THE WORLD NEEDS A WAY
TO MAKE UP ITS MIND

By Richard Hudson

   Every political body, from a small nuclear family to a system of global governance, needs a rational method of decision-making. The planet Earth does not now have one.

   The United Nations, currently marking its 60^th year, is a game start, the best effort so far, but it falls pitifully short of obvious needs. The world is clearly physically capable of achieving a peaceful regime under law, a survival level for most of its population, and decent standards of education, health, and environmental protection. Yet on all of these measures, global society is failing miserably in practice.

   What to do?

   Success in coping with the myriad problems will not be achieved simply by enumerating them and making a shopping list of ad hoc “solutions.” What is needed is a global system based on an integrated approach, with maximum “sovereignty” – here defined as the right to make binding decisions, whether they be at the individual or international level – held to the lowest level possible and distributed to higher levels only on the demonstration of functional needs for advances in human society.

   To expect these advances to occur in the present situation, where technology has exponentially outrun the effectiveness of social organization to achieve even the elementary goals of civilization, is utter folly. It should be obvious to even the most casually observant that today’s society is flunking the test of achieving a world order of decent standards.

   There appear at this point to be three general directions to choose from:

(1)   Make do with the present United Nations: The existing patchwork of nationalistic growths has resulted in a situation in which the ultimate mass destruction orgy has not occurred, but in which the ineffable catastrophe remains imminent. Meanwhile, senseless violence remains widespread, while hunger, disease, and pollution are rampant.

(2)   Dump the United Nations and start afresh: Two important longtime financial supporters of the CW/PS have bowed out, suggesting that we abandon the U.N. as a bad job and work for a completely new organization. Perhaps they have in the back of their minds the American experience of 1787, when the U.S. Founding Fathers concluded that the Articles of Confederation, founded on the uninhibited sovereignty of the 13 states, were unsuitable as a foundation for a stable national state. They locked the doors in Philadelphia and secretly drafted the U.S. Constitution, which still serves the country well. This is so, despite the fact that initially the founding document permitted slavery and denied women’s rights. The Constitution also survived a brutal Civil War and many other severe tests.

(3)   The United Nations Charter, today marking its 60^th birthday, was a child of American parentage, which is now being dishonorably disowned by the U.S. government. But while the Constitution bears a loose resemblance to the stillborn Articles of Confederation, the United Nations Charter continues to be a beacon of the world’s most noble aspirations. Its first sentence proclaims its aim “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Thus far, it has done a miserable job in meeting this goal, but remember that it took the United States quite some time to end slavery and bestow women’s rights. Now is not the time to give up on the United Nations; rather, it is the historical moment to exercise the broad flexibility of the U.N. Charter to win its explicit original aims.

   The U.N. Charter has been formally amended twice in important ways: first, by the expansion of the Security Council from 11 to 15 members, and second, by the doubling of the Economic and Social Council from 27 to 54 members. But two even more important structural changes in the U.N. have been accomplished without formal Charter changes.

   The first of these occurs under Article 27 of the U.N. Charter, which states at the outset of its third paragraph:

Article 27

3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters [not procedural] shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members... 

   Thus, abstentions of permanent members must be considered vetoes. But they are not. This change was made without Charter amendment. If this had not been done, the history of the U.N. would have been different in a number of significant cases.

   The second case of major structural change in the U.N. without amending the Charter occurred when the composition of the Security Council was altered. Article 23 of the U.N. Charter reads:

Article 23

1. The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being specifically paid, in the first instance of the contribution of Members of the Untied Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.

   Thus, by replacing the no-longer-existing U.S.S.R. with its large remaining remnant, the Russian Federation, and installing “China” in the seat of the founding member, the Republic of China (Taiwan, which was kicked out of the U.N.), the world organization, with little fanfare and no Charter change, brought about a profound transformation in the international order. 

   These developments are precedents for the kinds of changes the CW/PS is advocating in the structure of the U.N. Actually, the changes we urge require far less “stretch” of the Charter than the two instances cited above. In fact, it could be argued that the CW/PS proposed changes, which would give increased decision-making authority to the General Assembly, would not require any “stretch” in the U.N. Charter at all. I contend that if Chapters 4 and 5 of the U.N. Charter are read together in their entirety, they provide ample grounds for the establishment of a high level of cooperation among the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Economic and Social Council.

   Among the articles in Chapters 4 and 5 of the U.N. Charter are two that lay the foundation for the enhancement of the role of the U.N. General Assembly – after the change in its voting procedures introducing weighted voting on certain designated subjects. (This weighted voting shall be based on three factors: (1) one nation, one vote – the same as now, (2) population, and (3) contributions to the regular U.N. budget. Limits and restrictions to be negotiated.)

Article 21

The General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure. It shall elect its President for each session.

Article 17

1. The General Assembly shall consider and approve of the budget of the Organization.

   There are two critical questions in regard to U.N. development at this point in history:

   First, given the harshly negative attitude of the Bush administration toward the U.N., should we all cave in or fight harder? Some of our former supporters think our cause is hopeless. “Until after January 20, 2009, forget it,” one said. Others comment that to get the kind of U.N. we want, we must think in terms of 5, 10, 20; even 100 years. My reply is that famous barnyard epithet. Things are so bad – we may all be dead before January 20, 2009 – that, as a perpetual optimist, I hope the grim scene will wake some people up. With John Paul Jones, I shout, “I have just begun to fight.”

   Second, let me conclude on a parochial, modestly hopeful note. I live on Manhattan’s liberal West Side, where traffic is already a horror. Our New York City Mayor, billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, got the great idea of building a new football stadium, at a cost of $2.2 billion, in the middle of Manhattan’s West Side. Even the village idiot knew this was a preposterous idea. The community rose up in opposition – with newspaper and TV ads, statements by local social groups, street demonstrations – and the stadium proposal died.

   A similar groundswell of global support for the United Nations could conceivably be developed. The various elements are there. The first would have to be within the U.S., where Bush and his quagmire war in Iraq are continuing to lose support. The European Union, with its 25 members who can cast votes in the U.N. General Assembly, might be expected to give support to a political resolution supporting increased authority for the General Assembly. Both the African Union and the Organization of American States have lately been showing signs of independence from American influence. Even China and India would have motives to join an informal coalition backing a revitalized role for the U.N. General Assembly.

   As a realistic start in this direction, the international community must abandon, at least for the time being, its obsession with expanding the Security Council. The heavy pressure of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan to win permanent seats on the Security Council can be expected not to get any further in the next decade than it has in the last one, which is nowhere. There are many reasons for this, but one is sufficient: the United States of America will prevent it.

   Fortunately, it is not necessary to expand the Security Council to make the United Nations into a world organization that can “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The Framers of the U.N. Charter were prescient: they gave us the means to do this, if we can develop the political will, in Chapters 4 and 5 of the U.N. Charter. The present 15 members of the Security Council, operating as a powerful group within the revitalized 191-member General Assembly, can proceed very well in exercising their responsibilities for global security. The end result should be a new meld of responsible decision-making by the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly.