INTRODUCTION
Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations' mission has evolved. Its initial charge was to foster international peace through dialogue and preventive action. Over the years, the means to peace have been changed to encompass bringing law, security, and prosperity to a troubled, war torn world. From its New York headquarters, the UN oversees Third World development projects and gives essential guidance to nations on the brink of disaster. America's role in the United Nations is essential. With American political and financial assistance, the UN continues to stabilize governments and provide people with needed food and shelter. America gets their investment back, however. By succoring starving and suffering nations, righting wrongs, fighting wars, and bringing stability to the world, the UN's many efforts sustain American dominance over the globe.
NOT YOUR FATHER'S INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION
The League of Nations had failed. It had been a noble and worthy experiment, but ultimately flawed. So, soon after the devastation of World War II, when a "global association of governments facilitating co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, and social equity" ("United Nations", Wikipedia) was proposed, skeptics naturally abounded.
Following World War II the Allied powers, along
with other agreeable states, concluded that the nation
state system of security -- as then organized -- could
no longer maintain peace and security in the absence
of an international forum. While the League of Nations
had reached a similar conclusion, the UN carried a
heavier burden: it was reacting to large numbers of
human casualties, the first use of nuclear weaponry,
and the general scourge of the world's second global
conflict in a little more than a generation. (Jenkins 479)
Subtle but unmistakable inferences were contained in the creation of the UN: first, this international forum was to have teeth. "The United Nations was never intended to be a talking shop with no clout.... Franklin D. Roosevelt and ...Harry Truman were clear-eyed, hard-headed realists determined to ensure that the UN did not meet the same fate as the League of Nations a generation before." (Featherston) They achieved this by setting the bar a bit lower: not "governing the world, but [by] preventing another major war" (Ibid.). The United Nations was established in order to prevent the breakout of hostilities between nations, as had been grossly and sorely witnessed in the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific.
Three initial principles were established with the creation of the United Nations, which still exist, in modified form, to this day. The first overarching principle is the sovereign equality of states, which is "consistent with Westphalian tradition. Each state -- the United States, Lithuania, India, or Suriname, irrespective of size or population -- is legally the equivalent of every other state" (Mingst 167) in the eyes of the United Nations.
However, the Security Council has supervisory authority over the sometimes-raucous General Assembly. The veto power of the Security Council overrides the equality of the states; five nations have permanent membership -- the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom -- and may reject any UN resolution or policy, regardless of a majority vote in the general assembly. (Sarooshi) The other ten slots are filled on a rotating basis. This allows the more dominant and powerful states (at least the post-WWII dominators) the prerogative to oversee and shape UN action.
Each permanent member state has veto powers, which can be used to void any resolution. A single veto from a permanent member outweighs any majority. This is not technically a veto, rather just a "nay" vote; however any "nay" vote from a permanent member would block the passage of the resolution in question. ("United Nations Security Council")
This supervisory body of powerful nations was a concept unknown to the framers of the original League, who did not make provision for urgent action.
A Security Council member must always be present at UN headquarters in New York so that the Security Council can meet at any time. This requirement of the United Nations Charter was adopted to address a weakness of the League of Nations since that organization was often unable to respond quickly to crises. (Ibid.)
The second principle behind UN function is that only international problems are under its purview. The stated purpose of the United Nations was to prevent global conflict, not settle internal disputes or intervene in civil war. While this works in a rigid, formal state system as was the norm in the time of the Peace of Westphalia, critics have stated that this policy fails to take in the transportation, communications, and technology issues that affect today's international issues:
Over the life of the United Nations, the once-rigid distinction between domestic and international issues has weakened and led to an erosion of sovereignty. Global telecommunications and economic interdependencies, international human rights, election monitioring, and environmental regulation are among the developments infringing on traditional areas of domestic jurisdiction and hence on states' sovereignty. (Mingst)
The recent crisis in Darfur, for example, is a civil war contained within the Sudan coupled with a mass migration of refugees into neighboring states. Despite UN action in 2004 to try and alleviate the suffering and death of refugees in the region, the UN fails to adequately address humanitarian crises created when refugees from domestic disputes cross their borders. (Shawn 27-8)
The third principle behind the foundation of the UN is their primary concern with international peace and security, including "economic and environmental security; international intervention to manage economic instability and to protect from environmental pollution" (Mingst 167). The UN's original mandate to prevent war has evolved into a higher calling: the UN wants a world with equality and plenty, thereby negating the motivations for war. This is the impetus behind the UN's humanitarian efforts. "The American people expect effective action from the United Nations in terms of enhancing the international community's ability to act to save lives and make people safer" (Gingrich and Mitchell 28). Through its humanitarian efforts, the UN encourages member states to "refrain from the threat or the use of force, settle disputes by peaceful means, as detailed in the Hague conferences, and support enforcement measures" (Mingst), thus perpetuating peace among Third-World nations that suffer internal stress.
With the new Millennium, the United Nations expressed once again its mission:
We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, respect for their territorial integrity and political independence, resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion and international cooperation in solving international problems. (Millennium)
The United Nations' willingness to get involved in humanitarian issues, individual rights, freedom from sickness, hunger, and disease is a reflection of its evolving mission. The UN's humanitarian efforts are a tool to alleviate human suffering.
GETTING THE NGOS INVOLVED
The world's second attempt to create this international body made the unprecedented move of allowing policy shaping by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). "There were representatives of 1,200 voluntary organizations present at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945" (Alger). NGOs affected the first seven words of the Charter: "We the peoples of the United Nations" and insisted the inclusion of Article 71 of the UN Charter, which states, "the Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations." Seven times the charter mentions human rights, and article 55 specifically mentions the standards of living and education that would prevail in such a world. By doing this, the UN insisted on equating peace on an individual level with peace on an international level, and it was achieved through the involvement of NGOs. "Never before had civil society played a role in international affairs, and oddly enough it was the US that requested the assistance of NGOs for what was known as 'an experiment in democracy in action on the diplomatic level.'" (Jenkins 480) The UN undermined the notion of peace through state-sponsored militarization, replacing it with human rights and individual peace.
LIBERAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Those disposed to the inherent goodness of man were well pleased with the United Nations. Woodrow Wilson, the inveterate liberal, composed Fourteen Points from which international peace would inevitably flow. This agenda included such lofty goals as free trade and universal self-determination. (Kaufman 847) This text laid the groundwork for the original League from whose ashes the UN was born. Since liberalism and its corollary, neoliberal institutionalism, feel that interdependence among states is key to long-term survival due to a fundamental capability to cooperate (Mingst 65), the UN is seen as an ideal forum for affecting change on a global level. It is through the UN that societal progress occurs. "Given the existence, albeit imperfect functioning, of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations... the power and security based theory... clearly has value beyond mere intellectual discourse..." (Kaufman 352). The UN fills a need for international dependence and collective security, and the outcome is clear; as the US "...remained engaged overseas and, with our allies, worked to create international structures... [including] the United Nations, NATO, and 42 other defense arrangements... [that together with economic organizations have] enabled us to strengthen security and prosperity and win the Cold War" (Ibid.).
REALISTS HAVE THEIR SAY
Creating the United Nations was a controversial move. Back in 1945, on the heels of the Second World War, the world was in tatters. Other than the United States, there was no industrialized nation that was not decimated by the war. When the League "proved incapable of maintaining collective security, and during World War II, when human atrocities made many question the basic goodness of humanity, liberalism came under intense scrutiny" (Mingst 63). The realist version of the post-war world was codified by Morgenthau, who believed that international relations is "a struggle for power.... The flawed individual struggles... for self-preservation; the autonomous and unitary state is constantly involved in power struggles, balancing power with power and reacting to preserve what is in the national interest, and... because the international system is anarchic -- there is no higher power to put the competition to an end -- the struggle is continuous" (67). However, Morgenthau continued, "Of all the factors that make for the power of a nation, the most important, however unstable, is the quality of diplomacy" (Kaufman 229). Morgenthau preached a world where military leadership from above and preparedness from below was a sure way to counteract external threats (215). Yet he also recognized that diplomacy was "the brains of national power" and could better shape a state's destiny on the world stage: "In the long run, such a nation must yield to one whose diplomacy is prepared to make the most of whatever other elements of power are at its disposal, thus making up through its own excellence for deficiencies in other fields" (229). The United Nations, as a diplomatic forum for the United States and its foreign interests, is an essential tool. The perpetuation of the UN was seen as part of the US's long-term strategy for engagement of the nations of the earth, thus allowing American domination of the world scene for decades to come.
The United Nations, while not a perfect realist solution, provided a means by which nations could interact, thus enforcing the "Yalta Peace". By maintaining "a well-developed system of restraints and counterbalances between the two superpowers" (Mikhailenko), peace could be maintained, even through the crises of Communist intrusions into the free world. The UN was seen as a means to an end for realists: it allowed nations to ally against the encroaching Soviet imperialism. Kenneth Waltz posited "an international environment where autonomous, atomistic states interact on the basis of competition, rivalry, necessity, and mistrust. States build relationships and occasionally cooperate..." (Cronin); such continues to be the UN.
Even those of the so-called "anarchic school" of realist thought endorsed the mutual dialogue provided by the United Nations. Robert Jackson, for example, makes a case for the presence of a global community of nations "that can be identified by generally accepted procedural norms and standards of conduct that are specified in the charters of international organizations and in public international law" (Ibid.). The United Nations' founding was welcome by realists, who were pleased with the opportunities it presented to engage both allies and enemies in the classic art of diplomacy. The United Nations serves the purposes of the realists as well as those of the liberals.
WHAT THE UNITED NATIONS PROVIDES
The United Nations allows an environment that fosters discussions on vital world issues, both large and small. Each of the 191 members of the General Assembly is equal, and this often leads to endless squabbling:
The big everyday problem for any UN secretary-general is the fight to bring coherence to a fractious organization that pulls in all sorts of directions at once. The contradictions and the horse-trading between different groups of countries -- set against each other by size, by wealth, by geography, by ideology, by sheer cussedness -- are dictating now the process of choosing the secretary-general, as they do everything that the UN touches. ("Annan and after")
Members of the General Assembly can bring any topic up for discussion, as long as it falls under the purview of the body. Everything from border wars to international weapons proliferation comes before the General Assembly.
WAR AND PEACEKEEPING
On 25 June 1950, South Korea was invaded from the Communist North. The United Nations pledged a multinational force to help retake the peninsula. When the North Korean and Chinese armies were stalemated at the 38th parallel (the original line of demarcation halving the peninsula), orders were not to press forward, but to maintain. Though the orders did not come from the United Nations per se, they were consistent with the UN's mission, which is to prevent war through maintaining the status quo.
In 1990, the UN responded to an aggressive assault on Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army. UN forces took the nation of Kuwait back within 100 hours, but when commanding General H. Norman Schwarzkopf recalled that the UN mandate for preventing future conflict with Iraq was maddeningly nonexistent: "The kick-them-out-of-Iraq objective was one that was given to us by United Nations Resolution. But [to] inflict maximum damage upon the Iraqi armed forces so that they cannot return ...was another objective that... you'll never find ...in writing, anywhere" ("Oral" 2). Clearly, the UN did not want Saddam deposed; instead, the UN saw restoring the status quo a more compelling motivator than long-term security for the region. To move past the northern Kuwaiti border would undermine Iraqi autonomy (a key UN precept), despite the recently undermined Kuwaiti autonomy at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Twelve years later, the US would cross that border without UN mandate.
America expects the United Nations to be concerned with sustaining human life around the globe. The United States Congress' Task Force on the United Nations issued a report underscoring that expectation: "Americans have always hoped that the United Nations would play a major role in the pursuit of a better world... an effective United Nations is in America's interests" (Gingrich and Mitchell v). The report continued by praising the UN's peacekeeping operations, specifically in Namibia, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, East Timor, and Macedonia. Tragic failures, such as Rwanda and Srebrenica, highlight the need for assistance from all UN members: "Current efforts are bedeviled by limited capacity, operational challenges, and inadequate mandates.... The UN member governments appreciate that UN peacekeepers often need very robust capabilities to defend themselves, the mandate of their missions, and civilians in their areas of operations" (Ibid. 11, 89).
UN-led peacekeeping missions are varied, all the more surprising since the UN lacks a standing military force. In late March 2005, there were more than 70,000 peacekeepers worldwide in 17 different missions, all wearing the UN banner. (Ibid., 11)
Humanitarian assistance to the impoverished nations of the world comes not just through troops, but also through many UN programs. These programs are summed up in the UN Millennium Goals, "which aim to halve poverty and hunger, enroll every child in primary school, spare mothers and their infants from untimely deaths, thwart infectious diseases, save the environment and forge a 'global partnership' in pursuit of development" ("Aspirations"). To achieve this lofty goal, the UN budgets millions of dollars every year for humanitarian aid and assistance efforts.
LIFE SUPPORT FOR DYING COUNTRIES
The Failed States Index was created by the Fund for Peace, and it tracks the nations that have the worst living conditions, human rights records, corrupt governments, and other indicators of instability. The Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sudan, Iraq, and Somalia were the "Top Five" most endangered nations on the planet for 2005. ("Failed States Index") The Fund for Peace "focuses on the indicators of state failure that drive conflict" on developing early warning and performance measures; promoting transparency and accountability among governments, the private sector, and non-state actors; limiting the proliferation of weapons of war; and protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict" (Ibid.). By drawing attention to nations that are in danger of collapsing, they hope to bring international aid to these regions. This kind of nation building (or rebuilding, as it were) falls under the purview of the United Nations Development Programme. "UNDP's purpose is to help developing countries, and countries moving from centrally planned to market economies, build capacities for 'sustainable human development' -- development that centres on people." (UNDP) This sustainable development is key for national long-term survival, since so many nations neglect the common good for what is financially expedient, mostly to the detriment of their national resources. The UN is a staunch defender of human rights, education, and governmental reform. For this purpose, the UN gives millions of dollars in monetary aid and food; all for the purpose of bringing the world's poorest up to a sustainable and safe standard of living. The Mission's stated purpose is "to strengthen international cooperation for social development with particular attention to poverty eradication, employment generation and social integration, especially with due regard to issues relating to older persons, persons with disabilities, family, youth, persons in situations of conflict and indigenous peoples" (Scholvinck). The UNDP's website states that it
...provides a managerial umbrella for a wide range of funds
and activities covering major development initiatives and
especially for special measures for the Least Developed
Countries (LDCs), round tables for country aid planning and
coordination, management services for projects financed by
bilateal donors and the World Bank, promotion of technical
cooperation among developing countries (TCDC), collaboration
with NGOs, support for the private sector, and strengthening
public sector management.
All is for the purpose of bringing nations back from the brink and introduce educational and humanitarian measures that sustain them; by so doing, the UN maintains the status quo among both the most stable and the most unstable. "...Any threat to one is truly a threat to all. This principle, once applied only to military attacks by one state against another, should be extended to all categories of threats we face. ...All states share an interest in a collective-security system that commits all of them to act co-operatively against these dangers" (Annan, "Shared").
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?
American influence within the United Nations is strong. The US State Department revealed that the US is the major financial contributor to the UN:
The United States is the largest financial contributor to the UN and has been every year since its creation in 1945. We provided more than $3 billion in contributions, both cash and in-kind, to the UN system in 2002. (In-kind contributions include items such as food donations for the World Food Program). The United States funded 22 percent of the UN regular budget, as well as more than 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. Additionally, the United States provides a significant amount in voluntary contributions to the UN and UN-affiliated organizations and activities, mostly for humanitarian and development programs. ("U.S. Participation")
This kind of financial contribution does not come without strings. America considers the UN an arm of its own foreign policy, as the sustaining of the New York-based forum is in its own best interests. The US contributes the lion's share, and the American government has an expectation to receive appropriate treatment:
Through the UN, the United States builds coalitions and pursues multilateral programs that advance U.S. interests. Our priorities include: settling disputes peacefully; encouraging non-proliferation, nuclear safeguards, arms control, and disarmament; promoting economic growth through market economies; adopting international standards to facilitate international trade, telecommunications, transportation, environmental protection, and scientific exchange; and strengthening international cooperation in agriculture and health. (Ibid.)
The United Nations' humanitarian efforts work to stabilize the anarchic world community. By so doing, it allows products and services to move freely in and out of the endangered country, thus raising its standard of living and allowing it to flourish. It also creates a market (or prevents the destruction of a market) for American products, which helps US businesses and the US government.
World economics is sustained by UN intervention on behalf of stabilizing high-risk countries. The transnational corporation (TNC) does most of its manufacturing and production in stable Third World nations, and the enabling of these TNCs to offshore their production is clearly a side effect of UN efforts. The humanitarian efforts the UN has undertaken has exchanged the strength of "production mostly designed and destined for a world market, or at least for several national markets.... Production for the larger world market has transformed innumerable national or local enterprises into transnational corporations" (Strange 44). Sustaining struggling economies, opening markets to western products, and bringing cheap manufacturing centers online for American TNCs: this is how the US sees the return on its UN investment, with interest.
DOES PERCEPTION REFLECT REALITY?
This influence over the UN is not completely opaque. Though the UN does not overtly support America, it is perceived as being an arm of American foreign policy:
...with the end of the Cold War... there was nothing to stop the
United States making more use of the approval of the Security
Council and of the UN's limited peacekeeping resources to
pursue its own unilaterally-determined strategic objectives...
in which the US meets no effective opposition.... (Strange 167)
With no viable resistance, it was assumed that the Security Council would begin rubber-stamping American-led initiatives. Thus the United States' agenda, hypothetically, would go forward without fail. Yet the US does not always get its way with the UN. Even despite UN vacillation, the Americans forged ahead on their regime change in Iraq after making a strong case to the UN Security Council. This memorable presentation was underscored by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's vial of anthrax and convincing report of mobile weapons labs throughout the rogue nation. ("Powell") The cited inability to receive international support for the Iraq war is indicative of a larger problem within the UN: the unwillingness of UN member states to jeopardize the sovereignty of another nation in order to enforce its own resolutions. Without that directive, members of the US government and populace see the UN as toothless and obsolete.