Military

DATE=APRIL 18, 2003

TYPE=DATELINE

NUMBER=7-37378

TITLE=THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

BYLINE=MARY MOTTA

TELEPHONE=(202) 619-2702

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=CAROL CASTIEL

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

HOST: When the United Nations Security Council suggested it would not support military action in Iraq, the United States assembled what they called a "coalition of the willing." The determination of President Bush to wage war against Iraq split the permanent five members of the Security Council, pitting the United States and Britain against France, Russia and China. Now that the U-S and Britain are well on their way to an overwhelming military victory, what is to become of the fractured United Nations? VOA's Mary Motta takes a look.

MM: Analysts have suggested that the first casualty of the Iraq war happened on American soil: In New York at the United Nations headquarters. They say the mission of this agency -- the idea that great nations should work together to provide collective security -- is now in peril. And , some fear that the U-N Security Council's refusal to back the US in taking down the Iraqi regime by force will prompt the United States to sideline the agency in future decisions, reducing the organization to a glorified humanitarian agency.

Ironically, the United States has always had a love-hate relationship with the international body it helped create. To understand the pathology of this relationship, one has to look back at its predecessor, The League of Nations.

///AMBIENT SOUND OF MUSIC/BOOING CROWD AT THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. ESTABLISH AND FADE///

MM: The League of Nations was born of the destruction and disillusionment arising from World War One. It was an ambitious attempt to construct a peaceful global order. President Woodrow Wilson pushed for the creation of the organization in which even the smallest country would have a voice.

Unfortunately, President Wilson faced an uphill battle: U-S isolationists were alarmed at the idea of a "community of power". So when the League Covenant was agreed upon at the Paris peace conference in 1919, the U-S Senate refused to ratify it sealing the fate of the organization to move forward without the United States as a member.

By the end of 1920, 48 countries had signed the League Covenant, pledging to work together to quell aggression between member countries. The organization was relatively successful for at least a decade after the war.

The Achilles' heel of the League became apparent, however, when it had to deal with big powers challenging the status quo. As one of its founders, Britain's Lloyd George put it, The League of Nations had "weak links spreading everywhere and no grip anywhere." Grip meaning the capacity to use force.

///AMBIENT SOUND OF ABYSSINIA SPEECH AT THE LEAGUE. ESTAB. AND FADE///

MM: The Italo-Ethiopian War -- an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule -- is often seen as one of the episodes that paved the way to World War Two.

Critics say the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers. They say Britain and France were unwilling to rein in Italy's attack on Abyssinia, now called Ethiopia, because of their wider strategic fears.

A few years later in 1938, it became apparent that the League's power was beginning to fade. One of its members, Austria, was invaded by Germany. By 1939, League members found themselves at the threshold of a world war.

When the Allied forces finally defeated the Axis powers in 1945, they rejected the idea of restoring the League. Instead, they proposed a new world body called the United Nations. The structure of this new international agency gave more clout to the traditional powers through the U-N Security Council.

Though the framers of the new agency tried to steer clear of re-creating the League of Nations, Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation in Washington says the similarities are obvious between the two agencies, particularly in light of the recent war in Iraq.

///GARDINER ACT///

I think there is a parallel with the United Nation's failure to do anything over Iraq with the League of Nation's failure to act over Abyssinia (Ethiopia). It stood by while dictatorships enforced their will on their own population and threatened much of the rest of the world. So, I believe we are in a similar situation today where the United State and Great Britain are taking on the role of the United Nations effectively dealing with growing threats and I believe the United Nations is simply unwilling to address these threats and deal with them.

///END ACT///

MM: Mr. Gardiner argues that unless it radically reforms and restructures, the United Nations will go the way of the League of Nations as a dying force on the world stage. He says the agency failed to deal with the growing threat posed by Saddam Hussein and he warns that its influence is likely to diminish further in years to come.

///GARDINER ACT 2///

I believe the United States and the United Kingdom are best suited to run post-war Iraq. In addition I think there are another number of reasons why the United Nations should have a very limited role. Primarily I would argue that the United Nations lacks the moral standing to enforce the peace on post-war Iraq as the United Nations failed to enforce no less than seventeen resolutions calling for Iraqi disarmament.

///END ACT///

MM: Mr. Gardiner says the role of the United Nations in a post-war Iraq should be limited to a humanitarian mission carried out by such agencies as UNICEF and the World Food Program.

While most analysts agree that the United Nations, in particular the Security Council, needs a makeover, some say its existence is essential to world peace.

Charles William Maynes, the former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs under President Jimmy Carter, argues that the existence of nuclear weapons in the world today makes it essential to have an international organization.

///MAYNES ACT///

If you are going to cooperate, you are going to have to have some structure. Some established rules of the road and that is precisely the function of the Security Council and the United Nations. Now, I would agree that the United Nations needs some reform. There are powers that should be on the Security Council that aren't. But I think that if we don't use it, we are going to have to create another forum that will perform roughly the same function.

///END ACT///

MM: In recent years the United Nations has come under increasing fire. Criticism has been directed not only at the failed U-N peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, and Cambodia, but also at the widespread inefficiency, waste, and fraud that plague the organization.

In the build up to the war with Iraq, some Bush administration officials made it very clear that the Security Council was a quagmire to be avoided.

David Malone, head of the International Peace Academy in New York, sees it differently.

He says while at the heart of the dispute between the United Nations and the United States is the disarmament of the Iraqi regime, the real struggle goes much deeper: In reality, it is about the dominant role of the United States, the world's unchallenged superpower, and its relationship with its former rivals and allies: Russia, China, Britain, France and the other member states of the European Union.

///MALONE ACT///

I think the rest of the world is still adjusting to American power no longer constrained by the Cold War. I think the U-S also is still adapting to that. And a lot of that adaptation to international relations is refracted throughout the U-N system, in particular relations through the principle powers in the Security Council. These relations hit a very serious bump in the road over Iraq. But it doesn't mean that they will necessarily continued to be tortured. Indeed there is a strong argument to be made after the action in Iraq that all of the permanent members need to sober up and need to relearn how to work with each other.

///END ACT///

MM: Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, agrees that now is the time to seize an historic opportunity to reshape the role of the United Nations. She argues that the United States must work with other permanent members of the Security Council to ensure that the next security crisis perhaps Syria or North Korea does not end up like the last one. She says that requires compromise on all sides.

Ms. Slaughter argues that the best approach in making the United Nations a viable organization would be to link the human rights mission of the United Nations with its security role.

///SLAUGHTER ACT///

The U-S was only able to argue about disarmament within the Security Council, but outside the Security Council, it was arguing, this regime has to go, this is a horrific regime. The U-N should evolve so that you could make both of those arguments within the Security Council. In other words that we make the human rights half of the U-N and the security half together so that it is possible in extreme cases like in Iraq to make the argument for regime change within the United Nations and to get the ascent of other nations to target a particular government.

//END ACT///

MM: Despite the need for change, Ms. Slaughter says it is important to take note that the United States and other nations still felt compelled to go to the U-N Security Council in regards to Iraq.

///SLAUGHTER ACT 2///

They really used the system the way it was suppose to work except at the very end, they could not get an agreement.

///END ACT///

MM: Former U-S ambassador William Leurs is president of the United Nations Association, a nonprofit organization that supports the work of the U-N. He agrees that the United Nations will continue to play a vital role in maintaining world peace.

///LEURS ACT///

I don't believe that this demonstrates that the Security Council is dead. In fact, most of the world believes that the failure of the Security Council was its failure to stop the U-S from using military force, but that it functioned well.

MM: But the Heritage Foundation's Nile Gardiner is much less optimistic about a new role for the United Nations:

///GARDINER ACT///

I think the United Nations is completely powerless at the moment. The question is whether the U-N can become relevant once again. And I believe North Korea also gives the U-N the opportunity sort of a last shot at redemption. There is no evidence so far that the U-N is willing to do anything at all about the growing threat posed by North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and its nuclear program. So once again it's likely that Washington and London will have to bear the burden and deal with the North Korean threat.

//END ACT///

MM: This week, as coalition forces turn from combat to reconstruction in Iraq, the United States took swift action asking the United Nations to lift economic sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime after the first Gulf war. This would enable Iraq to trade its oil on world markets. Analysts say the United Nations is eager to win a role in the post-war reconstruction and a decision to end the sanctions could happen quickly.

For Dateline, this is Mary Motta in Washington.

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