Cold War haunts UN hopes

Cold War haunts UN hopes

The following is an excerpt from a statement made by
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas at the commemorative
meeting of the Security Council on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of the United Nations on Sept. 26, 1995.

NEW YORK: It may be recalled that the United Nations was born
while humankind was still recoiling from the horrors of World War
II. The international community, determined to "save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war," endeavored at the San
Francisco Conference fifty years ago to create an international
organization that would be able to prevent such calamities in the
future by establishing the political, economic and social
conditions for a new, more peaceful and safer world. An important
part of that task -- the maintenance of international peace and
security -- was entrusted to this Security Council.

The high hopes that the international community invested in
the United Nations, however, were soon overcast by the shadow of
the Cold War. The lofty intentions of the UN Charter could no
longer be fully realized in a world split into two rival military
and ideological blocs locked in a struggle for dominance.

In this Council, a sense of higher responsibility and common
purpose among its members had been presupposed, but time and
again the Council would be paralyzed precisely because the major
powers could not achieve unanimity. As a result, the Council too
often failed to take decisive action to resolve conflicts and its
resolutions were frequently defied or ignored. The super-
imposition of East-West rivalries on the deliberations of the
Council rendered even unanimously approved resolutions
unimplementable. In the process of eliciting the support of the
Permanent Members, resolutions often became diluted to the point
of being pious declarations or futile exhortations. The excessive
use of the veto further paralyzed the Council.

But it cannot be denied that even during the Cold War era, the
Security Council did manage to bring about some measure of global
stability by limiting the scope and intensity of conflicts.
Working with the secretary-general, the Council provided
modalities for conciliation and mediation, good offices and fact-
finding, true observation and quiet diplomacy. Time and again the
Council would formulate guidelines for the solution of complex
problems and substitute dialog and negotiations for armed
hostilities. Many a cease-fire arranged by the Council paved the
way to a political settlement. And if admittedly the Council
could not resolve the most dangerous problems of that time, it
nevertheless kept them from breaking out of control. It certainly
prevented the escalation of regional conflicts into global
conflagration which, considering the capacity of the major powers
for mutual nuclear devastation, could well have brought humanity
to the brink of extinction.

With the end of the Cold War, a new era in the search for
peace has dawned. Breakthroughs have been achieved in long-
standing conflicts in some countries and regions. On a number of
occasions in the recent past the Permanent Members of the
Security Council have recognized the international
responsibilities inherent in their status and have shown a
capability for united action never seen before. We are thus given
a glimpse of what the Council could achieve if it could be made
strictly faithful to the vision of the UN Charter. Equally
heartening, cooperation between the permanent and non-permanent
members has also improved.

Still, the lessons of the past 50 years are clear. We are
called upon to further strengthen our institutions and to adopt
more effective and innovative approaches to the prevention and
resolution of conflicts. We have to recast the Charter's concept
of collective action for peace and security so as to render the
United Nations more capable of carrying out its primary function.
We need to devise a more viable system of collective or common
security in which all member states can participate in accordance
with their respective capabilities. In this way, the burden of
making the world better and safer for all will be equitably
shared by all.

The General Assembly, the Security Council and the secretary-
general should assume their respective, complementary roles in
preserving the peace as mandated by the Charter. Peacekeeping
operations have to be armed with a clear mandate and provided
adequate means, including financial, to fulfill their missions.

Indeed, in this context it is of critical importance to come
to grips with the serious financial crisis that the organization
is facing, without which all our endeavors to maintain
international peace and security would grind to a halt. Concepts
of peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace building and preventive
diplomacy need to be adapted to the new realities, especially in
view of the qualitative changes that have occurred in the nature
of conflicts. Questions relating to the future use of powers
vested under Chapter VII of the Charter call for a collective
rethinking on the basis of insights derived from recent
experience.

The profound changes that have taken place during the past 50
years should now be reflected in the Security Council. An
equitable and balanced expansion of the permanent and non-
permanent membership of the Council, coupled with reforms in its
working methods and procedures, would render the Council more
responsive and relevant to prevailing geopolitical realities and
more open to the participation of small and medium-sized states
which constitute the majority of the organization. It would also
be timely and pertinent to review the manner in which the veto is
presently exercised with a view to mitigate its arbitrary use and
to ensure a more democratic decision-making process.