Martin LeFevre: Free the United Nations!

Fittingly, when you click on the official button for United Nations Day (October 24) it takes an inordinate amount of time for Ban Ki Moon’s brief message to load up. Most people give up; a few look elsewhere. (http://www.un.org/en/events/unday/2009/)

The United Nations, in its presently woefully inadequate dispensation, raises an old question to new heights (or nadir): Stay within and reform the existing framework, or create a new one?

For most people who believe in the necessity of the United Nations, the question is a non sequitur. The UN framework is a given, it’s ‘all we have,’ and there’s no choice but to ‘reform the UN.’

The rather sad and exceedingly unworkable idea of a “United Nations People’s Assembly” epitomizes this way of thinking. At some level, the activists who are pushing such a plan know that for the UN to survive, it must ‘evolve’ into an effective, limited institution of global governance.

Ban Ki Moon, who seems like a very decent man and conveniently weak Secretary General, rightly says, “this is a unique moment in world affairs; many crises are hitting us at once.” But when he adds, “people everywhere are looking to the United Nations,” he unwittingly points to the chasm between global actuality and UN reality.

Can the UN lead the way in meeting the challenges facing humanity—“climate change, poverty and hunger, keeping the peace, standing up for human rights, stopping the spread of deadly weapons, stopping the spread of disease, protecting people and families hit by natural disaster, or the global economic crisis?”

Without a new foundation, and without a transfusion of renewed mission and purpose, the UN cannot meet these challenges, and the multilateral global crisis will continue to worsen. I’m not talking about collective catastrophes; they are probably inevitable. I’m saying that the UN, being the arrested child of the most powerful nation-states following World War II, is not even equipped to tackle the challenges before us today.

The quagmire of Afghanistan, into which the United States led the UN and NATO, exemplifies the catch-22 in which the United Nations is presently caught. It was neither able to say no to sanctioning the invasion (thanks to the French, the UN was saved from complete destruction by not giving its imprimatur to the US/UK invasion of Iraq), nor once in, has the UN been able to affect policy in any meaningful way.

The denouement was the UN oversight of the sham Afghan election. It included a disgraceful performance by the UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, who said recently that “additional international troops are required,” and that “this cannot be a U.S.-only enterprise.” Ironically, it was his American-born deputy, Peter Galbraith, who blew the whistle on a UN attempt to cover up voter fraud.

As Galbraith, who was fired for his remarks, reported, Eide “denied that significant fraud had taken place, even going to the extreme of ordering U.N. staff not to discuss the matter.” The immediate reason? Because it would have been “deeply disturbing to president Karzai.”

The underlying and overarching reason for Eide’s attempted cover-up is the habit the UN has of embracing the status quo, no matter how unsustainable it is.

Criticizing the UN is like criticizing Barack Obama. Because so many right-wingnuts do so reflexively, it draws one’s sympathies into question. In addition, there’s a reasonable fear of ‘divide and rule,’ since, as Jose “Pepe” Majica, a former guerilla, committed socialist, and the likely next president of Uruguay said, “the congenital illness of the left is a lack of unity.”

Even so, constructive criticism by the left inoculates progressive politicians and political institutions against attacks by the right. And disunity amongst people who retain their hearts can only be overcome by inspired appeals to the heart, not by rationales and tactics from and for the head. The heart makes mistakes, to be sure, but leading from the head leads to evil. That’s what so-called conservatives by and large do.

If the UN is to survive, much less grow into an institution of genuine global governance, a new component in the political architecture of the global society is urgently required. A new space has opened up, and nation-states and their institutional manifestations cannot fill it.

The global space knows no borders, although global citizens respect the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. Global citizens reject coercion and control in all forms, but they understand and support the necessity of structures, frameworks, and the rule of law. Global citizens reject the whitewashing language and traditions of diplomacy, but value the intentions and processes of negotiation.

The elements of a previous framework cannot be extended and enlarged to fit the exigencies of a new reality, without a new factor that transforms the fundamental dynamic of the old order.

It’s like trying to make the monarchical order prior to the 18th century ‘evolve’ into the new reality of nation-states. The modern state had to be invented to manage the modern reality, just as a global polity and a global body have to be invented to manage globalization and the global society.

The most difficult questions for global citizens are these: First, what is the right relationship to power? Second, is accruing power necessary to effectively influence the policies of national governments and international institutions?

We live in an age beyond interconnection. After all, interconnection is between the two or the many, and now power, money, technology, and ideas all function and flow across the globe. That means power has become passé, though it will continue to be the currency of governments.

An authentically reformed United Nations is necessary for the rule of international law between states. But the UN has no more moral authority or moral suasion now than Uruguay, or the United States. What is our response as global citizens to be?

The world urgently needs a non-power-holding body of world citizens. What better place to build it than East Africa, the birthplace of humankind?

The creation of such a body would cut the Gordian knot that threatens to strangle us all. It would also resolve the riddle of staying within the existing framework or creating a new one.

The answer is both, as long as a few put humanity first within a genuinely global framework. The UN cannot be or do that.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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