First Draft, Comments Invited

Opening remarks prepared by Richard Hudson,
Executive Director of the Center for War/Peace Studies,
for the opening of the conference

Californians for the U.N.

WHAT FUTURE FOR THE UNITED NATIONS?

To be held June 26-27, 2005
(the 60^th birthday of the U.N.)
at the Chaminade Conference Center
Santa Cruz, California

   Welcome, everyone!

   During our day and a half here, I hope we will make tangible progress toward the goal proclaimed in the first sentence of the United Nations Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” In this effort, we will address three questions:

   First, historically, where are we at?

   Second, what should we do now?

   Third, how do we do it?

   On the first question, the blunt answer is that we are in a hell of a mess. The bright optimism that followed history’s worst war has disintegrated to the point that violent conflict – both inter-state and intra-state – is found throughout the world. Disarmament talks have been stuck for years; military expenditures are steadily mounting.

   The United Nations, which once offered such bright hope to the world, now is floundering badly. The Security Council, supposedly responsible for keeping the peace, is failing to do so, as the veto power of the five permanent members blocks constructive action – and stymies the necessary repairs to the Council. The General Assembly is crippled by its more than tripling of the membership, thus making its non-binding decisions unrepresentative of the real political world. And the archaic system of financing the organization severely hampers not only its peacemaking efforts but also its programs to improve people’s lives in matters of health, environment, and education.

   How to turn this situation around? Should the global body politic dump the United Nations and create a new and more realistic organization? That is the road the Americans took in 1787 in Philadelphia, when the Founding Fathers secretly scrapped the founding Articles of Confederation and wrote the present U.S. Constitution. But today, a similar course is neither possible nor necessary with the United Nations. The U.N. is a far more advanced organization than was the Articles of Confederation then. It has made a good start toward a system of global democratic governance, but it is now in dire need of a major mutation.

   Another approach has been urged by advocates of world federalism: to amend the U.N. Charter in ways that would give the General Assembly limited legislative powers under a weighted voting system and restrict use of the veto in the Security Council. I also favored this course until a few years ago, when I concluded that it was neither possible nor necessary in the current political climate.

   Now, I suggest that the necessary improvements in the operation of the United Nations can be achieved without amending the U.N. Charter by relying on certain articles of the existing document. There are ample precedents in which articles of the Charter have been interpreted in ways to effect major structural changes in the U.N. system. Here are two examples which might be described as cases where “Politics Trumps Law”:

§         The third paragraph of Article 27 of the Charter contains these words: “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.” Despite this clear language, an abstention has never been considered a veto. The history of the U.N. would have been importantly different had this not been so.

§         The first two sentences of Article 23 reads as follows: “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 and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council.” With little fanfare and no Charter amendment, two fundamental structural changes were made in the United Nations: the U.S.S.R. was replaced by the Russian Federation, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) by “China.” Thus, Politics Trumps Law.

   The principal change in the United Nations that I now urge would take place not by Charter amendment but by a General Assembly resolution under Article 21 of the U.N. Charter:

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

   The central resolution to be drafted by a General Assembly task force under the aegis of Article 21 would create a weighted voting system in the Assembly based on three factors:

1.      one nation-one vote (the same as now)

2.      population

3.      contributions to the regular U.N. budget (a rough measure of GNP)

   A measure could be approved only if it receives a majority on all three “legs.” Known as the Binding Triad system for global decision-making, it can be employed only on specified matters, and with possible limitations to be negotiated on requirements for majorities on population and GNP. The result would be a decision based on a balance of the three inputs, which should be close to a global consensus. Decisions taken in this manner should make it possible for the Security Council and the General Assembly to work together more closely on measures requiring the use of force, as envisioned in the Charter drafted in San Francisco.

   How to bring the Binding Triad into reality?

   Surely, the first step is to get the concept on the official U.N. agenda. Then it cannot be ignored by governments, the media, NGOs, the Secretariat, academia, and funding sources. The best way to proceed is to locate a few respected U.N. member states to be cosponsors of a resolution calling on the General Assembly to name a task force to undertake a study of decision-making in the United Nations. Support in any one of these sectors can help create synergy with other sectors. But it is time to get going, and every individual can help one way or another.

   Let us not underestimate either the difficulty or the importance of strengthening the structure of the United Nations. The current international state of anarchy is profoundly dangerous, causing untold miseries. Humanity has in the past largely eliminated many scourges of society, including cannibalism, colonialism, autocratic communism, apartheid, and oppression of women. It is now time to end the scourge of war. What better place to than where the United Nations began!