Between the Lines Q
A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints
on national and international issues
under-reported in mainstream media
for release Dec. 27, 2004
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U.N. Considers Proposals to Reform U.S.-Dominated Security Council
Interview with James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, conducted by Melinda Tuhus
Listen in RealAudio:
For more than a month, the U.S. news media has been focused on allegations of corruption at the United Nation's-run oil
for food program that operated in Iraq from 1996 until the U.S. invasion in 2003. An investigation is being conducted by
the U.N. itself, while several committees in the U.S. Congress are also examining evidence of mismanagement and fraud
that reportedly funneled billions of dollars to Saddam Hussein.
That story has largely overshadowed a set of important recommendations made for reforming the United Nations put forward
in early December by a committee appointed by embattled U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The world body has seen
significant geo-political changes since its founding after World War II, which are not reflected in its current
structure. One of the key recommendations is to expand membership of the powerful U.N. Security Council, which sets
aside only five permanent seats for the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, France and China, with a rotating group of ten
additional members.
Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum with its office
near the U.N. in New York City. The group's mission is to monitor policy making at the United Nations, promote
accountability of global decisions, educate and mobilize for global citizen participation, and promote issues vital to
international peace and justice. Paul discusses the need for reform to strengthen the world body, not weaken it as many
conservatives in the U.S. are advocating.
JAMES PAUL: It’s almost a standard assumption that the Security Council should be enlarged, that there should be more
so-called representation of the various regions in the world, that the countries of the global South should be better
represented on the Council. But there’s a lot of literature that shows that when bodies pass beyond the size
approximately of 15 or 16, they develop some kind of executive committee inside. So I don’t think enlargement is going
to be in the interest of smaller states or better representation. In fact, it’s actually going to lead the way to a
small executive committee of the big powers. That’s the danger that most people aren’t talking about, but it’s there.
Another thing is that member states now when they come on the Council, they pretend they represent their region, but
they represent themselves, and none other. And so the real challenge is to develop better regional mechanisms so as to
have representation. That’s the way the Council could be strengthened -- to keep it small but have a much more
regionally coordinated input.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What should be the role of nation states in the U.N.?
JAMES PAUL: The world is evolving very rapidly, and there is a question as to what the role of nation states in fact is
gonna be at a time when there are international organizations of various kinds that trump the nation state -- the World
Trade Organization, for example, (the International Monetary Fund) IMF, and so on, and also regional organizations that
also trump to some extent nation states, and that’s particularly true in Europe. So it’s a funny institution, it's
somewhere between the Congress of Vienna, with the great powers coming together in Europe deciding the future of
European security or whatever, and some future thing that may well be a worldwide parliament, and sort of stumbling
along between the past and the future. Institutional reforms can’t make it right now what it needs to be because the
international system is still very chaotic and still dominated -- especially dominated by one very powerful country, and
that’s the United State of America -- and there’s huge differences of income and well-being between the peoples of the
world. So it’s a very chaotic and extremely unjust world, and it’s very hard to imagine an institution developing in
this particular world that’s going to be anything close to what we would like it to be.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Well, does anyone have a vision for how this world body could operate effectively and equitably?
JAMES PAUL: There’s constant pressure on the UN to make various different kinds of reforms that are moderate in extent
but moving in the right direction. Some of the most exciting are the International Criminal Court -- a very, very
interesting development; the U.S. hates that. There are a lot of interesting proposals having to do with the development
of global taxes, which are considered in the U.S. Congress to be impossibly radical and they’re very opposed to it.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Can you make any connection between how the U.N. is structured and some of the unsavory things that
U.N. troops have done, such as raping civilians in a number of different countries or supporting the current, un-elected
government of Haiti?
JAMES PAUL: Well, there are several issues here. One has to do with whether or not U.N. peacekeeping sometimes ends up
being used to support illegitimate great power interests. In the case you’re referring to in Haiti, this is certainly
true. It was a coup that was brought off by the United States and France with Canadian complicity and the U.N.
peacekeeping force down there for better or for worse, is involved with that initially illegitimate process of
overthrowing (Jean-Bertrand) Aristide.
Secondly, though, the issue of sexual abuse by peacekeepers has something to do with the fact that it’s the richest
countries who have the most disciplined armies -- they’re not always as disciplined as we would want them to be, but the
point is they are much better trained and much better equipped and much better officered and so on. And they don’t send
their armies to the U.N., so the U.N. peacekeeping forces are often made up of they don’t give their units to the U.N.
-- so the U.N. peacekeeping forces are often made up of rather badly trained and not well-officered forces, and those
are more likely to be involved in these kind of abusive acts. Furthermore, because of the arrangements between nation
states and the U.N., in which the nation states insist on maintaining their national sovereignty, the U.N. doesn’t have
the capacity to bring these soldiers to justice. And so they have, essentially, impunity. It’s up to the individual
country to discipline them and they very often don’t. So all these things show how short we are of the kind of
international order that we need, desperately, in this period.
Contact the Global Policy Forum at (212) 557-3161 or visit the group's website at http://www.globalpolicy.org
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Melinda Tuhus is a producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 35 radio stations and in RealAudio and
MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated
weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending Dec. 31, 2004. This Between The Lines Q was compiled by Melinda Tuhus and Anna Manzo.
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