Is it time to rethink the UN and rebuild the international order? If so, how?

I’m gonna take two weeks
Gonna have a fine vacation
I’m gonna take my problem
To the United Nations

Well, I called my congressman
And he said, quote:
“I’d like to help you, son
But you’re too young to vote.

(Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran)

He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

(Isaiah 2:4, inscribed on a wall at the UN)

The UN has a real place in the global order, but is it time for a real rethink of its governing structures? If so, how would or could this be done?

Back in the 1960s, while I was in high school, my interactions with the ideas, goals and activities of the United Nations were positive. Back then, the UN was probably at or near the height of its influence, popularity and support among Americans. 

For students interested in international relations and politics and thinking about somehow turning that interest into an actual career choice, there were opportunities to participate in national essay competitions on the future of the international body sponsored by the US Association for the United Nations, as well as the debates at model UNs for high school students, organised by leading universities in many parts of the nation. 

(A few years ago, I even served as a judge at one such model UN in South Africa, organised for university students. There is a direct connection between South Africa and the UN. Prime Minister Jan Smuts had written the first draft of the UN Charter’s preamble, and South Africa had ratified its membership in the UN in 1945.)

Living in the Washington, DC area and participating in those activities, I was lucky. I could get access to US government offices for a basic briefing on the UN, as well as meetings with the embassies of countries we would end up representing in those model assemblies. Those activities could help reinforce an idealistic student’s sense that a global body like the UN might actually help solve some of the most fraught international issues. 

In part, this admiration of the UN’s role and future possibilities stemmed from the global prominence of and respect for its long-time secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, who served from 1953 until his still-mysterious death over Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), in 1961. 

But for an American, there was also the moment when the US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, had forcefully confronted his Soviet counterpart in October 1962 over the illicit presence of Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in Cuba aimed at the US. Stevenson had included his display – a still new approach – of those big photographs of the actual missiles on site. 

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That was a moment when the world seemed just minutes away from a global nuclear conflagration – something averted in part by a public demonstration of the power of words at the world body. 

Further back in time, earlier than this author’s direct memories but read about later, was the UN’s forceful military response in 1950 (largely using American military forces but with contributions from many other nations, including South Africa) to repel the invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour. (The peninsula had been divided temporarily, following the end of Japanese rule, into Soviet and American protectorships.) The decision by the Security Council to act had only been possible because the Soviet Union had boycotted the meetings in protest over the decision not to replace the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan with the recently installed Communist Party government in Beijing.

Looking back historically, the Roper Center (a major American public opinion research body) found that more than 70% of Americans were satisfied with the role of the UN well into the late 1950s. It noted that “the proportion of people saying they were satisfied with the progress made by the UN increased substantially over approximately the same time frame. Positive attitudes continued through the 1960s. A 1964 Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith/NORC poll found 87% of Americans in favour of the United Nations. In a 1965 Gallup poll, 59% believed that, without the UN, there would have been another world war.” 

More recently, though, there has been a downward trajectory, at least among Americans, towards the UN. Roper continued: “Americans don’t believe the United Nations is doing a good job, but mostly continue to support its mission and existence, albeit at slightly lower levels than in the past. While Republicans tend to hold the UN in lower regard than Democrats and independents do, most still want the US to remain a UN member nation.”

The most recent demonstrations of this tendency in its more extreme view have been Donald Trump’s use of his speeches at the UN General Assembly plenary meetings to chastise the body for its failings in dealing with global conflicts (in contrast to his own Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts, at least by his own estimation), as well as the American withdrawal from participating in a number of the UN’s specialised bodies, and cutting back on paying assessments for some of the UN activities – although the US remains the largest contributor to the UN overall. 

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In recent years, as international circumstances have evolved, wielding the veto power over Security Council actions and decisions by the five permanent members has shifted dramatically from the Soviet Union to the US. (According to the UN Charter, the Security Council can formally authorise the UN to undertake peacekeeping or peacemaking actions, as opposed to the power to debate and pass resolutions to ask the Security Council to act that has been given to the General Assembly under the Charter.) 

Previously it was the Soviet Union’s use of that power into the 1980s, but that has now shifted to frequent US vetoes of matters before the Council – often in relation to proposals seen by the US government as antithetical to Israel. The role of the Security Council owes something to ideas of the “Concert of Europe” that came about among the major European powers in the post-Napoleonic era, with their agreement to maintain order on that continent after decades of warfare and to prevent future conflicts among the major powers that could evolve into a continent-wide war.

Why is this veto power held by the five permanent members of the Security Council such an important question? The UN, as both an organisation and as an idea, goes back to the failure of the League of Nations, established after World War 1, to forestall conflicts in the 1930s that led into World War 2. 

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s warning in 1936, after his country had been invaded by the armies of Mussolini’s Italy, that if the League failed to act against Italy, it would lead inevitably to a greater, wider conflict. That failure proved to be the encouragement the Axis nations – Germany, Italy and Japan – needed to engage in further conquests.

As the allied nations coalesced into a more conscious alliance during World War 2, the locution, “United Nations”, became increasingly common, culminating into the actual creation of a United Nations body and its charter at the end of the war. That design called for a secretary-general to be the chief administrator, the incorporation of various specialised elements as functional bodies under the UN umbrella such as the International Postal Union, a general body of all members, i.e. the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice that actually predated the UN by decades, and, of course, the Security Council.

That Security Council comprised the five leading nations that had achieved victory in World War 2 – the UK, France, China, the Soviet Union and the US. Given their sacrifice, military heft and global reach, the five would be permanent members holding that all-important veto power. An additional six nations (later increased to 10) would be added to the body for two-year terms, selected from the regions of the globe.

In recent years, the global dialogue has increasingly focused on whether or not the current arrangements of the UN are fit for purpose – and appropriate for today’s world. As with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comments in his recent UN General Assembly speech, African leaders continue to press for permanent membership for Africa on the Security Council. But that leaves open the question of how and which nations from Africa should be able to claim a permanent seat on the Security Council. 

Read more: As South Africa takes a second bite at the UN Security Council apple, leadership is crucial

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It is now 80 years since the end of World War 2 and there is just a small number of people left in either Japan or Germany who were even children during that war. Given those two nations’ economic and financial heft and considerable contributions to the UN budget, shouldn’t they be considered as candidates to become permanent members of the Security Council? 

And what about a major nation like India with the world’s largest population, even surpassing China’s? Or how about the two powerhouses of Latin America – Brazil and Mexico? In the case of Ramaphosa’s idea, which African states should be the ones to be considered as permanent members? And would all of the other nations on the continent be happy with such a grant of power to one (or even two) countries? 

Or, should it be on the basis of the possession of nuclear weapons? That would be a true cat among the pigeons though, wouldn’t it? In that case, theoretically, potential members might be India, but also Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, and maybe Iran as well, soon enough. Or should Security Council membership be determined on the basis of population or economic weight, or some other category or mix of things, and how to make use of them to decide? No one really knows since the original decision over permanent membership took place back at the end of World War 2. (At that time, several of the members had been devastated by the war and would take years to recover, and two of them would, soon enough, give up their global empires.) Would the current permanent members of the Security Council easily surrender some of their power to potential new members?

All of these possibilities, though, do speak to the question of whether the Security Council has actually outlived its utility in its present form. Given its virtually certain frozen status when a permanent member’s perceived interests are at stake – such as the conflict in Ukraine, the various troubles in the Middle East, among other questions – shouldn’t there be a larger rethink of its structure and functions, in conjunction with a realisation that the biggest global issues are often the ones not usually part of the council’s remit. 

In fact, global economic and climate issues may be more pressing, but they are not part of the Security Council’s main focus. Instead, it can be argued the three major global institutions dealing with economics – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization – are increasingly more consequential, or should be, compared with the UN’s Economic and Social Council. (And then there are all the varied roles of the EU, the Shanghai Cooperation Council, BRICS, the several international development banks, the OECD and regional bodies like ASEAN and the AU.) 

But among that triad of the major international bodies, there are also questions about which nations hold the largest powers of decision-making. Frequent complaints are that again it is the club of developed nations that have the final say on most things. It is one thing to make such complaints about “who governs”, but it is a different thing to see any glimmers of possibility of a grand meeting to restructure the entirety of postwar structures of global governance. 

In sum, there may well be good arguments – ethically, pragmatically or morally – for real changes in the UN and other global bodies. But a way forward for that remains unclear, with no precedents or roadmaps guiding politicians and policymakers. DM