Major Acid's E-Rag
After Nine Eleven
A New World Club?
October 6, 2001
With the activation of
Article 5, and the almost certain to be multi-national nature of the
casualties in the World Trade Center Attacks, NATO has declared its
member countries attacked as much as was the United States. With WTC
casualties estimated to have hailed from more than 40 countries, this is
understandable. US leaders, however, are busy building on this
solidarity by promoting a new political reality that transcends the
alliance, even making overtures to its one-time cold war enemy Russia,
and at the same time – with the moral justification of being the most
bloodied – positioning the US as the leader of this new reality. But the
leader of what? Not simply of NATO, and not of a United Nations effort
to counter terrorism, but of a new and as yet loosely defined
organization of mostly western, mostly developed, mostly democratic
countries. As NATO acted in Kosovo without the UN, this newly forming
alliance could reduce yet again the relevance of the United Nations in
world affairs.
From a western point of
view, the less developed and largely undemocratic countries – who
benefit from simple numerical superiority in a one country, one vote UN
– have become increasingly problematic. UN peacekeeping may be on the
rise and more or less effective depending on the situation; and UN aid
and health initiatives may also enjoy varying degrees of success; yet,
the UN, with so many voices so different in their political expression
from the democratic and developed west, provides a steadily falling
level of effectiveness for expressing the western paradigm. In other
words, some of the founding members of the UN no longer like the way the
modern UN looks and works.
To some extent this can be
likened to creating a club with the express purpose of extolling the
virtues of, say, baseball (read: peaceful democratic life) and then
admitting a numerically superior number of members who prefer cricket or
soccer or any number of other sports. In short order, the baseball
faction finds that concern for and real promotion of its sport is
diminished. The purely ‘democratic process’ of one member, one vote is
busy displacing baseball as the prime concern. In fact, the club becomes
a forum for denouncing baseball as the source of all kinds of evils,
especially the fact that baseball isn’t cricket or soccer or any of a
number of other allegedly equal (or superior) sports.
Objections by the baseball
faction to this change of direction are belittled by constant carping
and characterized as undemocratic or racist or any number of epithets.
In exasperation the baseball faction faces a choice – live with the new
order, or withdraw from the club and form a new one dedicated once again
to the virtues of baseball. Inevitably, such a withdrawal would be
followed by the familiar and nasty name-calling of the remaining
members.
In real life, of course, the
situation is not so cut and dried. The UN is not a club promoting a
particular sport: there are some inherent design specifications in the
UN – the Security Council and the power of the veto – that still protect
to an extent the western dominated design of the organization;
peacekeeping, health, refugee, disaster relief, and similar programs can
be argued as having on-going value that should not necessarily be
diminished because of dissatisfaction in other areas; and the western
democratic countries – especially the US – are already used to being the
victims of constant carping. The US in particular views many of the
carping states to be criminal states in any event. These states are
considered to be antithetical to democracy, to harbour terrorists, and
to use the democratic (one state, one vote) nature of the UN as a way to
attack an otherwise largely unassailable foe. To many, the situation is
paradoxical: Can an institution that is supposed to be a champion of
democracy function as that champion when so many of its members are in
practice antithetical to the very concept of democracy? Should a
democratic state even stay in such an organization?
Forming a new club faces
difficulties, however, not the least of which is the public relations
problem. Many voices throughout the western democracies will decry a
move away from the United Nations. From such big money interests as Ted
Turner (who volunteered to pay a portion of the US-owed UN dues, the
non-payment of which was an early indication of serious US
dissatisfaction with the UN) to the so-called grass roots, the members
of myriad western-based Non-Governmental Organizations, or just people
in general who have a serious wish for the peace that was once the
vision underpinning the UN, the desire to remain active in the UN is
extremely strong. What was missing was the single impetus that could
force – or at least legitimize – a distancing from (or even outright
withdrawal from) the UN and spark the creation of a new club. The
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have provided
that impetus: The United States has declared itself in a “New War,” one
in which the UN has no place.
In the short time following
the September 11 attacks, the US has worked hard to build a positive
public image in its pursuit of new alliances. Some of these alliances
have been characterized by the Israelis as being akin to dealing with
the devil, at least the Israeli devil Hitler in the guise of Islamic
states, but for some of these states the benefits are clear in the short
term. Pakistan is back in good grace with money flowing to it from the
international community for its support of the US-led fight against
terrorism. Even the UN has benefited, though belatedly. President Bush
has done something Clinton could not do in 8 years – sign the order to
pay nearly $600 USD in back dues to the UN. If nothing else, and it
seems to be nothing else, this move is good public relations. It should
not be significant comfort to the UN, however, which was pointedly not
consulted before the US and Britain launched their military attacks on
Afghanistan.
This situation must reflect
an uncomfortable historical parallel for the UN. In its own time The
League of Nations, predecessor to the UN, was dogged by an inability to
achieve its international aims and, facing a new world war of its own,
finally disappeared. This is not to say the UN will disappear any time
soon. The organization is huge, and simple bureaucratic inertia –
following the business dictum that ‘the first rule of business is to
stay in business’ – will likely help it stumble along. As well, as
mentioned earlier, the UN has proven capable of providing useful
services in areas such as peacekeeping, health, disaster relief, and
refugee aid, and these will likely continue. The members of any new club
would be risking highly expensive duplication of services by trying to
function in those areas as well.
In fact, the new club could
be an existing club simply revised or expanded. The G-8, for example, is
such a candidate. It doesn’t mirror the make-up of NATO, but it does
represent a real target – in terms of economic development and political
stability – for those states that are trying to emerge into a
democratic, western world. Membership in an evolving G-8 could depend
not only on economic and political affinity, then, but also on mutual
military or security protection agreements.
All of this is guesswork.
Certainly, the US is trying to forge a new coalition to deal with
terrorist activities, and there is a vested interest in this for
western, democratic states. However, political will is notoriously
volatile, public sentiment notoriously short-term, and the US seems
intent on trying to draw unpalatable states such as Saudi Arabia into
the fray as allies, too. The urge to associate may dissipate as fast as
it began.
Whether the US can succeed
in engaging the members of a new club at all, or engaging the members
for anything beyond the immediate anti-terrorist concern, is anyone’s
guess. Curiously, the most likely guarantor of success is the terrorist
himself – having proven once so spectacularly what he can do, he is sure
to continue. Any success he ‘enjoys,’ however, will only re-ignite the
urgency to create a new political reality, a new club that will be
designed, finally, to defeat him, and that will also, by its simple
existence, reduce the influence of the one major international political
organization that gave the terrorist or his state sponsor a world voice
– the United Nations itself.
