UL and UN Approved
UN approval of American actions seems to be becoming substantially important
..when you look at polls...to the American people and the people of Europe.
Support for an invasion of Iraq jumps in both locales when you posit its UN approval.
Even the Vatican will apparently bless an Iraqi invasion only with UN approval--
the same UN where China has a veto, the same China that is persecuting the
Catholic Church on a grand scale. The UN's fan base is sometimes rather puzzling.
Like seeing "UL Approved" on lamps, are we drifting into a situation
where any action America might take internationally will lack the support of
its allies and its own population if it lacks the UN seal of approval?
A seal that can't be gotten without the blessing of rivals like China?
If we are indeed so adrift, some thoughts on the UN are in order.
Rather than squinting hopefully in the direction of the UN, dubbing it our last
best hope for humanity, and declaring victory, perhaps a more detailed look
at its structure is in order.
First, let's think about the structural bias of the UN toward inaction and silence.
To get the great powers to join (China/Russia/US/Britain/France),
you had to give them all an absolute veto so they could be
sure nothing objectionable to their interests would ever be
passed. The little guys didn't care because they were
living under de facto great power veto anyway, and at least
now they'd get a vote, albeit a somewhat illusory one, and a
chance to make speeches.
So on what issues can all five veto powers on the Security
Council agree? The most dangerous situations (think 1914) involve
great power alliances. Well, toss all those out the window, the
UN won't ever be able to issue anything substantive on any of those.
That reduces the universe of useful UN proclamations to
technical matters, acts of charity, certain peacekeeping operations
(once the battle is decided), and proclamations against states
so rogue and so marginal, that no great power has any
conceivable interest there, not even an interest in seeing
one of the other great powers stub their toe on it.
And these great powers aren't a group from which we can
expect reasonable accomodations. If they could come to such
accomodations, they wouldn't be spending billions on defense and
pointing nukes at each other. Mafia dons can coordinate on
areas of common interest, but only insofar as they see this helps
them against a common enemy (e.g. avoiding bloodshed that would
attract the feds). But until space aliens invade and start zapping
the Kremlin and the White House, the great powers are the top
of the food chain, with no common enemy incenting concessions.
But is this structural bias fixable?
The UN is only able to exist at all because all the difficult problems
of "world government" have been avoided. If you were really
going to evolve the UN into an actual government
you'd need to face issues like: Is it one country one vote,
as in the General Assembly today? (Where India and
Costa Rica have equal voting power, and the USSR's
voting power went from 1 to 9 or whatever with its collapse).
Or is it one person one vote? And if India's gov wins by 51%,
is it "winner take all" on those one billion votes like the
maligned electoral college? Do dictatorships get "one man
one vote" credit for their entire populations? Do UN decisions
require a simple majority, or a super-majority of 2/3 or 3/4?
Could one country someday have a large enough population
to block any supermajority and thus enjoy the sole absolute veto?
Is it fair for nations with strong militaries that would bear the brunt
of any UN enforcement, to be ordered about by nations who
spend on plowshares knowing they can wield dearly bought
foreign swords as needed, simply through force of numbers at
the UN voting booth?
And democratic scruples aside, would it necessarily
be just or prudent to allow screwed up nations with
runaway populations, no environmental scruples, no free press,
and widespread illiteracy, to override policies of the more
"together" nations simply by force of numbers?
As you begin to choose among the various federalist models,
nations will be exquisitely aware which schemes maximize their
power, and which diminish them in some cases almost to nothing
in practice. Just read the Federalist Papers. It was difficult
enough to get the American colonies to agree on a scheme, and
they had the pressing necessity of the world's preeminent naval
power breathing down their necks, hoping for the failure of their
unprecedented experiment. Again barring space aliens, what
pressing necessity will drive the all earth's pre-eminent military
powers to turn over their swords to this One Authority?
India and China might put their militaries under UN control if
they got the "one-man/one-vote winner-take-all
no-judgement-on-free-elections" formulation, but certainly
Europe/Russia/US would not. And India and China will only
do so if everyone does, so the UN won't even get India and China.
And below these practical considerations, there is another level
of intractability to this problem. When you burrow down to this
level, your shovel scrapes against a large part of the Problem
of Evil itself: at least one big concrete face of it. Those willing to truly
turn over their power to some higher dispute-settling authority are precisely
the ones who aren't the problem. Evil, almost by definition, is the abuse
of the power given one. The only followers of this new UN Law will be the
lawful. The others will undermine it, openly or in secret, seeking their
own advantage. There is something distinctly millennial about hopes for
a truly functioning and authoritative UN. People imagine lions laying
down with lambs, who can't get along with their own spouses.
To imagine a millennial UN that is both widely obeyed and largely
itself in the right, is to short-circuit your way past the
palpability of evil in a way you have no right to. If the world were someday
covered exclusively by prosperous and enlightened liberal democracies,
the UN might begin to have a semblance of plausibility--at the very moment
it ceased to be needed.
So what we have today, in the UN, is a bunch of people in
a room who can issue non-binding pieces of paper, if none of the
great powers veto even that. It resembles an actual world government
only in the sense that they've got a guy from each nation in the
room. Though its pretenses go beyond that, the dirty little secret
is that increasing its actual power and relevance one iota is
structurally impossible, whether you base this on history, human nature,
self-interest of the players involved, any way you want
to slice it. Rational people will only cede sovereignty
against a common enemy, and by definition the UN is the whole.
NATO made sense; the UN doesn't, and can't.
So I'd say the structural bias toward inaction is intractable and permanent.
You can get the semblance of a world government, but you can't maintain
the illusion without vetoes for all the key players.
Denying the great powers a veto means there would one day, probably quite
soon, be the terrible situation where Great Power A is outvoted and instructed
to do something it very much does not want to do. Will it meekly comply?
At this point the legitimacy of the majority must go back to one of these
voting schemes you would never have gotten agreement on in the first place.
Also at this point, you would have the UN ordering the armies of the
other great powers to attack Great Power A. If some of them wish not
to sustain the losses and basically say "well, we're with you but after
YOU!", the UN will need to be able to order them to attack.
(In a smaller way the EU is going to be facing all these
problems of federalism as it evolves; it's fragile enough
in peacetime--imagine if things get ugly).
So we limp along with what we have: this semblance of a world government
that occasionally, when all the stars are in alignment and the issue's not
that serious, can issue a proclamation the important players were
already in agreement about anyway, UN or not.
Imagine we start basing American foreign policy on getting these improbable
seals of approval. First, note that the toll gate will primarily be operating on
only one direction of traffic.
Saddam would have such a devil of a time getting UN approval
for stashing a nuke in a container ship bound for Los Angeles, that
he may not even seek it. His history of neglecting to consult the UN
on his invasion of Kuwait is not promising. It's possible that if China
invades Taiwan, it may not seek UN approval for that either.
When faced with a mostly paralyzed referee like the UN, it's far
easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. "Just do it"
becomes the rational course of action. Let those who have a problem
with it go and try to get a resolution opposing it! And if they can't,
well, they'll be branded international outlaws if they react.
Iraq never got UN permission to throw out the weapons inspectors,
but it's been enjoying the moral high ground of a deadlocked
security council ever since.
The other unsavory aspect of this one-way tollgate is that in practice
it might actually become a kind of toll. If America feels it
needs to do X for its national security but can't do it without the UN seal,
then Russia and China can make the US pay a toll each time for their
consent. Like agreeing to ignore Chechnya or Falun Gong. Or even to look
the other way on Taiwan. Is such a toll system likely over time to increase the
health and happiness of the globe? Especially given a bias where for
domestic political reasons the US always seeks UN permission, and
its rivals simply do their dirty work without asking. Even if you're willing
to throw morality out the window, the US is going to end up with few
horses to trade here under this system. ("Well, we let you do X" won't
count because gee, they never asked).
An interesting idea (probably unworkable) to address the
"paralyzed referee" problem is this, by flipping it: any international action
taken by any country without UN approval, immediately creates a UN
resolution authorizing force against that country. And to overturn
this resolution, you need to go through normal UN channels (including
vetos) to pass another resolution rescinding it. But I say unworkable because
until we work out a mutually agreed federalism for the UN, an enterprise akin to squaring
the circle, we'd still be in a fantasyland where anyone who didn't feel like
it would actually be listening to these
resolutions.
I'd be grateful if anyone who places some hope and faith in
the UN could help me understand its (to me) bafflingly wide fan base.
Do people just like the idea of a higher power that could settle things
fairly and rationally? I agree that that would be wonderful. Are they just not
quite engaging with the details of whether the UN is, or ever could
be, that entity?
