Weak leadership, corruption create poor nations

As the United Nations celebrates its 50th anniversary today, Juwono Sudarsono argues that the world organization has yet to fulfill its mission in global politics.

JAKARTA (JP): The sense of occasion at United Nations headquarters in New York City this week will be mitigated by feelings of despondency among developing nations that in its 50th year the United Nations has not accomplished its stated goal of international peace and security based on an equitable world order. The recently-concluded eleventh Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cartagena, Colombia, reiterated what has been urged since 1964: "reform and democratization" of the UN system.

In fact, criticisms about the UN system began at the organization's inception fifty years ago. After all, the UN is a product of a post-World War II desire to avoid the pitfalls of the League of Nations, conceived at the end of World War I. The League failed, not so much because of its ponderous consensus decision-making among major European powers and Japan; rather, America's non-participation in the League rendered international peace and security functions inconsequential.

In conceiving the UN, the choice was between establishing a democratic and idealistic organization and one that was inherently undemocratic but functioned, albeit on the terms of the major powers. Because the UN was created to transcend the moralpolitik of the League of Nations it was inevitably subjected to the exigencies of East-West rivalry and realpolitik.

The preponderance of the Security Council's authority as embedded in the UN Charter reflected the imperative that the conditions of international peace and security must be acceptable to and serve the interests of the Allied powers. The decision to locate the UN's headquarters in New York City confirmed the rise of American political, economic and military preponderance and the decline of Europe in world affairs.

In the event, the UN Charter legitimizes a constitutional monstrosity. The Security Council Permanent Five's authority made sure that the General Assembly only plays a symbolic role and that the actions of the UN secretary-general are pliant to the wishes of the major powers. The General Assembly became a forum where presidents, kings, prime ministers and foreign ministers from other nations could occasionally blow off steam and inflate their egos at the same time. While during the 1970s and 1980s the General Assembly was on occasion able to perform important functions as a "world parliament" in drawing attention to urgent global issues, these consciousness-raising meetings were too numerous to gather support and were rarely followed through with creditable performance. More importantly, the impotence of the General Assembly was repeatedly exposed, every time a veto was cast in the Security Council.

In recent years, the Security Council's legitimacy among developing nations has come into question because of the strikingly different UN reactions to the 1990-1991 Iraq-Kuwait crisis, on the one hand, and the present crisis in Bosnia, on the other. Attempts to reinforce the Security Council's legitimacy by adding Germany, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria and India as non-veto- carrying permanent members have been made since early 1991, but to no avail.

Despondency over the UN has been intensified by the marginalization of developing countries following the formal end of the Cold War in late 1991. The contemporary conservative climate within the United States has not helped attempts at reviving commitment to international governance.

One way of overcoming the current lethargy is for government leaders of the developing world to refrain from endlessly blaming the UN and the rich industrialized countries for existing international inequities.

While grievances against the UN and the industrialized countries are often warranted, these must be balanced by greater recognition that the causes of poverty and despair in developing nations often stem as much or more from weak leadership, rampant corruption and mismanagement within their respective political and economic systems. Until these issues are tackled vigorously through tough political, social and economic reform at home, democratization of the UN system will remain hollow.

The writer is a professor of international relations and the vice governor of the National Resilience Institute in Jakarta.