When the United Nations was founded in 1945, it emerged from a world in ruins. In Europe and Asia, the rank application of totalitarian power had dissolved order, left tens of millions dead, and offered the new horror of systematic murder in concentration camps on an industrial scale implemented with engineering precision to the world. The world was numb.
From this shock emerged the organization founded with principles that on the face of it are laudable. Article 1 of its purposes states that it will “maintain international peace and security… take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace,” and “take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.”
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But the devil is in the detail. We must pose an inescapable question: Which political and economic systems are best suited to achieve these ends? No amount of utopian hopefulness can evade an answer. On this matter, the UN is mute.
In many ways, the UN, from the moment it was formed, had within it the seeds of its own demise. Behind those apparently high-minded statements of purpose, there is no indication of the fundamental values for which it would fight in the post-war world. There is no elaboration on exactly what sort of political systems would best secure “peace and security”.
This was not surprising.
Some of the major powers, with whom the West’s friendship was forged in the final struggle against the Axis powers, were themselves hardly democratic. Stalinist communist Russia would have made it impossible to set up a United Nations whose stated purpose was to advance democracy and free economic conditions as the means best aligned to achieve international cooperation.
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If we were to have any United Nations, then it would need to be vocal about ends, but silent about means. In 1945, any alliance was a good alliance after what had just occurred.
Fast forward to the 21st century. The collective amity forged in the heat of World War 2 battles has seeped into history apart from periodic memorials. The bond between the world powers that was sustained by this memory has weakened. And what is there left?
As, in the interests of global harmony, the UN never stated what it really stood for, we now have an organization that wallows in a sort of moral no-man’s land.
The war in Ukraine illustrates the fundamental weakness. In seeking not to alienate its member states and the members of its security council, the UN has found itself unable to articulate any statement about what is clearly an imperial war of aggression that has violated the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation.
The desire to act as a neutral arbitrator of world powers, the original intention of the organization, has hobbled its capacity to do the very thing that is stated unambiguously in Article 1 of its purpose, which is to achieve the “suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.”
What is to be done?
I want to suggest two possible ideas.
First, it seems helpful and essential that we have an organization that does indeed represent the whole of humanity on any matter in which planetary-scale coordination is necessary.
From climate alterations to short-term natural disasters, the world must have a forum where all nations, regardless of their political character, can put aside differences and work together. This is especially the case for existential risks. If, God-forbid, we were to discover a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth, then we will need a functional United Nations. Such an organization has much to offer in helping us all to address problems such as pandemics.
We could imagine a re-organization of the UN into an alliance whose purpose is to handle global threats, particularly those that emerge from non-political sources, such as those that materialize from natural disasters, changes in the Earth system and other planetary-encompassing technical problems whose scale requires international collective action.
In essence, the UN would cut back on its ambitions and direct them to those things for which an utterly neutral position would make sense. It seems to me that the UN would be eminently good at doing this. Ironically, its current inability to stand up for any particular political principles provides a solid demonstration of its ability to carry out this special task.
Instead of destructively demeaning the UN, let’s give it a portfolio of work that fits this brief and its inherent character. Its Articles of Purposes and Principles could be modified to reflect this new and more focused role.
Second, we do need a new global organization that is willing to stand up for principles.
It is simply not the case that the various political systems on offer around the world are all equal in standing. No matter how much some parties want to advance the idea of a “multi-polar world”, human beings have generally been happier and more peaceful internationally in societies that encourage genuine democratic deliberation as a way forward, rather than the brute force of dictators. Nations that stand by this basic premise should form an alliance that is willing to protect these ideas.
The multi-polar concept that all political and economic systems are equally meritorious leads to the twisted notion that the UN’s role in Ukraine is to be hands off and talk to everyone involved as if both parties caught up in this invasion were the legitimate sides of the same coin. This is where the UN’s absence of principles logically leads us. It is exactly the same problem that ultimately confounded the League of Nations, which had similarly impressive ambitions, but little moral authority.
What we might imagine is a new alliance of Democratic Nations, let us call this, for sake of argument, the “League of Democracies.”
This league would have stated purposes similar to the existing UN, but it would be clear how it believes these objectives can be best achieved – by nations that accept the rule of law and impartial law, nationally and internationally; that repudiate wars of imperialism; that open themselves to observation of elections by other members of the league; that encourage credible political opposition; that achieve certain quantifiable benchmarks on freedom of the press, anti-corruption and humanitarian and educational standards in prisons; that uphold human rights.
It is interesting that the emerging BRICS alliance has no equivalent bloc committed to the ideas of liberal democracy. NATO is currently a purely military alliance and so is not a political equivalent.
For anyone who says that the idea proposed here is divisive, one could point out that with BRICS now in play, it seems reasonable that liberal democracies should join together to offer a different vision of an alliance that is founded on clear and common principles of governance. A League of Democracies is no more antagonistic than BRICS if one is to accept the idea that nations can get together and form political and economic alliances if they wish.
Thus, what we might envisage is a United Nations that oversees global technical challenges, and a variety of political alliances that compete to offer compelling visions of human organization, with the League of Democracies being one – an alliance I happen to believe would offer humanity an exciting and well-proven template on how to run societies.
For democratic states, a new league would provide the basis for proposing a world order which offers a way forwards, with clarity and distinction, for the development of civilization and the continued construction and maintenance of a rules-based order that draws humanity away from the inter-state military rivalries of the past.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
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