Report on the Panel discussion:
can the united nations survive?
October 2, 2003. New York, NY
Moderator Mustapha Tlili opened the debate with remarks on the moral challenge we face today. According to Tlili, this challenge--which can be solved by wisdom alone--lies in reconciling the necessity of the United Nations as an instrument for maintaining international peace and security with the reality of the United States' unparalleled degree of military, economic, and cultural hegemony. How can we ensure that the U.S. pursues its national interests without undermining the principles of the UN Charter? This is the same challenge, Tlili noted, that was put forth by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his address to the current General Assembly--the challenge, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to build "a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world."
The first panelist to speak was Professor Michael J. Glennon of the School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His answer to whether the UN can survive is that, "it depends." He considers the threat of irrelevance (more than extinction) to apply to the Security Council rather than the organization at large. Can the Council survive not only in form, but in substance? In light of the UN Charter's assumption that the organization serves to "protect future generations from the scourge of war," one could hardly argue, Glennon claimed, that this mission was being fulfilled. Since its foundation in 1945, there have been over 200 military conflicts, none of them authorized by the Security Council, that have together taken millions of lives.
Glennon went on to address the question of why the collective security system has failed. He gave three reasons. First, there is no consensus among members on the most fundamental issue of when military intervention is warranted. Opinion is split, for instance, as to whether intrastate genocide should be confronted through UN-backed action. Second, the unipolar power structure of today's world presents a dilemma. The United States, according to its own interest, must act to preserve power and freedom of action as a means of protecting security. Third, there is no deterrent against nations using force unilaterally. In fact, the U.S. has used force without UN approval so many times that other nations are following its example. For all of these reasons, Glennon argued, the legalist system does not work and it would be difficult to imagine structural reform of the Security Council since the way it is set up by the Charter makes it basically unfixable under current conditions. Glennon encouraged listeners to realistically recognize the depth of the problem with the internationalist system and warned against counterfactual solutions.
The second speaker was Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations and one-time President of the Security Council. The Ambassador recalled Tlili's opening remarks about the moral nature of the challenge to the UN and suggested that there is an eternal tension between power and principle, though our choices between the two tend to differ domestically versus internationally. Whereas at home we respect everyone's rights, the Ambassador stated, the world in general is still playing “zero-sum games.” Boundaries, he said, are disappearing but the necessity of the UN will only increase in a globalized world.
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