The more I studied the UN's key documents, the more I realised that it was no different from any other bureacracy across the world. The more I watched it function, the more I realised that there was no hope to be found in it. Call me a hardened cynic if you must, but as a system, as with any other new system which is implemented, the UN was structured to ensure that the status quo was never removed and to, in a sense, fail. The failure of a system is the route for anyone within the system to gain power. This is exactly what the 5 powers had in mind. I don't doubt that there must have been severe comprimises made so as to ensure that the Russians were on board. Even so, I have my doubts about how genuine the political will was towards truly ensuring international peace when balanced with the chance of securing seemingly perpetual international power. For instance, how realistic was Article 43 six months after some 25 million soldiers had died? How realistic was it to expect a consensus on international military strategy in the SC where there was a distinct probability of an Iron Curtain?
Ignore every bit of human rights work that the UN has ever done. Ignore the countless, meaningless instruments that have been deposited at the Secretariat. Ignore the tax-free, pension-linked salaries that spoil otherwise perfectly good officials. When the UN faces judgment day (so to speak), it will be judged on the basis of one function alone: did it maintain international peace and security?
During discussions leading up to the Secure World report i.e. the high level panel appointed by the SG (see here), there were severely conflicting views on what the number of violations of Article 2(4) since the inception of the Charter were. In any case, the lowest number that was put up was a princely 205 (by the pro-institutionalists), whereas the highest was in the 800-and-a-bit range. 200 violation in 60 years is about 3.5 violations every year. Considering that these are usually harbingers of open armed conflict, its a little worrying.
But my beef in this post isn't with unilateral uses of force. Countries will do what they have to when their interests are at stake. (As luck would have it, this is already adequate explanation of the vetoes from China and Russia. See here for an interesting report on China's involvement in the Darfur conflict.) The point of this post is to deal with a Zimbabwe-esque situation.
There is, in my opinion, a fundamental error in the way that rogue States are dealt with. (NB: I'm sure there's plenty of academic papers on both sides of the subject and this is really little more than a logical analysis of the situation.) Whenever you want to break something, it must be done from within. In a system, the only ones who can make real change are those who run the system. In a similar vein, in a Zimbabwe situation, you must squeeze the key figures to act, not the population. Sanctions will never affect Mugabe himself.
I don't purport to know how to deal with the situation, just that the sanction route, especially economic sanctions, isn't terribly useful. I fail to see how somebody who is happy to see 8000% inflation, mass starvation, massacres and complete economic failure in his country, will succumb to further sanctions. Moreover, if and when Zimbabwe ever emerges from this nightmare, there's sufficient propaganda material there against the world order to give birth to another Mugabe. (Remember, he wasn't always the demi-god he is today. Remember Humphrey Appleby mentioning Mugabe as one of the great JBB - Jailed By the British - leaders from his beloved Bailey College?) Perhaps this was the first step to a larger goal for the US. But surely they knew that China and Russia's interests in Zimbabwe were always too large to allow a UN, or more importantly, a US foothold. I'm glad that they forced them to cast a veto, though, as opposed to letting the resolution die a premature death.
I'm a great believer in the 'no good deeds...' saying and where Mugabe was once the darling of the international community he is now their very own Frankenstein. Maybe this is like one of those movies where the villain is right - God it must be...
Monday, July 14, 2008
A continuation of Rishab's new-found UN cynicism
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4 comments:
I agree entirely with Shreyas when he says that a system can only be effectively changed from within. In fact, that is exactly why this whole situation is so alarming. The people actually wanted change from within the system, and they came out to vote for that change (forgive the Obama campaign pun).
Further, the Russian and Chinese veto was used to bloc a UN Resolution to freeze Mugabe's personal assets not to impose sanctions.
Rishab - I don't agree and I do. As clarification:
1. The change from within a 'democratic' system does not fall to the voters. Once again, I apologise for my shocking cynicism, but when we vote for an MLA, an MP, a party or even a Government, we vote for someone we hope will change the system. We are not changing the system ourselves. It is the people in power who must be the rebels. Moreover, the Zim situation and Mugabe specifically is not at all alarming - he is the typical autocrat who we, as a world order, have been unable to find a way to depose other than through external military intervention.
2. My comment on the futility of using sanctions was not directed at this specific draft resolution. That is exactly why I am happy that both Russia and China were made to cast the veto. At least history will record their explicit support for Mugabe.
I'd post a whole answer to this, but apparently I'm not an author yet. I'm not the most optimistic person myself, but somebody ought to contest all this cynicism, I say!
No good deeds go unpunished, indeed. Shreyas, the way I read it, you draw an interesting parallel between Mugabe and, say, a Bin Laden. At any rate, I've heard the Frankenstein description applied to Al Qaeda often enough.
I really have only a point or two to raise to both you and Rishab. Before I go on to it, though, if I'm not wrong, "Only God can remove me from power" was a boast made by Idi Amin - and possibly Seseseke Mobutu before him. And look what happened to those two. If anyone's entitled to make such a boast, I think it would be Fidel Castro - but then, you'd say he wasn't the *typical* autocrat. Whatever that is.
Anyway. On the UN system itself. I will not go so far as to suspect the motives of those involved in forming the UN (or believe they formed it to fail), though I don't doubt that the considerations you mention will have served to encourage such a situation. The simple fact is that anywhere between 3 and 15 situations that can erupt into major conflict (what I believe are called "flashpoints) have arisen per annum over the past 60 years - and barely a dozen have actually erupted. Even in the Iron Curtain era. The Cuban missile crisis did not go to full scale war. Afghanistan never did become more than a scuffle in USSR's backyard, for all the proxy warfare that went into it. Almost all of the last few major conflicts have been a function of internal ethnic friction - Cambodia, Timor,Rwanda, the Balkans, even Darfur, Chad and Sierra Leone. The only exceptions to this - in terms of major international flashpoints - are Vietnam and Iraq, of which the less said the better. Situations like the Russia-Georgia clash over Ossetia barely even register on our radars as crises anymore. Compare this to the insecurity, escalation and sheer frequency of conflict pre-1945. You will see for yourself if we have indeed managed to save mankind from the scourge of war. It's a pet thesis of mine that terrorism is growing today because frustrated territorial expansion can no longer take the form of open warfare with any hope of success (as witnessed by Ethiopia and Eritrea recently). We live in one of the least violent periods of human history, where a person can try to tour the world with a reasonable expectancy of returning alive and largely unhurt. Where people (amongst them, a certain former vice-President/ by rights President of the USA) can actually list damage to the environment as a greater concern than potential flashpoints. Is this simply because we learned the lessons of WWII well, and on a deep level no one wants another of those? Maybe. But surely some credit must go to the system that was established towards this very end.
Second point. Last year, I attended a fascinating lecture by Dr. David Malone, Canadian High Commissioner to India. He was speaking about the future of the Security Council - which is in many ways the future of the UN itself. (I wrote an article/summary about that talk... can mail it if anyone wants it.) In there, he made one overarching point which has a direct bearing on the situations that concern you most here - Mugabe, or if I may add one of my own, Myanmar. Neither of which is close to the sheer devastation achieved by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, though they're getting there. The question you seem to ask is: is there any way the UN can actually compel the leaders in such cases to work for their people? Freezing their assets (at least the known ones) is a start, but not enough. Something more direct is needed, but not feasible. The reason, of course, is that the UN ALWAYS runs into the barrier raised by the doctrine of Sovereignty. This is why we cannot tell such governments - albeit we do not recognise them as legitimate - to do what we say or face the consequences. But, as Dr. Malone pointed out, that very concept is currently undergoing a very, very major change. All the trends in world politics today suggest that the idea of a sovereign nation is becoming less and less absolute and more and more constrained. Not that we call it constrained - oh no, we say "interdependent" or "mutually reliant". But the upshot is - nations are gaining the kind of un-disentangleable (sorry) leverage on each other which makes talk of absolute sovereignty, absolute bollocks. The key transition, in terms of outside leverage, will only arrive at that point (in situations like Zimbabwe) where the nations which share such leverage act to bring it to bear. Mugabe cannot survive with no friends whatsoever - which is why the Sino-Russian veto is actually quite disheartening. But before we get all preachy, lets remember that India holds precisely such leverage as regards both Tibet and Myanmar - and we consistently refuse to use it, for reasons arising almost entirely out of economic interest.
So, what I'd say is, we're actually closer to getting to the goals of the preamble. Though it has been rather slow going. The question now is not whether the system can work - it is whether WE can put in place people willing to use it, and use it against all dictates of realpolitik if that seems the right path.
And don't bother saying realpolitik is all-prevalent in a post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan world. USA (or at any rate the government of George W Bush) clearly does not think so, in as much as said government can be said to think at all.
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