United Nations: Promises unfulfilled

At age 36, the United Nations is a misbegotten prometheus chained down to a very disunited disarrayed world. Its tire has long been extinguished, its promise long lost in the ever-gathering clouds of tension, conflict and war.As delegates from 154 nations trooped last fortnight into the vast ornate hall of the General Assembly, on the first floor of the 45-storey building facing lower Manhattan's hopelessly polluted East River, there was no sense of urgency nor of serious engagement despite the South African invasion of Angola, a far cry from the 1956 Anglo-French invasion of Suez. Nobody expects anything dramatic or spectacular of the UN these days. Yet no one is prepared to shrug it off as useless or obsolete or irrelevant to our trying times.Six years ago, in 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the then US ambassador to the UN, paid the UN a high tribute by calling it "a dangerous place". The UN had earned that tribute by passing a resolution which bracketed Zionism with racism. Moynihan put the US in the role of the leader of the opposition in the United Nations. Congressmen and Senators questioned if the United States should continue to pay 25 per cent of the UN budget. In the last six years the US has "lost" 30 resolutions in the UN. The UN has become an object of scorn, concern and ridicule in the host country. But the United States continues to foot one-fourth of the UN's annual budget. Its current UN representative, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown University political science professor, who got the job by writing a get-tough-with-the-Third World article in Commentary magazine, strides the corridors of the UN building like a knight attired in stainless steel armour.Moynihan (left), Kirkpatrick and Waldheim: a wide spectrum of viewsThe Third World delegates do not exactly catch a cold when Kirkpatrick sneezes. But she, and the Reagan Administration whom she represents, do send shivers down the spine of many delegates from Latin America and Africa. A member of the Mexican delegation contemplates the Picasso dove with Spenglerian gloom and remarks."We don't have the least doubt that the Reagan people will try their best to destabilise Mexico. They want a government there that will do their bidding." Weeks before the US stood by South Africa in the security council. African delegates made no secret of their fear that the US would stand by South Africa where its "vital interests" lay. "The United States cannot stop the march of history in South Africa," declared a delegate from Angola with an oracular accent. But he hastened to whisper the caution, "It can certainly make things difficult for all of us."Cold War: The Africans, however, came to the 36th session of the UN in a jubilant mood. They are certain that the next secretary-general, will be Saleem Salim, the suave, ever-smiling foreign minister of Tanzania. Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian who earned a bad name in the US for "appeasing" the Third World, has ended his second term. He was more than willing to offer himself for a third term, and had actually done some vigorous canvassing in the major world capitals including New Delhi. Waldheim, however, did not finally run when he found that Salim had the support of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The Africans argue, not without logic, that western Europe has had three UN secretary generals, Asia one; it is now their turn.The new secretary-general will inherit a United Nation which is neither potent nor impotent as the world's peacekeeper. The UN's peacemaking role prospers in a cold war between the two superpowers. When Moscow and Washington can get together to settle major disputes, the UN takes a back seat in the global hall of conflict. It played no role in the Vietnam agreements between Hanoi and Washington. Nor in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war between Israel and the Arabs. However, the UN peacemaking role has somewhat improved with the return of Cold War, phase II. In each of the current international crises affecting peace and security of a world suffocating in the hollows of superpower confrontation, the UN has dug in its toes. A Latin American representative of Waldheim has been hopping from New York to Kabul, Rawalpindi and Tehran in search of a UN formula to end the Afghan crisis; his latest report, timed for the opening of the 36th session, was opaquely optimistic of bringing the Afghans and the Pakistanis to the conference table.The UN General Assembly: no sense of urgencyShortly before the opening of the 36th session, the UN hosted, at the request of the Asean powers backed by the United States and China, a conference to end the Kampuchea crisis. It left the crisis exactly where it was because it was boycotted by Vietnam and the Soviet Union (as well as by India). The UN has been working with the Reagan Administration to prevent Lebanon from becoming thecasus bellifor a new Arab-Israeli war. In none of these crises does the UN play a crucial role comparable to the ones it played during the Korean war or the Congo crisis of the early 1960s.But, with a new cold war raging, the corridors of the UN building have regained the strategic importance they had acquired in the decades of the first Cold War. Once again, handshakes and whispers exchanged in the corridors have become more important than the rhetorical storms that blow over the richly carpeted conference rooms.Power Struggle: Between the corridors and conference chambers, the UN in 1981 is indeed a strange and baffling place, a hazy collage of hope and disappointment, of idealism and brute struggle for power.In visible ways the UN does represent the world community - a disparate cacophonous group of nations - overwhelmingly black, brown and yellow, with a small white minority; you have only to take a look at any of the sessions in progress, whether of the GeneralAssembly or any of its different committees. Without the earphones one is immediately drowned in torrents of human tongues; even with an earphone clipped to the ear, one has to navigate fuzzy grammar, atrocious accents, laboured syntax. Yet, again in a surrealistic way, the UN represents the global village, tries to speak a world lexicon of interdependence. However, the real world remains brutally mortgaged to the power of money and weapons, in the grip of nations whom Wordsworth described:Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take, who have the power And they should keep who can..Between the powerbrokers and the world's pawns of power, there exists, at the UN, a third force. It is the international civil service, or more accurately, its upper echelons, a world elite, still predominantly white, which claims to cling to the heritage of the League of Nations that grew up in the 1920s and 1930s on the shores of Lac Leman, Geneva, despite American absence. The UN today is a hotbed of tensions between three closely interacting constellations: the white haves split between the two cold-warring blocs; the black-and-brown have-nots who, in their own turn, are split into numerous geographical, ideological and political groups; and the international civil servants who form its backbone.The 36th session of the General Assembly will not make the world any better, nor is it likely to make the world any worse than it actually is. The UN is probably involved in far too many issues and projects than it can cope with. Indeed its activities encompass almost everything under the sun from disarmament to sugar prices, from drug smuggling to child abuse.The UN has indeed gone through enormous change since it was created in 1945 by 32 "founding" members (including India). For nearly two decades, it remained under effective control of the United States. The great change stemmed from the disintegration of the European empires. As many as 34 of the UN's present 154 members are former colonies of Britain. Years of Portuguese misrule gave the UN, almost overnight, four Marxist-ruled new African members in the small years of the '70s. The net result of the change-of-colour was that the US lost its control of the UN.In the 1970s, the new members, all hailing from Africa and Asia, were joined by several nations of Latin America and all these nations acted in unison with the Soviet bloc to create a climate at the UN which Americans described as downright hostile. "The balance of forces is now with the Soviets," groaned Moynihan in 1975. The glint of the oil power of the Arabs showed more at the UN than anywhere else in the world, and in 1975-76 it seemed for a brief period that the Arabs and their friends, with loud Soviet support, would succeed in expelling Israel from the UN. The threat brought forth a warning from Henry Kissinger, who was then US secretary of state: "We fear for the integrity and survival of the General Assembly itself and no less for that of the specialised agencies... the support of the American people which has been the life-blood of the organisation, will be profoundly alienated unless fair play predominates and the numerical majority respects the views of the minority."The US showed its teeth. But what changed the alignment of forces at the UN was not American teeth, but the naked claws of Soviet power. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan broke the anti-US coalition of the 1970s, together with several other developments, each exposing the disarray in the ranks of the new nations- the Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea, the split among the Arabs, the crisis in the Persian Gulf, the collapse of oil power. The 35th session of the UN General Assembly in 1980 restored American confidence in the world body.In the mid-'50s, American foreign policy makers like Zbigniew Brzezinski were identifying the contradictions between the industrialised capitalist nations and the impoverished nations of the South as the principal line of confrontation in the global arena. The main task of US foreign policy was devised so as "to keep the industrialised nations together and the nations of the Third World divided." In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration can confidently count on the active support of the necessary number of Third World nations at the UN to make confrontation with the Soviet bloc and its friends and allies as the centre-piece of American foreign policy. Many Third World diplomats at the UN appeared angry but were secretly pleased when American Fighters shot down two Soviet-built Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra on August 19. "The mood of America is ugly," sighed a UN diplomat from Kenya. "It's not a good portent for the UN." UN support for South Africa has not outraged too many Third World delegates.No Concessions: Third World envoys at the UN do not expect their countries to gain much at the 36th session of the General Assembly. "We will probably lose on all counts," mused a South-East Asian diplomat sadly. "High on the agenda is what has come to be known as the North-South issues. But the North is absolutely in no mood to make any real concessions to the South. Now, with so many fractures in the ranks of the developing nations, the North is in a strong position to defend its privileges and power."A Zambian diplomat observed, "This session will be more noted for the contacts that take place between the superpowers than what happens with regard to the Third World. Of course, we Africans will train our guns on Namibia and South Africa. But frankly I don't expect much progress in that direction at the UN."The 36th session of the General Assembly will not make the world any better, nor is it likely to make the world any worse than it actually is. The UN is probably involved in far too many issues and projects than it can cope with. Indeed its activities encompass almost everything under the sun from disarmament to sugar prices, from drug smuggling to child abuse. The General Assembly and its 15 specialised agencies labour for a New World Human Order with glacial speed. The General Assembly has passed scores of path-breaking "resolutions" without breaking any new paths for the human race because nations who vote for resolutions at the General Assembly, or oppose them, are under no obligation to implement them.Thus, the General Assembly has "legislated" that every man and woman has a right to peace and a right to development; it has urged all governments to ensure their citizens' basic human rights including social and economic rights. It has "banned" aggression as well as foreign intervention, and has invoked development and disarmament decades. It has even appointed a committee of eminent persons to probe the mischiefs multinational corporations do in the developing countries. While all these "resolutions" and "declarations" and even "legislations" reveal mankind's concern for a better world of real equality and justice, they have little impact on the actual world of overkill arms races, sweeping poverty, and increasing arrogance of power.Contributors: The contradiction between what the world actually is and what the UN, in its more sober and relaxed hours, wants it to be is written large on the walls of the UN buildings not only in New York but in Geneva, Paris and many other world capitals. The UN was located in New York in recognition of the emergence of the United States from the Second World War as the globe's number one power. That was a great mistake which many now acknowledge but nobody believes can ever be corrected. The US pays 25 per cent of the UN budget; the Soviet Union pays less than 12 per cent. The other major contributors are Japan, West Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Britain. As many as 71 nations pay 0.01 per cent each. (India's contribution is 0.68 per cent of the UN budget, which came in 1976 to $16,000,000- Rs 14.24 crore).The US of course, gets much more from the UN in monetary terms than what the UN gets from the US. A UN publication says, "41 per cent of the United Nations regular budget is spent in New York. 30 per cent at Geneva, 11 per cent at Vienna and the balance at about 60 duty stations around the world. As far as voluntary contributions go the situation is similar. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that it puts back into the United States economy, mainly through salaries of experts and purchases of equipment. 35 percent more dollars than it gets from the United States contribution." The US also has the largest single share of top jobs in the UN; as of June 30, 1979, 516 Americans were holding high-salaried jobs in the secretariat.The UN "system" is run by 45,000 civil servants whose salaries, perks and life-style have absolutely nothing in common with the 110 poor nations who constitute the bulk of UN membership. This international civil service is now a hot bone of contention among the geographical members; at the same time, it is a deeply frustrated and demoralised service whose lower ranks find their promotions blocked.The UN has been and remains in a serious budgetary crisis; 80 per cent of the budget of the General Assembly and its specialised agencies and 33 per cent of the entire UN budget (including voluntary and special contributions) are consumed to pay the international civil servants. Little, then, is left for actual development activities, while the demand on UN resources continue to grow year by year. Waldheim ordered a "No-Growth" budget three years ago (in the UN this is parodied as "Oh-Growth" budget). In 1978-79 salaries ate up $151 million (Rs 134.4 crore) of a UN budget of nearly $1 billion (Rs 890 crore); administration, management and general services consumed $161 million (Rs 143.3 crore).Thus, when in the basement of the secretariat building, an African delegate attired in a Saville Row suit barks at the rich powers for exploiting the world's poor, the mood in the upper floors of the building is one of indulgence, the talk of retirement settlements in Swiss francs and in six figures, while, in the middle and lower floors junior UN civil servants wail that their dollar cheques buy less and less every year. The UN should have been located in Lagos, or Cairo or New Delhi; its employees should have been paid at the rate of salaries drawn by senior officials of Third World governments, and rich advanced nations should have been asked to loan experts or volunteers to work for the world body. That alone would have made the UN represent the world as it really is. By locating the UN in New York, Geneva and Vienna, and by creating a civil service in the image of the American civil service, the UN has built an unbridgeable gulf between itself and the world of the poor and the deprived. No wonder that at no time in the 35 years of the UN, more than 12 ambassadors have ever been counted in New York, including the envoys of the five permanent members of the security council. At certain periods of time India was one of the 12. It is not now. It has not been one of them for quite some time.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 11, 2013 10:06 IST--- ENDS ---

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United Nations: Promises unfulfilled

At age 36, the United Nations is a misbegotten prometheus chained down to a very disunited disarrayed world. Its tire has long been extinguished, its promise long lost in the ever-gathering clouds of tension, conflict and war.

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