ISSUE 42: JUNE-AUGUST 2006

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COMMENT

U.N., U.S. should not work at cross-purposes

By Ramesh Thakur

The United Nations and the United States come together at the cross-roads of ideals and power politics. The world is a better and safer place for all of us (1) because the Cold War was fought, how it was fought, and who won – U.S. power prevailing in defense of U.S. values; and (2) because the United Nations exists, what it does, and what it symbolizes – the ideal of an international society rooted in human solidarity, based in law and ruled by reason. Therefore the world will be a better and safer place for all of us if the indispensable superpower and the indispensable international organization work in tandem, not at cross-purposes.

Ideas are the currency of an information society and knowledge economy, and institutions are conduits for ideas. In the broad sweep of history, empires rise and fall, rulers come and go. They are remembered chiefly for the ideas they leave behind, embedded in institutions or practices, for improved governance or quality of life. Over the course of the last two centuries, the idea of an international community bound together by shared values, benefits and responsibilities, and common rules and procedures, took hold of peoples' imagination. The United Nations is the institutional embodiment of that development. In this sense it is the repository of international idealism, the belief that human beings belong to one family, inhabit the same planet and have joint custodial responsibility to preserve the peace, promote human rights, husband resources and protect the environment. The global public good of peace and prosperity cannot be achieved by any country acting on its own. Under conditions of modern civilization, no country is an island sufficient unto itself anymore.

9/11 was a decisive repudiation of the belief that the most powerful country ever in human history can shelter behind supposedly impregnable lines of continental defense. Yet while the terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, caused some damage to the Pentagon, and shook U.S. self-confidence momentarily, they did not and cannot destroy the idea and symbolism of the United States: The metaphor of the shining city on the hill burning bright with the hopes of all mankind, in particular the oppressed, the downtrodden and the outcasts – in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

It has been the particular genius of the United States to welcome the despised and discarded dregs of other societies, to offer them the chance to live the American dream, to watch their dreams turn into reality, and then to harness those dreams to forge the most prosperous and the most powerful nation on Earth.

Therein lies the rub. Because of the sustaining belief in being a virtuous power, the United States is averse to domesticating international values and norms on greenhouse gas emissions, the death penalty, land mines, the pursuit of universal justice, etc. But this self-image of exceptionalism is neither congruent with how others see it nor conducive to securing the cooperation of others.

Contrary to some instant explanations offered after 9/11 that the United States is the terrorists' target of choice because of its success, dynamism and openness, the core basis of international respect for the American Republic, albeit with reservations and caveats, is its extraordinary success as a society, economy and polity. The U.N. Charter articulates quintessentially U.S. values. In truth the peace of the world since 1945 has depended more on U.S. power and wisdom than U.N. felicity. The U.S. commitment to the post-1945 order had emphasized the protection of the democratic community through rules constraining the use of force by "the other side"; the impact of 9/11 in the moment of uni-polar triumph saw an expansion in the use of force to promote and export the democratic franchise. The naive enthusiasm has waned since.

Imperialism is not a foreign policy designed to promote, project and globalize the values and virtues of the dominant center, but a form of international governance based on an unequal hierarchy of power. The reality of inequality structures the relationship between the imperial center and all others. This is not a matter of malevolence on the part of a particular administration in Washington, but an artifact of the reality of a uni-polar world that will shape the foreign relations of any administration. All sides must learn to live with this reality.

Nevertheless, progress toward the good international society requires that force be harnessed to authority. The United Nations has authority but no power. It seeks to replace the balance of power with a community of power. The United States has global power and reach but lacks international authority. The United Nations, universal in membership, symbolizes global governance but lacks the attributes of international government. The United States often acts--has no choice but to act--as a de facto world government, but disclaims responsibility for the distributional outcomes of its actions with regard to resources, environment, labor and justice.

Just as the United States is a nation of laws, so the United Nations is dedicated to establishing the rule of international law. The U.N. Charter was a triumph of hope and idealism over the experience of two world wars. The flame of idealism flickers when buffeted by passing storms, but refuses to die out. In the midst of the swirling tides of change, the United Nations is still the symbol of our dreams for a better world, where weakness can be compensated by justice and fairness, and the law of the jungle replaced by the rule of law. History's learning curve shows that the U.N. ideal can neither be fully attained nor ever abandoned.

The United Nations remains our one and best hope for unity of purpose and action in a world of almost infinite diversity--a world in which problems without passports require solutions without passports. Unbridled nationalism and the raw interplay of power must be mediated and moderated in its international framework. Of course the United Nations is an international bureaucracy with many failings and flaws; and a forum often used and abused by governments for finger pointing, not problem solving. Too often has the United Nations demonstrated a failure to tackle urgent collective action problems due to institutionalized inability, incapacity or unwillingness. These are the three facets – an international bureaucracy, a politicians' talkshop and a spineless-toothless cop on the beat – that draw the most trenchant criticism.

Yet the United Nations remains the focus of international expectations and the locus of collective action. The reason for this is that more, much more, than the attributes of bureaucratic rigidity, institutional timidity and intergovernmental trench warfare, the United Nations is the one body that houses the divided fragments of humanity. It is an idea, a symbol of an imagined and constructed community of strangers. It exists to bring about a world where fear is changed to hope, want gives way to dignity, and apprehensions are turned into aspirations. In the words of the illustrious Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, the United Nations was "not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell." The concept of hell is incomplete without the accompanying concept of heaven. 

Ramesh Thakur, senior vice rector of the United Nations University, was installed as an honorary doctor of laws by the University of Maryland University College in Tokyo on April 22. This article, published in the May 1 edition of  The Daily Yomiuri, is drawn from his commencement address on that occasion. These are his personal views.

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