The United Nations at Fifty

By Christopher R. Mitchell

Amid all the brouhaha about the United Nation's 50th anniversary, it is curious that nobody seems to have made the point that for the last few years the organization has been operating the closest it ever has to the intentions of its founders, at least so far as "the maintenance of peace and security" is concerned. It is difficult, now, to think back past 50 years to the arguments and debates in San Francisco that resulted in this post-World War II replacement for the League of Nations. However, reading accounts of those discussions and re-reading the charter (as it was probably meant to be read in 1945) leads one clearly to the conclusion that the system established by its "founding fathers" to deal with conflicts in the postwar world was one that abandoned the old League idea of "collective security," at least in its classic form, and substituted for it a Great Power police force--in effect, the five "victor" powers of World War II--controlled through the Security Council.

China, France, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union all had a veto on when the United Nations could act against any other country that constituted a threat to or breach of "the peace" (read "became involved in a dangerous or destabilizing conflict"). The same five victor countries, it was anticipated, would provide the military force, organized through the Military Staff Committee that they also controlled, which could be used on recalcitrant members (or nonmembers) that became involved in a conflict disapproved by "the Big Five" or their allies and clients. In effect, under this system, conflicts were to be dealt with through the deterrent and coercive systems outlined in Chapter 7 of the charter. It was anticipated that those running the United Nation's military arm (the "Big Five") would remain in agreement about the use of that arm. However, differing views about the precise role and nature of the United Nation's military arm surfaced even in the early period (1944-45), and became part of the events contributing to and affected by the onrushing "cold war." On the one hand, there were those--mainly among the western Allies--who argued that to be really effective a large U.N. force with many allied military units earmarked for potential service would be necessary for the Security Council to wield a credible and effective deterrent. On the other hand, the Soviet Union argued that a relatively small U.N. force would be all that was necessary, given that the veto ensured that the United Nations would never be used against any of the major military powers (or their allies and clients).

This controversy, together with differences about the composition of the United Nation's military arm and who should supply the major part of the branches (land, sea, or air) of that overall force, plus the growing Soviet suspicion that the West might intend some day to use a large and mobile U.N. military force against the Soviet Union (or its allies and clients) in spite of the veto, contributed to deadlock within the United Nation's "peace and security" system. This deadlock resulted in the impotence of the Military Staff Committee, which thereafter met once a year to set the date of its next meeting. It also ultimately resulted in the "Uniting for Peace" resolution of the General Assembly, the development of what became the United Nation's classic peacekeeping--as opposed to peace-enforcing--role, and, particularly under Dag Hammarskjold, the enhancement of the role of the secretary general in dealing with world conflicts. In the early years of the United Nations, the only peace enforcement operation launched was that undertaken in Korea, an operation only made possible by an ill-judged Soviet absence from the Security Council when the Korean War broke out.

Since the ending of the cold war, however, the Soviet-U.S. rivalry has no longer been played out in the United Nations, and the possibility of agreement about the use of the United Nation's deterrent or peace enforcement system--against recalcitrant Somalis or Bosnians, for example--has become a clear policy option. Paradoxically, as its 50th anniversary approached, the United Nations found itself in a position envisaged in 1944 in which U.S. and Russian troops might well serve, side by side, in a peace enforcement role and where (so the theory went) the threat of such an eventuality might give pause to those parties threatening to aggress, break the peace, or provide a danger to "international security." The results of such a threat have not, so far, been encouraging. As with all coercive or deterrent systems, to be effective those who are deterring or coercing must demonstrate (and be willing to use) overwhelming capacity to do harm; that appears not to be a real possibility.

There are obviously many reasons for that but I will mention just two. The first is the reluctance of the one remaining superpower and the other major military powers to provide the costly troops and equipment required to present an overwhelming coercive or deterrent threat to parties engaged in today's violent and protracted conflicts. The second, interconnected reason is the (relative) equalization of armed force throughout the world compared with 1945. Then, the Big Five controlled most of the available military force and the capacity for generating more; now, after five decades of global industrial development in the arms business and lucrative arms trades and transfers, the arms-saturated world of the 1990s is much more difficult to overawe with U.N.-controlled military force. Moreover, many governments have a great reluctance to supply soldiers to the United Nations if they may actually be killed enforcing the peace in some distant land in which the country supplying them has little direct interest. That is hardly surprising. Now, it is the U.S. Congress that drags its heels about placing its servicepersons "in harm's way" in the former Yugoslavia; then, in the 1920s, it was the Canadian government that first pointed out to the League of Nations that it was unwilling to send Canadian soldiers to be killed in "collective security" operations carried out by a League army in places where there was no possible Canadian interest.

This situation does throw an interesting light on the debates of 50 years ago. Now, it looks as if the western Allies were right in their contention that only a large U.N. military force would be sufficient to overawe potential breakers of the international peace. And given what human needs theory and the history of conflict (decolonization struggles, conflicts over ethnic identity, separatist movements) in the past 50 years tell us about the recalcitrance of those engaged in protracted and deep-rooted conflicts over security and identity, even a major U.N. military force might not work.

Fortunately, the United Nations has never had to rely solely on the doctrines of peace enforcement and deterrence enshrined in Chapter 7 of the charter and focused on a Security Council dominated by its "Big Five" members of 1944--some of which now look a little moth eaten. Indeed, to talk about the "founding fathers" of the United Nations as though they were solely the five victors of 1945 is very misleading. At least two groupings of founders were in San Francisco in 1944; the second group of small and middle powers--India, Canada, Australia, many Latin American countries--disliked the idea of dealing with post-1945 conflict by deterrence and suppression. It is to them that we owe many of the alternative provisions for dealing with conflicts that are now well established and used by the United Nations. If the coercive provisions of Chapter 7 look as if they are failing in the 1990s, as they did, for different reasons, in the 1950s, we still have the peacemaking and peacebuilding provisions of Chapter 6. Perhaps some of the classic peacekeeping practices developed during the 1960s and 1970s, and a renewed interest in exercising conflict resolution (as opposed to conflict suppression) principles to deal with the underlying causes rather than the violent symptoms of conflict, are what the United Nations should build on in its second 50 years.