The United Nations: A Viable Institution to Maintain Peace

Truth, justice and democracy are words easily thrown around in a world that seems to impart black and white judgments on issues that are much more complex and not readily discernible. We live in an increasingly integrated, interconnected and interdependent global community that cannot pursue policies based on separate national interests. With increasingly viable threats emanating from North Korea, and Iran, and populist resurgence in Latin America, as well as a host of other intercontinental conflicts, diplomacy is the key word.

Ideological predilections aside, the world cannot withstand another global conflagration. International institutions like the United Nations must have a firm grounding as important forums of negotiation and substantive action. With the appointment of Ban Ki Moon, the South Korean Foreign Minister, to succeed Kofi Annan as the next U.N. Secretary General effective this January, there is the hope that effective reform will serve to radically transform this needed institution to deal effectively with the unique problems of the twenty-first century.

In the era of globalization we need the U.N. more than ever to promote democratic global governance, human rights and positive relations along intergovernmental lines, which transcend national boundaries, penetrate the cultural divide and unite societies toward the vision of global peace. The U.N. steps forward as an association of governments intent on facilitating cooperation in international law, security, economic development and social equity.

As an umbrella organization, the U.N. has the ability to bring leaders from all over the world to the table to negotiate, make compromises and create resolutions that have great potential to bring peace to nation-states mired in perpetual struggles. It must espouse internationalism in its most Wilsonian sense and reject the evidential ambitions of foreign policy realists who believe that power politics is the only way to deal with "juvenile" states that may be stable, but lack the necessary social, political and economic institutions to converge with the more industrialized and wealthy countries.

Since its creation in 1945, following the end of World War II, the U.N. has imprinted an enduring mark on the face of international relations. One of its hallmark functions (which has not been explicitly outlined in its founding Charter) is the "peace-keeping operation". This is intended to prevent the recurrence and expansion of a dispute by sending a cease-fire supervision group or peace-keeping force, mainly consisting of personnel contributed by smaller countries, with the consent of the parties to the dispute. This function has become increasingly meaningful amid the realities of today's international community. Since 1948, there have been over 60 mostly successful U.N. peacekeeping missions with 16 of them ongoing.

While U.N. peacekeeping has seen its failures, most notably in Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995, these events have served to awaken the organization to the changing nature of regional conflicts and the necessity to instill and maintain effective leadership that takes into account the precedence to promote peace over all other ambitions.

One of the most remarkable advancements of the U.N. in the past decade has been the organization's transformation to reflect the structural reform of the international community. In the post-Cold War era, there has been a marked increase in the presence of third-world or developing states and a rise of emerging economic powers. The predominance of these developing nations emphasizes the need to have proper channels of influence and communication to maneuver toward the democratic trajectory that is necessary for constructive and beneficial relations among global partners. The nature of these global partnerships changes with newly introduced crises. For this reason, the fluidity and complexity of the U.N. accelerates.

Like all organizations that have bureaucratic underpinnings, the U.N. has experienced scandals, examples of inefficiency and instances of oversight that have done more to harm the institution's reputation and political clout than to uphold it. But we must understand that unlike individual countries, the U.N. does not attempt to politicize executive arrangements; the organization does not seek to fill its ranks with "yes" men but rather a host of different global actors who all hold unique interests and worldviews. Many believe that it is precisely this characteristic that prevents the U.N. from acting in a clear and decisive way when confronted with a crisis. Because the five permanent members in the Security Council have a veto but tend to disagree (usually with the U.S. on one side and China and/or Russia on the other), some think there is a lack of significant action because no nation can practice unilateralism. While this may be the case in some instances, it is not in many others. We only need to look at the developing situation regarding the nuclear ambitions of North Korea, the insistent efforts of the U.N. to take strong action in Darfur at the dismay of the Khartoum government, as well as the Israel-Lebanon crisis of this past summer to understand the need for a cohesive international response. Global conflicts such as these need strong and complete international consensus. If nation-states are to unilaterally pursue eradication of conflict, the world risks falling into a debacle much worse than the current situation in Iraq.

Despite the conspiracy theories and arguments against the effectiveness of the U.N., there is little doubt that the institution has done much to promote international peace. The Human Security Report 2005 notes that since the end of the Cold War there has been an 80 percent drop in the most deadly conflicts, an 80 percent reduction in genocide and politicide and a 40 percent drop in violent conflict. The improvements, according to the report, are attributed to "international activism," which in large part has been spearheaded by the U.N. through important policy action, missions and peacekeeping operations. To the extent that the reputation of the U.N. suffers today, it does so largely because so many of its member states are not democracies; they do not believe in and practice the U.N.'s universal principles of human rights. And because of their large numbers, they have a great deal of influence in its affairs. Democratic nations need to be the conscience of the U.N. and stand up for what they and the U.N. should believe.

One of the major contentions of today's U.N. opponents is its lack of efficacy in positioning nations toward actually implementing the resolutions they accept. This is an obstacle that can be overcome with a restructuring of the U.N.'s internal leadership and an increased desire toward pursuing reform. With the Secretary General position now changing hands, there is great potential for this to occur. Ban Ki Moon has already expressed his intentions to "streamline" the U.N. with proposed radical personnel, budgetary, and administrative changes.

The U.N. gains its legitimacy from its members. It does not hover above a host of nations but is rather a reflection of these nations in their pursuit to espouse moral imperatives and international principle. The surge in demand for U.N. services attests not only to the U.N.'s abiding relevance but also to its central place in advancing human dignity. The U.N.'s core mission in the previous century was to keep countries from fighting each other. In the new century, the defining mandate is to strengthen the inter-state system so that humanity may be better served amidst new challenges. From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of long-standing humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the U.N. was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the United Nations, are advanced together with equal vigor.