Rice still thinks the security council has credibility:
When the international community reconvenes after the 30 days, there has to be some message, clear message, that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, or you will start to call into question the credibility of what the Security Council says when it says it
If the credibility of the security council rests on whether or not its decisions are enforced, then the obvious way to ensure this is to make sure it's decisions are vague and meaningless. This is a tactic with considerable precident.
If the credibility of the security council rests on it actually being able to do something useful when most meaningful resolutions will be vetoed, then the battle was lost long ago.
The sad truth is that a credible Security Council, with both international legitimacy and the ability to enforce resolutions, is not in the U.S. interests. The reforms needed simply won't happen. Rice's lip-service is hypocritical.
7 comments:
There are several aspects to the “credibility” of the UN.
1.) The UN has to be international. A union of Western European nations + the US doesn’t mean much.
2.) The UN has to step in when one nation is trying to attack/posses that which doesn’t belong to itself, that is when its charter says to.
3.) When it does “resolve” to do something, it must follow through.
My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that the UN was meant to arbitrate disagreements between small nations, so they wouldn’t grow into big problems. The expectation was that traditional diplomacy would still be employed to deal with the large nations. In this way, Italy wouldn’t have been permitted to take Ethiopia, and North Korea was not be permitted to take South Korea. The UN is not credible when dealing with any of the 5 Veto-capable powers, and it wasn’t meant to be.
In the eyes of the US, the UN is not credible because it issues resolutions, and doesn’t follow through. In the eyes of much of the world, the UN is not credible because it does not step in (or resolve to) when it should (Sudan) or when they think it should (US invasion of Iraq).
AMI,
Thanks for hosting additional discussions :-)
Stryker,
You're probably correct that it was never intended to mediate between larger nations. But there's no mechanism to change what is considered a "large" nation. In todays world it makes no sense that the U.K. and France have a veto, but not Germany, Japan, Brazil, or India.
Why there needs to be a veto at all is a mystery to me. We could acknowledge the wealth and military power of the larger nations by giving them a weighted vote, but no veto.
For the council to mean something, even when dealing with smaller nations, there need to be international laws that are applied equally, without regard to what is in the best interests of the veto-bearing members.
In addition there needs to be some sort of enforcement mechanism. A U.N. army is unrealistic, but if member countries signed a treaty agreeing to abide by U.N. sanctions then this would be at least something.
... Ami.
Ami,
As for why ther need*S* to be a veto, I can't answer. They needed for a veto when the Soviets wanted to have a vote for each republic. The US of course would counter with a desire of one for each state. Realistically, I could see a "continental" veto of some kind, where if a majority of a subset wanted to veto, they could.
As for enforcement, I don't think signing an enforcement treaty would get anyone very far.
As for the international law, it makes sence, but what theory of law do you base it on?
Stryker,
I don't know much about international law, but frameworks do already exist:
http://www.un.org/law/
The University of Helsinki is actually a big center for internationl law. I might try to take a few introductory courses.
... Ami.
You ask "Why have a veto?" Quite simply, it's because it's fundamentally unfair to have 5 wolves and 4 sheep vote on what's for dinner. Does it make it more fair if it's 5 wolves to 2 sheep if the sheep each have 2 votes?
I also think you're right, Ami, that there should be a way to reconsider who does and doesn't get a veto. France having a veto makes little sense, and good arguments can be made for the UK not deserving a veto.
I think the idea of the vetoes was based on the idea that, if a general consensus could be reached (as demonstrated by no vetoes being made by large, generally opposed, nations), it would be appropriate for the world community to interfere, and not to interfere if it couldn't be reached.
Some responses to points mentioned above:
(1) Part of the UN's goal was to create a forumn where large nations could meet even if they weren't on speaking terms. That's not the same as mediation or arbitration but it is a significant step forward in the post-WWII world. The rapid decline of Soviet-western cooperation in the UN's first few years would imo have been far worse had the UN not existed. The Korean conflict, for instance, could very easily have turned into a direct military confrontation between the US and USSR, but I credit the UN's existence for keeping the Soviets from entering that war directly.
(2) The Security Council veto was established so that the five principal allied powers could ensure that the UN would not be used as a blunt instrument against any of those five nations. Obviously, the USSR benefited most from this protection in the early years of the UN, but I suspect that the US and UK have also benefited from this protection frequently, especially during periods when the majority of world governments have shifted leftward.
Unfortunately, what developed was that the veto became a weapon to neutralize the UN when dealing with issues involving states where none of the directly involved states possessed a veto. Unless this changes I don't see it as being worthwhile to increase the number of nations with veto power - even though I agree that nations such as India, Brazil, Japan, and Germany are excellent candidates for taking on this kind of responsibility.
(3) Ultimately, I suspect efforts at improving the UN will fail because in order for the UN to be effectively improved the member states must be willing to surrender a significant chunk of sovereignty to the world body. At the moment there's no way that the US would do so, and I don't think that's a position which is solely Bush's or the Republican Party's. Clinton was reluctant to do this, and despite the "global test" rhetoric I don't think Kerry would have been willing to surrender US sovereignty on any significant issue either.
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