United, Powerful Nations

By the Editors

Most men would shy away from associating the deranged Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Gaddafi with any proposal of theirs. Dylan Matthews ’12, editor of Harvard’s liberal Perspective and recently minted Crimson columnist, is then, in this respect at least, far removed from the ordinary run of men. In arguing for a reform of the composition of the United Nations Security Council in his latest column, he lamented that one could turn only to the Tripolitanian crackpot, who peppered his speech with such vile absurdities as to make many diplo­mats leave the hall in protest, if one wished to see Security Council reform propounded before the U.N. While Gaddafi’s views are indeed evocative of the lack of traction that such proposals have gained, they are equally suggestive of the fatal flaws of Mr. Matthews’s somewhat naïve suggestions.

Matthews rightly points out that composition of the Security Council bears no relation to any democratical­ly-minded scheme. The council is dominated by the permanent five—the United States, Great Britain, France, China, and Russia—each of which has a veto on its every resolution. They hardly represent the downtrodden or politically marginalized of the world: All are among the eight largest economies and the eight greatest nations in military expenditure. It rankles that most powerful organ of a body dedicated to the “equal rights…of nations large and small,” should be so lopsidedly constituted.

But the United Nations was never intended—fortunately, in our view—to be a representative body in the sense of a democratic state, and probably never could. The United Nations is not a state that has the plenitude of power in its realm, but is rather a voluntary association of sovereign states. The permanent five have collec­tively and perhaps in most cases singly more clout on the world stage than the United Nations, as an institution, has. When it comes to applying force, like sanctions and peacekeeping troops, the United Nations would be hobbled without the permanent five, which provide almost 40 percent of the organization’s budget.

The League of Nations was always weakened by the absence of the United States. When the League pro­tested Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1933, Japan, which was a permanent member of the League Council, a forerunner of the U.N. Security Council, simply pulled out. Germany and Italy went the same way, and the latter three formed a little league of their own, rendering the League of Nations utterly ineffectual. Many mea­sures have been stopped by the Security Council because they threatened the narrow self-interest of permanent members, but those interests were habitually disregarded these members would likely just marginalize the U.N. and make all emanations from the council a dead letter.

The Security Council is one of the least farcical U.N. organs in large part because impotent, Lillipu­tian tyrannies cannot easily overrule the will of more level-headed great powers. Mr. Matthews reasonably points out the hypocrisy of the permanent five—all wielders of atomic arms—having the main voice in resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, but the hypocrisy of having nations like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Azerbaijan on the U.N. Human Rights Council or of having Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust at a U.N. conference on racism is a dime a dozen.

Just as Mr. Matthews’s analysis is questionable—he goes on at length about the changing nature of warfare without drawing out a clear point—so are his conclusions. He first suggests that permanent seats be given to large countries in regions not represented by the current permanent members. But would adding regional hege­mons make the council more credible to states in its sphere of influence, or would, say, Pakistan look on it more kindly if India had a permanent seat? The idea that the permanent members can ever meaningfully represent the interests of their regions is quite incredible.

Similarly faulty is his conclusion that only abolishing the veto could give the rotating members a “real say.” While the council can do nothing without the permanent members, as five among fifteen, they themselves can do nothing without the support of at least a few of the rotating members. Mr. Matthews also has the strange misapprehension that countries are overly swayed by how representative the process that produces resolutions is. Dictators and demagogues may bluster about imperialism and the lack of self-determination—while, of course, they try to keep the will of the people under wraps at home—but most nations simply do what they deem to be in their national self-interest, however broadly or narrowly defined, as long as they can get away with it.

International politics has always been an arena in which power inevitably outweighs consent. Some, par­ticularly liberal enthusiasts of the United Nations, believe the increased economic and technological interde­pendence of the world can make international politics and diplomacy look more like the internal negotiations of a democratic nation-state. This view has been shattered time and time again. As Aristotle noted, if one should even put two cities bound in trade side by side, they should not properly form one state. The drive to give to an international body power whose bulk or distribution is modeled after that of a state is dangerous where it is note merely futile.

The United Nations can perhaps help to temper the wills of the great powers in the direction of the common good of nations, but it will never command them. If the cost of “representation” is that the Security Council becomes dominated by states with no real ability to enforce its resolutions, and those that do are marginalized in the decision-making process, its achievement would be a Pyrrhic victory.