The United Nations in the post Cold War era

The following is an article based on a transcript of a speech given by Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie at the Military Staff College in Kuala Lumpur recently. This is the third of three articles in a series.

KUALA LUMPUR: The death of the Soviet Union can be interesting in post mortem. There are a number of probable causes, one of which could be attributed to financial exhaustion brought about by the arms race.

But it was Gorbachev, with his Perestroika, which expressed the yearning of every Russian that Moscow should return to a European home as a European power. That started the downtrend of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin sealed the fate of the USSR. Yet Yeltsin has not been able to bring about a real change in Russia because the U.S. and the West, plus Japan, has so far failed to give him support.

If the USSR has become the vanquished in the Cold War, why is Russia being treated so shabbily? The one explanation would be that Russia, even without the USSR, is still paranoid about its security and therefore is clinging to "spherism" as witnessed in the Japanese Northern Islands, in the Abkhaz uprising in Georgia, in the central Adriatic republics and in the Caucasus.

Russian participation in Bosnia Herzegovina under the UNPROFOR arrangement convinced many observers that it was motivated by the dire need for assurance of security for Russia through the concept of "sphere of influence."

The chaotic and unbalanced development in Russia encouraged Zhirinovsky to exploit the misery and sense of insecurity of the Russian people.

On three previous occasions when the political balance of forces in Russia was upset -- the end of the Crimean War, the defeat by the Japanese and the end of World War I -- revolutions took place. The Russian people, in another revolutionary mood, may stand up and support Zhirinovsky in the presidential election of 1996.

I maintain that the Cold War was a war to remove whatever impediments were in the way of those respective aims. Russia will continue to seek security through "sphere of influence", which runs counter to the concept of "universalism."

Any obstacles to the "universalism" of the Anglo-American alliance by Russia, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Australia, France, Germany, or any regional cooperation, would be the target of the continuing Cold War.

That, in my view, would have been inevitable even if the Cold War had been given another name. It is in this context that we should continue to view the activities of the U.S.-UK collusion to save their economies at home.

The specter of the depression is ever present. This ossified concept of preventing the recurrence of long lines of job seekers and food hunters at welfare kitchens will continue to be promoted in a kind of psychic zone among political leaders, the mass media and educators.

The Cold War will visit those who stand in the way of the hegemonic "universalism" with all its fury without regard to conditions and sensitivities no matter how absurd the actions may appear.

The rules of the game will have been set and changed from time to time by the "universalists" who will apply them at will in any form as exemplified by the Super 301, or aid conditionalities, or Spielberg's attitude towards the people of Manila, who feel their cultural sensitivities are being violated by some scenes in Schindler's List, or the British sense of the freedom of the press, or of speech, which logically would render anyone free to shout "Fire! Fire!" in a packed theater where there is none!

Japan, China and North Korea will be subjected to the "universalist" Cold War. The Japanese Emperor will have to eat imported rice, the Chinese will have to adhere to the foreign standards of human rights, sacrificing age old traditions, and to experience the strange ways of Hong Kong politics, while North Korea, but not Israel, will have to expose its nuclear program.

I wonder if the Asian phase of the Cold War can be mitigated by mutual respect and mutually agreed standards, including the sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Negotiations will only be an exercise in propaganda, which is part of the Cold War and there can be no meeting of minds, if there are no common references, but only unilateral standards of the hegemonic "universalism."

Therefore, it serves little purpose for us to discuss the post Cold War role of the UN. We can, however, list out the major and other defects of the UN and its specialized agencies and propose modifications and repairs.

The, UN being the creature of the victors of the last World War, will not be allowed to change unless those changes suit the winners, whom Churchill referred to as the English-speaking world and all its connections.

Now that Russia is hanging on the coat tails of the West and Moscow has become a European capital, Russia is given the position of the demised USSR in the Security Council as if she was one of the victors of World War II, adding yet one more anomaly.

All we can hope for is an independent minded secretary- general, tireless in his effort to steer the UN, the Security Council and all the specialized agencies through the rapids and tumults of an uncertain period caused by the monopoly of power.

For so long as the "universalists" hold sway, the undemocratic veto in the Security Council will persist. Russia will continue to squat in the Security Council as a permanent member; a Security Council-supported Desert Shield, by a sleight of hand, could become a Desert Storm; or the Security Council may suffer blindness in the face of such terrible acts of inhumanity like the rape of Bosnia Herzegovina.

For all of us, who believe in the UN and the idea that truly the whole world should be open -- and we mean the whole world not only the Churchillian English-speaking world and the ilk -- we will have to be wary that in supporting the UN we are not aiding and abetting in a conspiracy for the creation of a hegemonic "universalism."

We must be resolute in our endeavors to develop and simultaneously build our resilience through cooperation regionally and through collaboration in the spirit of a global community, sensitive to each others conditions, cultures and customs.

Even though the USSR collapsed, Marxism still lives, and Russia still lives. Russia's preoccupation will continue to be its own security. If it cannot get any satisfaction in that regard, the Russian people may resort to other measures, including national socialism or communism, with a vengeance, rejecting the errors of Leninism-Stalinism.

After all, China has devised her own brand of ideology, with Marxism based on a socialist market economy, which is a form of socialistic distribution of wealth derived from capitalism, which is supposedly devoid of its exploitative nature. China has also devised, through a kind of double-think, the concept of "two systems one country."

Since the end of World War II, the Anglo-American alliance has found that the market for their products is still not as "universal" as they had wished.

They look askance at EC, GATT, ASEAN, ZOPFAN and EAEC as obstacles to their designs. Fifty years have brought many changes and new competitors are emerging with higher productivity and better quality at competitive prices.

This is a development they did not foresee in 1945. Their arrogance and obduracy have made them unwilling to accept reality. There will be greater stress on "them versus us", and we of the growing economies will soon have to deny in GATT and other arenas any fresh efforts to make our growth harder to achieve.

China's entrance into GATT, or her search for U.S./UK markets, will be linked to her acceptance of the values and standards unilaterally established by the U.S./UK alliance. Even the EC is not happy with U.S. "numerical targets" approach against Japan since that would inevitably result in cutting down European market shares in Japan.

It is a pity that the two score and nine years of the Cold War did not bring home the lesson that the unilateral imposition of "universalism" will only isolate its perpetrators in the international trading system.

For Malaysia, we believe in the open market and free trade principle and not a flea market. However, we are developing our economy, political and social life on the basis of our own culture.

If that culture is not understood but appears to be an impediment to the "universalists", then we are certain to be involved in the Cold War and subjected to "Malaysia bashing." The challenge before us is that we must succeed in our 2020 vision to create a modern society without being dented by the Cold War.

For ASEAN, we believe in the nuclear weapons free zone and the zone of peace, freedom and neutrality as a contribution towards increasing the no-war theater. ASEAN also is promoting the concept of EAEC as a regional consultative forum. The same ASEAN ideas should be extended to all areas where the sense of insecurity abounds as in the Balkans and West Asia.

I do not believe that this anachronistic concept of hegemonistic "universalism" will defy change. It is up to us, who believe in modernization, to show a new way through cooperative endeavors by individual, regional and global collaboration and through North-South interactions so that the world shares the same fate and destiny.

Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, and a Fellow of the University of Wales, United Kingdom. The opinions and views expressed are entirely his own.