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The United Nations in international relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1996

Mats Berdal
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Extract

Writing about the United States and its highly ambivalent relationship to the United Nations, Conor Cruise O'Brien once noted how, in ‘the land which houses the United Nations, and which does most both to support and to use it, discussion of the functioning of the United Nations is almost all on [a] quas-supernatural plane, whether it be in terms of the strengthened Platonic UN, or in terms of a UN of evil enchantment—God or the Devil’. With some exaggeration, much the same can be said about the public debate of the UN's role in international relations in recent years. It is heartening, therefore, as the UN celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, to see a growing number of studies prepared to examine critically the performance of the organization; to explore its possibilities in a world where interdependence and transnational processes require greater cooperation; but also to acknowledge its limitations in the same world where the autonomy and primacy of the state remain unchallenged in vital spheres of activity.

Type
Review articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 95 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1996

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References

1 O'Brien, Conor Cruise, The United Nations: Sacred Drama (London, 1968), p. 17Google Scholar.

2 Of the eleven operations launched since the UN Security Council summit meeting in January 1992, nine have been related to intra-state or internal conflicts. A number of these operations are examined in Clements and Ward, Building International Community.

3 Ibid., p. 1. See also Evans, Gareth, Cooperating for Peace: The Global Agenda for the 1990s and Beyond (Victoria, 1993)Google Scholar.

4 Clements and Ward, Building International Community, p. 1.

5 See in particular the works of Mitchell, C. R., The Structure of International Conflict (London, 1982)Google Scholar, and Burton, John, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis (Brighton, 1984)Google Scholar.

6 Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London, 1984), p. 26Google Scholar.

7 Clements and Ward, Building International Community, p. 5.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., pp. 58 and 94.

10 Ibid., p. 310. In the Bicesse Peace Accords, Jonas Savimbi, Leader of UNITA, had committed himself to accept the outcom e of the elections. However, as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Joan Anstee, was later to remark, ‘the Accords relied on a kind of “Boy Scouts’ honour” in a situation which had not exactly been conducive to the development of the Boy Scout spirit’. Evidence has since emerged that does indeed suggest that Savimbi was convinced he would win the elections, and would simply not abide by any other outcome.

11 For an excellent review of the Angola operation and its problems, see Anstee, Margaret J., ‘Angola: The Forgotten Tragedy, A Test Case for UN Peacekeeping’, International Relations, XI, no. 6 (December 1993)Google Scholar.

12 ‘Cambodia: The Road From Peace’, USS Strategic Comments, no. 1 (January 1995)Google Scholar.

13 Following another visit to the area by Cyrus Vance in December 1991, Perez de Cuellar warned that an ‘early, selective recognition would widen the present conflict and fuel an explosive situation especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina’. Quoted in Eknes, Age, Blue Helmets in a Blown Mission? UNPROFOR informer Yugoslavia (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, December 1993), p. 22Google Scholar.

14 Clements and Ward, Building International Community, p. 146.

15 In the words of Jonathan Eyal, the ‘real tragedy was to be found not in the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia as such but, rather, in the Community's determination to take any risk in order to maintain the semblance of unity’. Eyal, Jonathan, Europe and Yugoslavia: Lessons from a Failure (London, 1993), p. 49Google Scholar.

16 Watt, D. C., How War Came (London, 1989), p. 2Google Scholar.

17 In this respect, see the excellent and penetrating portraits of Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman painted by the last US ambassador to Belgrade, Zimmerman, Warren, in ‘The Last Ambassador’, Foreign Affairs, 64, no. 2 (March/April 1995)Google Scholar.

18 S/25354, 3 March 1993, paras. 58 and 101.

19 See S/25354, 2 March 1993, para. 91. For UNS C 814, 26 March 1993, and other key documents see the appendix to Hirsch and Oakley, Somalia.

20 S/1994/653, Report of Commission Established Pursuant to UNSC Resolution 885 (1993), 1 June 1994.

21 Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 370.

22 For an excellent and critical discussion of the supposed erosion of sovereignty and its implications for order in the international system, see Hurrell, Andrew, ‘Order in International Society’, in The English School of International Relations: A Conference Report, ed. Neumann, Iver, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Report no. 179 (Oslo, 1994)Google Scholar.

23 Apart from the five regional economic commissions of ECOSOC, fifteen bodies are formally related to it (for example, UNICEF, UNHCR, World Food Programme). In addition, a number of ‘special bodies and programmes of the UN’ have been set up dealing with issues such as disaster relief (UNDRO) to the UN Centre for Human Settlements. Finally, fifteen UN specialized agencies have been created over the years, including bodies such as the WHO, UNESCO and IAEA. See Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 380.

24 Ibid., p. 44.

25 Ibid., p. 43.

26 Childers with Urquhart, Renewing the United Nations, p. 26. Childers and Urquhart do nevertheless provide very useful data concerning the true size of what is often misleadingly presented as a ‘vast, sprawling bureaucracy’. For example, the total number of UN civil service staff is below that of public-service employees of the city of Stockholm. They also stress, unlike Righter, that ‘executive heads are only civil servants who should be instructed by their governors’, p. 34.

27 Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 17.

28 Ibid., p.258.

29 Ibid., p. 258.

30 Ibid., p. 368.

31 In the first place, the US action simply ignored the WTO dispute-settlement system. More significantly, it violated two of the fundamental principles underlying the WTO: that member states should not discriminate among trading partners, and should not raise tariffs above agreed levels. See ‘Mr Kantor's Outrageous Gamble’, The Economist, 20 May 1995, p. 81Google Scholar.

32 O'Brien, Conor Cruise, ‘Faithful Scapegoat to the World’, The Independent, 1 October 1993Google Scholar.

33 Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 77.

34 Childers with Urquhart, Renewing the United Nations, p. 18. As evidence for this, they cite intimations of readiness from India and Zimbabwe to develop ‘general principles and guidelines’ for intervention to create ‘corridors of peace or tranquillity’ during the Security Council summit in January 1992. Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 20.

35 Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 344.

36 Ibid., p. 348. The arguments of French jurists and humanitarian NGOs in support of a droit d'ingirence, first voiced in the late 1980s, is viewed as a manifestation of the same trend.

37 Ibid. James Jonah was the UN Assistant Secretary-General in charge of the now defunct Office for Research and Collection of Information (ORCI).

38 ‘Legal Constraints of UN Military Operations’, IISS Strategic Comments, no. 3 (22 March 1995)Google Scholar.

39 The phrase is used as the premise of the discussion in An Agenda for Peace, the Secretary-General's much-vaunted report of June 1992. As such, it highlights the inherent difficulties of addressing issues of intra-state conflict within the UN.

40 Quoted in Adam Roberts, ‘A More Humane World: The Evolution of International Responses to Situations Involving Massive Human Rights Suffering’, paper for Commonwealth Secretariat, December 1994, p. 12 (my emphasis).

41 ‘Statement by Ambassador Li Daoyu, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, at Security Council in Explanation of Vote on Somalia Questions’, press release, 3 December 1992.

42 Statement by Permanent Representative of India, ‘Comprehensive Review of the Whole Question of Peacekeeping in All their Aspects’, 20 April 1993.

43 Ibid.

44 Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 376.

45 Kolakowski, Leszek, ‘The Search for Community’, in Experiencing the Twentieth Century, ed. Hagihara, N., Iriye, A., Nivat, G. and Windsor, P. (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1985), pp. 155–6.Google Scholar

46 Quoted in Righter, Utopia Lost, p. 240.