The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

of the late Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., about congressional deliberations: “Everything has been said, but not everybody has said it yet.” It is sel- dom a forum for serious negotiation. Instead, its major utility is in bringing together world leaders each Sept- ember. The ultimate corrective for this sit- uation is clearly out of reach in today’s world. Ideally, voting strength should be based on population (perhaps one vote per million of population; voting strength would today range from 1,284 votes for China down to Nauru’s 12/1000th of a vote. The U.S. would have 280.) This would put things in perspective and would certainly be democratic in the “one person, one vote” sense. On the other hand, the Chinese people, among so many oth- ers, don’t have much of a role yet in choosing who speaks for them or holding them accountable. “Multis” vs. “Unis” The role of international institu- tions like the U.N. and NATO in U.S. foreign policy is further affected by the continuing struggle between “multilateralists” and “unilateralists” that has been with us since we became a nation, though (thankfully) not often with its present ideological intensity. The essence of the difference we face in our body politic is the view, among multilateralists, that the U.S. is a member of an international commu- nity and that it is in our interest to act, to the extent we can without clearly jeopardizing truly vital interests, cooperatively with other nations and with a decent respect for their opin- ions and interests. The U.S. may have overwhelming power but it certainly has no corner on wisdom. The unilateralists disagree: the U.S. has an effective monopoly of power and should use it forthrightly to pursue national interests, uncon- strained by others. The new national security doctrine of this administra- tion explicitly advocates “pre-emptive action” against perceived (or fancied) threats. Imagine a world in which all nations claimed the right to make this subjective judgment! This clearly does not conform to the requirements of the U.N. Charter, which reserves to the Security Council the authority to approve the use of force “to restore international peace and security” in the name of the international community. The only exception is in the case of self-defense against an armed attack until the Council can act. Members pledge not to use force against the political inde- pendence or territorial integrity of any state, or, vaguely, in any other manner “inconsistent with the pur- poses” of the charter. In the case of Iraq, it could well be argued that neither the political inde- pendence nor the territorial integrity of the country was our target. It was not the first time this provision of the charter has been ignored, of course. It had been breached repeatedly by the USSR, by the U.S. in Grenada and Panama, by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia in the Balkans and, most unambiguously, by Iraq in Kuwait. Granted, the provisions of the charter, I believe, are inadequate to meet a number of current threats not thought about in 1945: genocide by a government against elements of its own population; violations of interna- tional law such as Israel’s or China’s of the Fourth Geneva Convention; situ- ations such as we see in Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Myanmar, where governments without the legit- imacy conferred by popular choice tyrannize their own peoples; or state sponsorship of terrorism. Moreover, old-fashioned “declared” state-vs.-state war is not the most fre- quent threat to international peace and security today, unlike six decades ago when the charter was drafted. Conse- quently, that framework seems too lim- ited to deal with the new order of transgressions, none of which may be direct threats to international peace and security. But I see little early prospect of international agreement on expansion of the occasions when use of force may be authorized under Chap- ter 7 of the charter. The Highest Common Denominator The U.N. is still essentially an assembly of sovereign states trying, through diplomacy, to find the highest common denominator for dealing with international problems, and each is jealous of its sovereignty. Finding the highest common denominator takes work. The lowest common denominator is easy: you just relax and slip into it. The United Nations has gradually evolved over time (peacekeeping, one of its major activ- ities today, is not even mentioned in the charter), and it is probably going to continue to do so. And this may not be so bad. As globalization gathers momen- tum, transnational problems become more pressing: trade-distorting barri- ers, environmental degradation, non- state terrorism, disease and health issues, weapons proliferation, drugs, climate change, international crime, governance of the global common 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 4 Disdain for the U.N. and other multilateral institutions seems to have become a pillar of a neoconservative credo.