Moving beyond the United Nations

Last week, the UN General Assembly held its annual convention, which featured such spectacles as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trademark anti-Semitic sophistry and an hour-and-40-minute rant by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that can be described as nothing other than the musings of a crackpot.

The “international community” is supposed to be a representation of the world’s states coming together to peacefully resolve issues for the betterment of humanity. I realize this description is idealistic to the extreme, but compare it for a moment to what the UN is today: a cabal of mostly undemocratic states, who consistently vote against measures designed to increase freedom throughout the world. Incidents like the election of Zimbabwe to head the UN Council on Sustainable Development in 2007 or the election of Libya to lead the now-defunct UN Commission on Human Rights in 2003 are nothing less than a mockery of the international system.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that is rooted in the Charter of the UN itself. Sovereign equality—the idea that states are both inviolable and equal—has been used for over 60 years as a cover for some of the world’s worst atrocities. The implication of this principle is that no matter how brutal your regime, no matter how much instability and violence your country exports to the rest of the world, you have an equal seat on the UN General Assembly. This flaw taints the entire organization because the UN decides on committee membership through election—hence the sorry state of the UN Human Rights Council. Even on the all-powerful UN Security Council, the concept of sovereign equality does its damage—it is politically much easier for China and Russia to stonewall an initiative when the majority of the UN membership is itself intransigent on the issue.

My quarrel is not with the semantics of sovereignty, but rather with the practical implications that this concept has on the ability of free, developed nations to exercise power on the international stage. Rather than buy into the spurious notion that Muammar Gaddafi is somehow on the same level as Barack Obama, the West should take the view that our respect for a given country is something that has to be earned, not something that a state is entitled to merely because it exists. Now, that is not to say that every nation has to westernize in order to be treated as an equal partner in the international community—in considering who we deal with, the West needs to consider both the individual country’s power and its principles, even if those two criteria diverge considerably. This way, countries like Russia and China will still be key players, while states like Zimbabwe will be shut out of important decision making.

I am not advocating Western isolation, or even an abolition of the UN, but rather a more streamlined and effective policy-making process. Just as NATO was created out of the realization that the UN Security Council could not effectively meet the West’s security needs, so too must a new international organization arise in order to give the world’s influential states the ability to tackle critical problems, without the distractions of irrelevant dictatorships.

Fortunately, an organization along the lines of what I am describing already exists, and looks as if it is beginning to take a leading role. This past weekend, the countries responsible for 85 percent of the world’s economic output agreed that the G-20 summit would replace the G-8 summit as the main forum for discussing issues of international economic and political importance. Although it lacks the kind of institutionalized power with which the UN is bestowed, the G-20 is a critical recognition of the fact that non-Western countries can have influence over world affairs. Specifically, the G-20 rewards countries for good economic stewardship, rather than the UN’s approach of ignoring geopolitical realities in the interests of adhering to some abstract philosophical principle.

When thinking about an effective international body, it is important to recognize that the West simply cannot go it alone. Industrialization and capitalism are leading to unprecedented increases in living standards across the globe, and developing countries are destined to become a key part of the global power structure. What the West needs to decide is whether it is necessary to subordinate our interests to the wills of marginal countries run by unelected governments, or if we can achieve more by working primarily with states like China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. If we want to tackle the great challenges of the 21st century, we need a new forum that brings together the world’s major stakeholders, where one’s seat at the table of nations is considered to be a privilege, not a right.

Jon Hollander is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics. He is the director of intergroup affairs for the College Republicans. Reasonably Right runs alternate Wednesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com