The structural tensions which have dogged the United Nations for all of its 50-year history are again surfacing with the lone move by the United States to veto a second term for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The US cast the lone vote this week against Mr Boutros-Ghali in the opening round of a selection process that could take weeks, but needs to be finalised by December 31, when Mr Boutros-Ghali’s five-year term ends.
The structural tensions in the United Nations began almost at its inception. The victorious powers in World War II … the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China … assumed the dominant role with the five permanent Security Council votes, each carrying a veto. With the onset of the Cold War, the council became deadlocked against taking significant actions of world political leadership. Moreover the rise of the losers of World War II, Germany and Japan, as large economic powers and their continued exclusion from the Security Council meant that the UN could never become a body of significant economic leadership. Other international bodies, in which Germany and Japan had a more significant role, emerged.
The UN’s best work was done at the humanitarian level, but even here, the structural tensions emerged. The United States, and to a lesser extent Britain, often asserted that the UN’s humanitarian works were ideologically and politically slanted. They were also critical of General Assembly for the same reasons.
In the US Congress this led to a view that the US should not support the United Nations financially. The US Congress has withheld its subscriptions to the UN and now owes more than a billion dollars. Congressional critics of the UN say they will not vote to send the money until the UN is reformed. Those critics want one or both of two reforms: fewer attacks on the floor of the General Assembly against US political positions and, perhaps more importantly, greater administrative efficiency in the organisation. To a large extent the end of the Cold War has also seen an end to political attacks against the US. This has also been aided by changes in US foreign policy from the hard-line Reagan-Bush years to the more ambiguous Clinton presidency.
However, the question of bureaucratic waste and inefficiency remains. From the US perspective, Mr Boutros-Ghali has failed to deliver any significant cost-cutting reforms in his five years and the US is fearful there will be another five years of inefficiency if Mr Boutros-Ghali gets a second term.
Most of that inefficiency comes from the UN’s structural tensions. Nearly all positions at the UN are determined not on merit but on taking turns and the overall balance between the several geographic blocks of nations. Administrative efficiency takes second place to politicking. Moreover, the UN is not answerable to an electorate unlike the governments of many of its members. And that, of course, is helping drive the US position. Domestic opinion in the US is fairly antagonistic to the UN.
The US is determined to veto Mr Boutros-Ghali. In doing so it will create a great deal of ill-feeling, but in the long-term, the US action may be a catalyst for essential reform.
As things stand, the unwritten law of UN says it is nominally Africa’s turn to have the secretary-generalship and that Mr Boutros-Ghali should be allowed a second term as others before him.
US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, says the US would give special preference to an African candidate, but it had to be an African candidate other than Mr Boutros-Ghali. The African nations, however, after committed to him, at least for now.
It seems likely, however, that that support might crumble if the US holds firm and some non-African candidates emerged. African nations might then accept an African other than Mr Boutros-Ghali rather than see the position go to another block.
There is danger here. China has indicated it will veto any candidate to acceptable to the Africans. So if both the US and the Africans hold fast, the secretary-generalship could be vacant in the new year.
The impasse illustrates the urgent need for structural reform at the United Nations. The world has moved on from World War II and the Cold War that followed it. The permanent members of the Security Council should not comprise solely the powers that won World War II. Nor is it sound for each of them to have a veto. It would make greater sense to expand the Security Council. The European Union should have a seat, rather than Britain and France. Perhaps Japan, India and Brazil should have seats. It would probably better to abolish the veto and replace it with, say, a three-fourths majority. Much greater attention should be paid to administrative effectiveness and less to jostling for position, but that is easier said than done.
It is unfortunate that the impasse over the secretary-generalship is likely to overshadow many of good works done by the United Nations, but if it highlights the lost opportunity for the United Nations doing more and better things towards world peace and relief of hardship, then it may not be such a bad thing. Of course, the US would be arguing from a position of greater moral strength if it had paid its dues first. The UN must be the only club in the world where non-paying members continue to get the vote. None the less, the fundamental points remain: the secretary-generalship should be awarded on merit and Mr Boutros-Ghali has done precious little to make the UN a more effective organisation; the UN is in dire need of structural reform; the UN contains far too much bureaucracy and even its “”good-works” agencies spend too much of their resources in the comforts of developed-world capitals than where the problems are.