September 1966, Sukarno’s hold on power was crumbling, and the Chairman of the Cabinet Presidium and soon-to-be President, General Suharto, sent a telegram which declared Indonesia’s intention “to resume full cooperation with the United Nations and to resume participation in its activities starting with the twenty-first session of the General Assembly.” The UNGA, having effectively ignored the country’s withdrawal, took note of the return of the Indonesian delegation and simply carried on.

The UN Charter does not, however, provide a mechanism for a member to withdraw — as if to remain silent makes it unimaginable. It is not. During his first term, President Trump pulled the United States out of UNESCO and the UNHCR, and he announced his intention to leave the World Health Organization.

All three moves were rescinded by President Joe Biden, but this year Trump again began the process of leaving the WHO, the UNHCR and UNESCO. In addition, the United States is $1.5 billion in arrears in its financial contributions to the UN. It would be a confident observer indeed who could not imagine a scenario in which Trump, attracted by the solipsistic drama and controversy, announced that America was going to make a clean break and leave altogether.

It is not merely a matter pertaining to the United States. Professor Jeffrey McCausland, a former U.S. Army colonel and fellow of various think tanks, has pointed to alternative organisations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRICS alliance as multilateral platforms which might suit some countries better in international diplomacy than the UN does. In September, writing in The Daily Telegraph, former UK Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis argued:

“We must recognise that the United Nations is a failure. We should defund it and shut it down… The way forward is to create a new entity (perhaps called the United Democratic Nations), where the only member states are proper democracies.”

These are still individual voices, but they are dramatically closer to the mainstream than they were a decade ago.

The United Nations was an understandable response to the horrors of the Second World War and a manifestation of that old emotion of “never again.” I am not among those who say it does no good. But it is anachronistic, tired, and is failing to prevent wars around the world (by one estimate there are currently 110 conflicts taking place). It could never do what it set out to do, and perhaps we have done well to reach its 80th birthday before having to confront that fact. But we cannot avoid it any more. There must be radical reform of its conception and its structure, and that could mean that it is replaced. All options must be on the table.