United Nations V2.0
Intro
This brief essay is about a view on the future of the world order; a vision on the mission of the United Nations (UN), which was and should be there to maintain peace for, and convergence within mankind. Looking at the currently raging wars, the UN is clearly failing in its responsibility, whereas a vast majority of its members still support its mission.
Disclaimer: I am no expert on this matter, just a very worried citizen who wonders what can be done to cause a renewal or regeneration of the, obviously, currently no longer functional international structures and to prevent them from effectively becoming fully obsolete.
Rusty
Although still possessing very useful elements in diplomatic exchange, the current UN structures strongly reflect the power dynamics of 80 years ago at the end of WWII. In practice, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) fundamentally hands over to or lets pre-filter almost all of its decisions by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), of which the five permanent members, by voting negatively on substantive matters, each possess an individual “veto” to block any decision.
As such is this veto mechanism only to be used as a last resort if no unanimity in the UNSC can be reached; the P5 members of the UNSC should thus exercise restraint in the use of their veto power. Unfortunately, self-control has been lacking and the P5 powers have controlled or dominated the world’s geopolitics since 1945 partially by “misusing” their UNSC veto power. Unwilling to change their behavior, they currently block any UN self-renewal and modernization.
The use of a veto power mechanism is in principle a very useful instrument. It prevents that temporary political (majority) coalitions can take over the governance of the world and permanently establish their structural dominance over a minority point of view. Being able to block this is essential for a democracy and stimulates to use unanimity or consensus as the primary “controlling or governing mechanism” instead of dominance. Therefore, all substantial representations of humanity (for example, geographical/cultural/religious blocks or zones) should possess a “veto” option and not only the five permanent members of the UNSC.
However, there are limits. If parties start using vetoes to protect their national geopolitical stakes or for unjustified or unbalanced interests of their close allies, this easily results in the mechanism becoming politically dysfunctional from a diplomatic perspective. As a result, it hinders or destroys the originally intended peace-building mission and leads to a stalemate, preventing people from getting any nearer to each other.
If there are no rules and/or mechanisms to overrule the UNSC’s non-UN-mission-statement-aligned vetoes, the stimulus to use unanimity as the primary mechanism is also minimized. This process is unfortunately ongoing and turns the UN, its bodies and courts into much less effective instruments than humanity currently requires.
Lacking an effective and respected international channel of convergence increases tension between member countries and strongly distracts from the urgent collective issues mankind faces, such as climate-change, inequality and forced migration. We are often externally forced to cooperate. If we want to protect ourselves or achieve any positive change and get closer to each other, none of us can do this alone.
The Willing versus the Unwilling
The UN charter is meanwhile 80 years old and, in that period, there have been strong shifts in geographic and/or economic development. There are by now many new or rising important global players. However, the UN has evolved much less and the five main UNSC powers are still mostly dominating the organization. Unfortunately, a voluntary reduction of this dominance, which would be the appropriate solution in order to adapt to new realities, seems to be very far away. In an increasingly polarizing multi-polar world, the opposite is actually happening; mankind is rapidly drifting apart. From this starting point, there are two possible outcomes.
The first one is one of a status-quo of a dysfunctional UN or, to say it differently, a “continuation of the dominance of the unwillingness to adapt to change”. This drifting apart will most likely, over time, slowly lead to WWIII. Then, in its aftermath, and if mankind does not become extinct, a new peace charter can be developed, like this has occurred before, after each previous WW.
The second scenario is one of immediate change where such a new charter is developed right now and where those open or willing to grow together start acting as one coalition in order to prevent WWIII by dialog and mutual understanding, thus focusing on what people have in common instead on of what makes us different from each other.
The question is how to facilitate such self-renewal mechanism and its regeneration outcome, how to motivate the few unwilling “status-quo” parties — who no longer reflect today’s world but the past — to voluntarily give up their dominance.
Abolishing UN V1.0
A serious obstacle is that the UN neither possesses procedures for withdrawal of member states nor for any process of regeneration, dissolution or disbandment. This means that it will be extremely hard to get the topic of modernization and adaptation to the current world situation on the agenda of the UNSC. The five permanent members can easily control this by vetoing it. However, it is nevertheless not fully impossible to invoke such a dialogue. Since dissolution has a substantial procedural component, an UNGA majority can, in principle, initiate a discussion on this topic. This requires an UNGA two-thirds majority, followed by a 9 out of the 15 UNSC votes to put the topic on the UNSC agenda, whereas the five permanent members’ possible negative votes in this case would not have any veto power status.
Once on the UNSC agenda and with the permanent five having veto power over the substantive elements of change, there is another option to stimulate those unwilling to adapt. There is precedence to be found in the past use of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution (UNGA Res. 377A(V)) which was originally designed to allow the General Assembly to act when the UNSC is blocked by a veto on urgent matters of international peace and security. Theoretically, this resolution could be applied if the UNSC turns out not to be open for the necessary voluntary change. The current UN dysfunction is clearly a matter which very urgently needs to be addressed from an international peace and security perspective.
The result of the above process can either be positive change, or a falling apart of the UN V1.0 as we know it today.
Creating UN V2.0
In case insufficient regenerative force is encountered, the UN in its current form will either dissolve or become irrelevant over time; the question is: What is next?
To, as mankind, address topics like conflict, climate change, inequality and forced migration collectively, we need international cooperation and coordination. The current UN charter is a good basis for this, but it should be formally broadened beyond peace and international cooperation as its primary scope.
A further main change which is required is to develop self-renewal or automatic regeneration mechanisms in order to keep the relevance of the UN as a stable factor on the international stage and to automatically adapt to a changing environment.
In such surroundings there is still space for using a veto mechanism to protect minority interests, but not for any misuse. A major change should thus be to define strict rules for the use of one’s veto in line with the UN charter’s mission statement.
The above can lead to disputes and therefore a court must be able to overrule possible misaligned vetoes and have the final judgment. Within the current setup this could probably be a new task for the ICJ. Still, the real challenge is to encourage positive unanimity-based decisions, instead of negative veto-based protective ones.
Membership and Subscription to a UN Charter V2.0
Still founded on principal equality and equal human rights, a new UN charter should be developed on the basis of consensus between an as large as possible majority of the current UN member states. Nevertheless, it will most likely imply that some of the current members will drop out.
Of course, one wants to maximize member country participation in the UN, but not at any price. If the result is stagnation, like right now, it is most probably a better approach to accept some countries’ refusal to join a UN V2.0.
Notwithstanding, it must remain attractive to be a member of the world community and to participate in optimizing global prosperity and convergence.
Consequences of Non-Membership
If a vast majority of countries joins UN V2.0, it would mean that the non-members isolate themselves from what “the world” wants. In the current globalized world this would likely have a strong negative effect on the non-participating minority.
In case a non-member’s behavior reaches the level of defined crimes against humanity, there are ample existing sanction mechanisms available which would discipline such party. As a last resort, collective military action could even be taken, although almost always more peaceful diplomatic alternatives are to be preferred.
Looking forward
Time is running out fast for the UN in its current form. The UNGA and UNSC must therefore act now. They have the world’s mandate to do so and to use all the instruments they possess to stop the current wars.
There is no single excuse left for any permanent UNSC member to use a “joker escape veto out of individual geopolitical interest”. Sanctions are urgently needed to secure peace.
Without doing so, the risk is very substantial that the UN becomes superfluous, and that the world is left without any structure to address common problems.
However, it is not primarily the UN’s fault that nothing happens, pointing at the UN as an organization is like shooting the messenger.
Mankind meanwhile created a world that is growing/falling apart, in which the UN just reflects our divergence and has become dysfunctional because of a lack of universal support. People will have to learn to focus on what they have in common instead of the differences between them to change this. To support this, we need a renewed UN as well.
If the current P5 members of the UNSC do not voluntarily abolish their dominance via a procedural UNSC discussion, a more convergent UN V2.0 must be created. If the above UNSC discussion fails, a second step is to use the precedent of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution by the UNGA to take over from the UNSC and to dissolve UN 1.0.
From here we can make a new start with charter UN V2.0 and to try to consensually unite as many as possible current UN member states in a broader and more modern organization. The other side of this coin is that some countries will not join the new 2.0 organization. Still, this is to be preferred over the current stagnation and dysfunction of the UN.
Humanity has to urgently grow together as equals in order to address the problems all of us face, such as conflict, climate change, inequality and forced migration; ”Collectively in Solidarity”.
