What the hell is the United Nations?

[michael]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
what are you getting at? even here with the most hotly contested election in 50 years the turnount was 49%. giving people a vote guarantees nothing but the freedom to exercise it. voting is only a tiny part of democracy. institutions, laws, checks and balances, and a willingness to behave not only to the letter of the laws but their spirit as well is where democracy flows.

A fairly simple one , I thought. As you said "voting is only a tiny part of democracy.

Many of the posts on this particular thread are critical of the UN, especially in relation to the participation of "non-democratic" countries. For me this is not such an easy issue that can be dismissed as "mobocracy" as martinw718 put it. There is clearly a continuim of democratic development. The US even elects public officials such as police/judges etc in some areas. In Australia the head of state is appointed not elected, in Britian there is a House of Lords, where membership is via hereditary title. Who will decide which of thesecountries is democrtic enough, or not, with regards to UN membership. Clearly ibrodsky and others are up for it. But by ibrodsky's own definition he recognises the PA as a democracy("...free citizens to choose their own leaders") while I would be rather reluctant to classify the PA this way, as would you I imagine.

[Mediocrates]

Interesting you should say that - westerners of all stripes, not just us Yanks automatically assume that their own form is either the only one that works or the one that works best. We automatically think that a wealthy PRC would be like a middle class America filled with Chinese people. But it can't be that, can it? Whatever it is it will be something different from that. Compared to that I saw that the the Germans reelected Schroeder by a microscopic margin and the markets tanked. So much for confidence.

Give me the benign paternalism of Singapore over the wild'n'wooly anarchy of radical Libertarianism any day.

But what difference does it really make what kind of government sits in the UN member states? What purpose does it serve to try to classify them all according to some taxonomy? Does anyone seriously propose to allocate weighted votes according to some sliding democratic scale? Sounds pretty much insane to me. The fact is the world is largely populated with broken corrupted governments bent on perpetuating themselves. How many people live under what we in the west even graciously would call democracy? Billion? Billion and half? Two? That means two out of three people live under the yoke of what we call oppression. So perhaps the best we can hope for is to stop deluding ourselves that there is anything just or fair or equitable about it. Because there is not. There is only aggression by other means.

The UN was born in the ashes of Europe in the faint hope that even if one country attempts to dominate all others, the others could band together to do something about it. In the 21st. Century, like any permanent unaccountable bureaucracy that has been corrupted into a cynical body that exists to exert national force by other means. In this case sanctions. Sanctions have now become a tool of national aggression. Just like economic warfare or propaganda or any of the other non military means that countries use to accomplish something.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by michael


A fairly simple one , I thought. As you said "voting is only a tiny part of democracy.

Many of the posts on this particular thread are critical of the UN, especially in relation to the participation of "non-democratic" countries. For me this is not such an easy issue that can be dismissed as "mobocracy" as martinw718 put it. There is clearly a continuim of democratic development. The US even elects public officials such as police/judges etc in some areas. In Australia the head of state is appointed not elected, in Britian there is a House of Lords, where membership is via hereditary title. Who will decide which of thesecountries is democrtic enough, or not, with regards to UN membership. Clearly ibrodsky and others are up for it. But by ibrodsky's own definition he recognises the PA as a democracy("...free citizens to choose their own leaders") while I would be rather reluctant to classify the PA this way, as would you I imagine.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that the PA is a democracy. Many Arab countries hold phony elections.

I said the purpose of democracy is to allow free citizens to elect their own leaders. Under the PA, dissenters are conveniently accused of being collaborators, which is certain death sentence. There is no freedom of speech. There is no due process. Those who oppose Arafat or Hamas dare not run for office if they value their lives.

Nor did I ever say that UN membership should be limited to democracies... The only legitimate purposes for the UN are 1) to serve as a forum to discuss conflicts in the hope of averting war, and 2) to manage international disaster relief. The rest is foolishness.

If only democracies were allowed to vote in UN deliberations, I still wouldn't cede my rights to other nations. The United States is a specific type of democracy in which powers are carefully divided between the federal government and the states.

[Rob]

A great thread. The UN is a terrorist organization where terrorist 3rd world countries get to flex their little muscles. It's time for the west to turn NATO into a western UN, by and for the west. The only problem is you can't trust most western countries either

[ibrodsky]

A very good post Hisardut. See what you can do when you employ anger management strategies?

[freke]

Much of the aggressive stances against the UN within the US and elsewhere would appear to stem from a rejection of the concepts of international community, multilateralism and any form of cosmopolitan democracy.

In their place is an older world view, one which in the past was called machtpolitik , or in more recent years 'neo-realism'. Neo-realists, like the Bismarckian machtpolitik, see the world largely as a mosaic of states set against a Hobbesian anarchic background. The foundation stone of the neo-realist outlook is the state, any other institution, sub-state or supra-state, is either a threat to the state or is irrelevant (the choice varies from one neo-realist to another) within the foreign policy context.

The foreign policy context, to a neo-realist, is of course one of states. Non-state actors, such as supranational institutions, NGOs, groups trying to attain state status, do not fit within the world view and are either irrelevant to foreign policy or a threat.

A state's foreign policy from this standpoint is fairly straightforward. The state must act primarily to defend its own security, defined in terms of physical and economic security. The state can be drawn into alliances, but these alliances are state-led, state-centric and should be of direct benefit to the state.

From a short-term perspective (which the US electoral cycle particularly encourages) this means that there is no sense for a state to form alliances or develop and support supranational fora (forums) which does not create immediate and visible benefits. Any supranational bodies which do not immediately and visibly benefit the state are liable to be attacked as being wasteful talking shops, irrelevant and dangerous.

This short-termist realism dominates the thinking of the present US administration. The world is full of threats, it is said, a veritable Hobbesian war of all against all. The responsbility of the state is defend its people against these threats, but also to secure the strategic commodities necessary for economic security.

Once one starts to look at the world using with this fearful viewpoint, there are threats everywhere. Over the last few years these fearful realist Republicans have envisaged war at some point or another with China, Russia, Japan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and even the EU.

The core difference between the realist and the multilateralist is the role of the state and long-term vs short-term perspectives.

For the multilateralist, the state may be the primary focus of identity and political organisation, but other forms of identity can also have political representation and therefore legitimacy. From this standpoint, I am a Londoner (with London-based political representation), an Englishman (without English representation, but working for it), a Briton (with national-level political representation), a European (with the EU) and a member of the human race (with some kind of political representation in the UN and other international bodies).

The state that I live in supports supranational organisations not because it wants to "give up power" - as is so often claimed - but because it believes that the long-term benefits of the club are worth the short-term ups and downs. Sometimes membership of the club will be an embarrassment for the state - such as when the European courts found against the UK government on a number of human rights issues - but often the club will benefit the state - such as the reduction of French agricultural subsidies which is currently being pushed through.

It would be a naive multilateralist to say that the state is not central to this. The state is still the main organising power, even within the EU, but states have formed together for the greater good.

It does not surprise me that the US has such problems with the multilateral perspective at present. The US has a strong civic democratic nationalism based upon its constitution. The idea of a meaningful supranational political identity is an anathema to many, some of whom have problems accepting a federal government let alone a supranational one.

Ibrodsky's comment: "If only democracies were allowed to vote in UN deliberations, I still wouldn't cede my rights to other nations. The United States is a specific type of democracy in which powers are carefully divided between the federal government and the states," I think reflects this.

The present US adminstration also sees little to gain from multilateralism and much to lose. With such economic and military power alliances and international bodies are but webs to entangle and frustrate US interests.

However, other analysts of these international bodies argue that they are state-sponsoreed power networks through which power can be expressed in a multitude of subtle ways. The WTO, for example, would seem to be a body which one state could not have disproportionate weight. One state has one vote, all have a veto. However, the US has an enormous permanent staff of lwayers in Switzerland working for the US in the WTO, and the US uses a whole range of different financial, military and diplomatic tools to secure preferential trade agreements.

International institutions can be used to tie other states down, in ways that blunt military power cannot. Using the WTO again as an example, the greatest foreign policy success of the Clinton era, in my view, is bringing China into the WTO. Because of this, the US has ensured that China will never again be communist. ]

Anyway, I've gone on for long enough, but just wanted to add a bit of theoretical analysis to this debate.

[Mediocrates]

You can't have it both ways. You can't advocate some multilateralist bodies on theoretical grounds and then pick apart the ones you don't like because you yourself don't dominate them. The WTO for example does more to keep China in the modern sphere than anything else. Is it dominated as you say by the US? Well in one sense yes one sense no. We need them as much as they need us. That's what organizations do.

But it bears examination beyond "We think our future lies in doing this..." when looking at the EU, for example. Of course it does, that goes w/o saying. We have to though look at why. And part of that reason, a big part is that the European Community needs to cooperate in new ways as a way of extending its influence not otherwise poissible. You can't extend force because it isn't there to extend. So what are the options? One is warfare by other means like international law, sanctions and opprobrium. The other is the carrot - trade.

[freke]

Medio, you read me wrong. I am not advocating some multilateral bodies and picking apart others. In my analysis all multilateral bodies work along similar lines, I only use the WTO and EU as examples.

In the EU Germany and France have predominant power, in the UN it is the five members of the Security Council, the IMF is dominated by the US etc etc It happens, but in general I am supporter of a rules-based international system.

I am not criticising the WTO because of US involvement, as you seem to suppose. I see it as obvious and inevitable that powerful and wealthy states will have predominant power within international organisations. Often this is a good thing, for it means that the organisations are actually used and effective, unlike moribund and distinctly parochial groups like the African Union (or whatever it has just renamed itself).

[freke]

There was more to your post than I saw before

What do you mean about the EU? Clarification needed please.

[Mediocrates]

The point is one projects influence through whatever is handy. Europe can't extend its reach in the old ways. After all, 750 million people lived under the Union Jack right after WW2. So the tools you have to extend your reach "To make the world England" as was your foreign policy in the 18th-19th C. are different.

Pan-European Unity is the boat and you are riding in it to the rest of the world. That you have to give up a degree of "Englishness" or "Irishness" or "Spaniardity" is a small price to pay to project that influence. Let's not forget that the Raj didn't exist because the Crown liked having armies in India. It had to do with economic interests. So now in the 21st. C. in order to maintain that influence, that new Raj, instead of might you have cooperation and international law. It's simply might by another mode and name but the purpose is exactly the same. What was once a Sepoy rebellion or an Opium war is economic sanction & cooperation. The carrot and the stick. It's because you're nicer, it's because that's what you have to use.

[freke]

OK, I would have liked to stick to the US and its view of the UN, but you wanna talk about the EU, that's cool.

The first, slightly curious, assumption you make is in that the British people, via the British state's foreign policy, still have the same aspirations as they did in the 19th century.

"So now in the 21st. C. in order to maintain that influence, that new Raj, instead of might you have cooperation and international law. It's simply might by another mode and name but the purpose is exactly the same."

The only other people to argue this are the radical left! Your argument, I presume, is backed by a Marxist analysis of global capitalism, yeah?

If not, could you explain how EU foreign policy priorities are the same as they were during the colonial era? Do we still have the White Man's Burden?

Could you try to identify EU foreign policy priorities and EU foreign policy approaches in a theoretical context?

[freke]

It would appear that your critique of the EU Medio is based upon neo-realist assumptions. But the very existence of the EU makes it obvious that the EU does not work along neo-realist lines!

Your analysis may apply to the US, but the EU is a different animal. The over-simplification of interests and power in your argument is very similar to the much-derided recent article by Kagan.

[Watters]

how can you all critisise the UN when after so many years of Israel breaking resolutions it appears that it will now be used as a vehicle with which to attack Iraq. I have no time for savage dictators but any future war is about protecting the US's thirst for oil. It is about control and power.

The reason for the UN is to represent the small against the big. You all go on about non democratic countries yet the soviet union has always had the power of veto and it was never demoncratic.

How can anyone justify bombing a people who use the only tool at their disposal to resist occupation. I am in Europe and it seems the the state of Israel is all about expansion not coexistance. With the attitude of the government and the hard line settlers, it is no wonder that the inoccent citizens of Israel get caught up in the conflict.

Northern Ireland has proven that the only way to bring peace is through concession and negotiation. Beat a dog for long enough and it may obey you but it will hate you and await its moment to bite back

[Ory]

Although I do agree with you on many points, I really can't see how you would call terrorism directed against civillians a viable tool for resisting occupation, let alone the only one. granted, jewish defence forces(pre Israel, such as 'hagana') used the same tool against the british mandate, and being ex military myself I could see the reasoning behind attacking military and police forces, but using terror tactics on bystanders? that may have worked before(france, for example), but not on a country that has been through three major wars in the five decades of it's existance, surely they must see that Israel would never back down to terror, even if it could never launch a full assult on palestine, and no arab nation in it's right mind woud attack it now, because even without us support, Israel has the power to level several of it's enemy before it gets overrun.
and what about other solutions? like getting their leader's hand out of the donation bowl and replasing him with someone that can actually preform his duties to his nation.
and as far as 'beating the dog goes' , that dog has been blood crazy for a while now, and while I don't agree whit israel's current solution to the situation at all, when ever you try to take the stick away, the dog attacks.

[ibrodsky]

Palestinian supporters love to cite the one, maybe two, cases in which Zionist groups used terrorism. The idea of killing innocent bystanders was firmly rejected by all Jewish groups and quickly stopped.

In typical dishonest form, Palestinians and their supporters point to isolated incidents that occurred over 60 years ago to excuse literally hundreds of terrorist attacks killing thousands of Israeli civilians and maiming tens of thousands.

The claim is made that Zionists used terrorism to establish the Jewish state. This is just another big fat lie. The two incidents in which civilians may have been purposely killed occurred in the 1930s -- more than a decade before Israel was established.