- Naciones Unidas, la reforma imposible...
FORUM TPSIPOL : RED DEMOCRATICA
Enero 2005
Contexto
Naciones Unidas: la reforma imposible
Oswaldo de Rivero
Oswaldo de Rivero
A year ago it occurred Kofi Anann UN reform and appointed a High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change to submit recommendations. More than a month this Panel submitted its report to the sublime title "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility
."
This report focuses mainly on reform of the UN collective security. Within this context, it makes a good assessment of threats to international security XXI century, qualifying as a threat to poverty, global infectious diseases, environmental degradation, climate change, terrorism, proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, global crime and national non-viability.
An interesting contribution in this diagnosis is to have recognized as a threat, something that was once taboo, namely that developing countries can become viable, developing, as the report says, in "Stress States" and also "failed states." This diagnosis is very similar to the points in my book "The Myth of Development" when, speaking of national infeasibility, established two categories: "The" viable national economies "(Stress States) and" ungovernable chaotic entities "(failed states. Thus, the possibility of national infeasibility, which many believed was an exaggeration is now recognized as fact by the High Level Panel convened by the Secretary General.
While threats to international security are well identified, the remedy proposed by the Report of the High Level Panel to address these threats is unrealistic, because it is no less, which established a new consensus on international security. is so easy.
This recommendation assumes that all states reach a common strategic vision of the threats. The truth is that a common strategic perception existed only briefly in 1991 during the first Gulf War, when America led to the endorsement of the Security Council, a large global coalition to evict Iraq from Kuwait. However, this consensus did not last long, some time, the United States and NATO used military force unilaterally to bomb Serbia and intervene in Kosovo without Security Council endorsement, for fear that Russia and China to veto the use of force against Serbia.
Today the gap to a consensus on international security has expanded much more, not only between the United States, Russia and China, but also with France, Germany and other middle powers, then the States' unilateral attack united Iraq, followed by the appalling violence and resistance to occupation, the torture at Abu Ghraib and the removal of the Geneva Conventions to the Guantanamo case and also with the different approaches that exist to do against Iran.
addition to non-convergent strategic visions there is another important strategic factor that allows building a new security consensus international. This factor is the lack of world power with both the American superpower, like all the other great powers to restore order in the world. Indeed, today no nation-state, however powerful, can today only, addressing terrorism, nuclear proliferation, to global crime, climate change, poverty, civil wars and genocides and massive violations of human rights.
Today, if you have a realistic view of world power, the concept of unipolarity deserves to be reviewed. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has released an image, more journalistic than real, of a United States omnipotent and imperial. In reality there has been neither omnipotent nor Empire only so far a short period of unipolarity, which ended when the United States returned to the Security Council calling for multilateral support to relieve the hell of the occupation of Iraq. Rather, what happened after Iraq, has been an erosion of U.S. global strategic power due to over extension of the voluntary armed forces do not recruit as before and the increased danger of his mega budget deficit and current account has fact that the dollar is devalued significantly.
today All these facts prove the limits of American unilateral power. The power in the world today is unipolar. The United States remains a superpower, but its unilateral action has serious limitations. As stated by Professor Samuel Huntington, the United States can not act alone today as a Sheriff and impose a Pax Americana. Also with good reason, the leading international security specialist Z. Brzezinski says, "Do not confuse dominance with omnipotence."
This deficit of American power should not lead us to move from a unipolar to a utopia utopia multipolar because France, Germany, Japan, Russia, China or India do not have power enough to have a multipolar balance of power against the superpower U.S.. Today, instead of unipolarity or multipolarity, so there is a great shortage of world power, a kind of apolarity that makes all the big powers for their inability to shine in front of a chaotic and fragmented by poverty, civil wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drug trafficking, people and arms. All this also makes it very difficult for strategic convergence exists to reach a new consensus on international security.
Against this chaotic world full of threats, the report of the High Level Panel recommended that the self-defense is framed, as established in Article 51 of the Charter is ie that only self-defense exercises after an armed attack occurs. However, he admits that the State can defend threatened with the use of preventive force against him when an attack is "imminent" or "obvious." However, the threatened state has to prove to the Security Council, the imminence or evidence that the attack will occur. In other words, there may be preventive use of force if authorized by the Security Council would otherwise be an illegal use of force.
This is a new interpretation of what is meant by self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter, since according to this article only can exercise the right of self-defense after an armed attack occurs, not before. That is the article denying any possibility of a preventive self-defense. Now, with this new interpretation may allow pre-emptive strike, but only on condition of being authorized or endorsed by the Security Council.
This new concept of anticipatory self-defense authorized by the Security Council did not place anyone. On the one hand, the United States who want to always have the possibility of a quick preventive self-defense against terrorism or nuclear proliferation, very unlikely to engage in Council Security for permission to use force, proving that there is an imminent or obvious. Long before this report came out during the election campaign, both President Bush and his opponent Kerry, declared repeatedly that never seek permission to defend the American people.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the other major powers do not look with favor this test, before the Security Council, the imminence or evidence for use of force. Almost all great powers, but did not proclaim a doctrine, have strategic vision, which in one way or another, considered a potential intervention in their areas of influence or dispute, invoking self-defense Finally, a large majority of non-aligned countries believe that the imminence or the evidence is only a pretext to enable effective preventive intervention against them. The truth is that the High Level Panel, with its lack of realpolitik, has not satisfied anyone.
Another lack of realpolitik of the Report is its proposal that the Security Council to endorse or authorize the legitimate use of force should be asked to "meet five criteria of legitimacy," namely: 1) there a serious threat, 2) that there is a proper purpose, strictly aimed at preventing the threat and no other ulterior motive, 3) that the force as a last resort, 4) that the response is proportional and 5) that the consequences are balanced, ie the use of military force is not worse than not having used it.
These five criteria are nothing less than a conceptual transposition of the terms of the "Just War" established by St. Augustine, then to St. Thomas Aquinas and later systematized by the jurist Vitoria. All of them make more rigid the operation of the system of collective security. It is truly pathetic that in the XXI century, when a terrorist attack, nuclear, chemical or biological or the outbreak of genocide or ethnic cleansing can become a reality in a small fraction of the time, you are prompted to countries threatened or those who want to prevent genocide, to demonstrate to the Security Council to meet the five requirements of the medieval "just war." If today the United Nations can not stop the genocide in Darfur, how it would be if you have to test these criteria from the medieval scholastic!
The problem with the Security Council to legitimate use of force will not resolve to observe the five principles of the medieval just war, but providing military capabilities to the Council, turning it into a sword mechanism to intervene quickly. The system of collective security United Nations may have all the legitimacy criteria you want, but if you do not have standing armed forces to intervene, Nor will his "legitimacy."
A true reform of the collective security system must be put as priority the urgent need for United Nations hold the sword, ie muster a standing force of UN peacekeepers stationed in various strategic areas of the globe for rapid deployment and thus deter, prevent and remove threats to peace and security. While the report acknowledges the lack of military capacity with the United Nations today to impose peace, not make it the epicenter a new system of collective security.
The main problem of the collective security system of the UN is that there are no brigades, battalions of peacekeepers embedded permanently within the armed forces of Member States to put immediately to the Council Security and deployment to conflict areas quickly. United Nations thus has no sword to pacify civil conflicts and prevent genocides. Whenever the Council decides to intervene militarily, it takes months to receive voluntary contributions and other military months, effective military force. Meanwhile, the aggression and genocide as they occurred. United Nations always comes later. His fiascos in Bosnia and Rwanda and now Darfur are clear examples that the central problem that has its system of collective security is not the lack of legitimacy medieval, but his lack of sword to pacify domestic hell are emerging in the world underdeveloped.
all the proposals of the Report, the most daring and important limitation of the absolute conception of national sovereignty when it comes to protecting populations from crimes against humanity, including genocide, ethnic cleansing and rape massive human rights. Indeed, the Report's authors argue that Article 2, paragraph 7 of the Charter of the United Nations establishing absolute respect for the domestic affairs of States, are not in line with the new global ethic to protect populations from crimes against humanity committed by their governments. In other words, the regimes that protect or destroy the lives of its citizens lost their sovereignty and can be taken over militarily by the United Nations, since it can not ever abdicate its responsibility to protect humanity.
Undoubtedly, the report is absolutely right, the homos sapiens are above the state and our humanity and our human rights should prevail over national sovereignty. However, this reform very positive may not be approved because the vast majority of UN member countries are authoritarian regimes or low-intensity democracies constantly take refuge in article 2, paragraph 7, "non-United Nations intervention in domestic affairs" to cover violations of human rights of its citizens. However, if by some miracle this proposal is approved, we will meet again with a Security Council without a sword to intervene quickly and prevent genocides. Darfur is a clear proof of this.
Finally, with regard to a new distribution of world power, the report does not extend the right to veto any State, leaving, as brides abandoned at the altar of world power in Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria who claimed to be permanent members with veto power. Perhaps this is a realistic as the world power is not shared so easily on the recommendation of technocrats. Thus, the report provides for the possibility of expanding the permanent members without veto power, raising two formulas: A) Six new permanent members without veto power. B) A new category of eight semi-parmanent too without a veto, elected for 4 years re-elected. These formulas are not content to anyone.
The truth is that the increase of more members in the Security Council does not solve the big problem with the United Nations, which is its lack of global representation. In other words, the organization composed exclusively of nation states is less and less, the true structure of the international community today is made also by non-state actors such as transnational corporations and civil society organizations of global reach. For example, today the great debate between two approaches to globalization is, outside the United Nations, including the Davos Forum, representing multinational companies and the Social Forum, which represents civil society.
The United Nations can not remain just a forum for representatives from governments, many of whom have no real power to change the global economic and ecological trends. The stark reality is that most UN member countries are quasi underdeveloped nation states have less real power that transnational corporations and global scope least that many large civil society organizations. To solve economic, social and ecological challenges is necessary to extend the concept of international co-responsibility for transnational corporations and civil society, engaging in certain specific negotiations. Only then Nations United will be the true reflection of the real world and his decisions accepted by all actors of globalization ..
However, the main problem facing the United Nations reform, is that reform is promoted by the General Secretariat, that is reform coming from the international bureaucracy to the States. It does not appear in the Member States themselves, including the most powerful. Reform is not even consulted in advance with the five permanent members with veto power. The silence of the great powers is significant.
The truth is that, according to historical experience, a new international security system has never emerged from a proposal technocrat. The security system called the Concert of Europe, was the result of the bloody Napoleonic wars and a new balance of power established by Congress in Vienna in 1815. The collective security system of the League of Nations was the result of the slaughter of an entire generation of Europeans in the trenches of the First World War. The current system of collective security of the United Nations was the result of the death of more than 60 million people, soldiers and civilians in World War II, including the Holocaust and two nuclear bombs. Humanity learns more tragedies than Reports. The new century international security XXI will not be born of a blue print of the Secretary General but socio-political turmoil of the chaotic real world.
The failure of a proposed reform from the bureaucracy will not be the obituary of the Organization. Even without reform, the United Nations Organization is indispensable to meet the threats of the XXI century. Or nuclear proliferation or terrorism or climate change, international crime and even less poverty can be addressed globally without the multilateral system. The United Nations is like a hospital where many times you can not beat death, but worse is not having it.
NY, January 2005
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