One of my favourite things about the Kitchener-Waterloo Record is that they occasionally give over their entire Insight to a point, counter-point style debate on an important issue. This weekend the debate was on the future of the United Nations. And one the reasons that I like these debates so much is that they often show agreement on the issues from the left & right and/or the for & against but disguised in a different usage of the english language.
On the side that the United Nations is going the way of the failed League of Nations is Wilfrid Laurier University Political Science Professor Barry Kay (who also works with the Lauier Institute for the Study in Public Opinion and Policy). On the "it is what it is" side is Director of Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) of Waterloo Alistair Edgar.
The first point of note is that both argue in favour of the non-political sphere components of the United Nations. Whereas Professor Kay concedes this point right up front,
...For the purposes of this discussion, we should perhaps distinguish the political sphere from the international health, educational and services programs which continue to play an important role in disadvantaged nations, but which also could exist independently of the political "talking shop".
Professor. Edgar uses about half of his column to argue the case. However, they differ on whether the present UN is required to have these programs.
...These organs and agencies are a part of the UN system; they depend upon the existence of a rules-based international in which states do, in practice and at a functional level, co-operate to achieve goals that are not purely self-interested and immediate.
The UN did not create this network; its member states did. But now the UN system is this network, and cannot be seperated from it.
Or more to the point, why the United Nations is required to be both these programs and contain a Security Council? For this we go back to Professor Kay,
...As much as anything, it is the current number of five veto-wielding nations that are the bane of the Security Council's ability to take a meaningful action. To illustrate, Russia blocked UN action against Yugoslavia, China currently blocks action against Sudan for Darfur as well as North Korea, and France threatened to block action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
On this point Professor Edgar seems to say that this is not a bug but a feature.
...It [veto] also was given to ensure that the UN Security Council could not vote to have the organization engage in collective security actions against another permanent member.
...The founders of the UN learned from the false hopes invested in, and the ultimate failure of, the League of Nations. There is plenty to criticize about the veto power, but it has also contributed towards making states recognize the limits of what the UN should be expected.
From this I take it to mean that the Security Council's function is to preserve the status quo. If this means not intervening against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, not intervening in the ethnic cleansings in Yugoslavia and Genocidal actions in Rwanda and Sudan and allowing Saddam Hussein to use one UN program to help himself to rebuild against the effects of a different UN program then it is a problem of your on expectations.
Further,
...the need for reform must be understood in the context of recognizing the very real strengths and contributions of the UN, and a realistic appraisal of what the world's only universal membership, multi-purpise international organization can be expected to accomplish. No better alternative is on offer.
I am not sure if that last point is correct and I am sure that huddled masses of refugee camps in Sudan appreciate the need to change their expectations of the UN when the Janjaweed hordes are descending on them.
This is why Professor Kay concludes,
...It is a tired metaphor, but in the light of this any UN reform can be compared to rearranging the deck on the chairs on the Titanic.
You see what I mean? They are basically in agreement that the UN Security Council is a toothless organization. Barry Kay doesn't want it to be that way. Alistair Edgar argues that is the only way it can exist. I am afraid that this point has not be communicated very well to the Canadian public and we seem to have entirely to much faith in an institution that, by design, is incompable of anything other than dashing false expectations.
