"World politics and international organizations" by Lucas Turks

Reality and utopia of the world international organizations

When the nations that on January 1 1942 undersigned the first official document signing as United Nations, it seemed that a new era of collaboration and peace between the nations had opened. The skeptics were ready to let notice that the convergent and contingent affairs of the states in the struggle against the Axis would have left the place to different and perhaps conflicting national politics just after having finished the conflict. The truth of such affirmations has been broadly confirmed from more than 40 years of cold war, from conflicts at regional level between contrasted ideologies and from an incapability of the United Nations to furnish solutions to these problems that went to effectively stop the desire of war of the nations of the world.

Yet after the fall of the wall in Berlin, the nineties had opened with a new sense of hope. The decennial struggle between United States and Soviet Union seemed finishing and really 1991, there was the first and till now last example of true international collaboration for the reestablishment of the peace: the War in the Gulf. The system of collective protection that was at the base of the aboriginal intentions of the founders of the organization of the United Nations was applied for chasing away again the Iraq invader within its borders. The collaboration between the allied nations was full, yet is necessary to notice that also in that occasion it missed the presence of all the states of the Safety Council. In fact, either China either Soviet Union maintained a separation that allowed conducting the military operations without interference, but it doesn't allow affirming that the UN has, in that moment, correctly developed its work of guarantor of the peace.

Other confirmations had found in the continuous shakings of this organization in Somalia, in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Kossovo) and recently also during the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. In each case the Blue Helmets have not intervened to interrupt hostilities, but only after the cease-fire as strengths of interposition to separate in the definitive way the contenders. The diplomatic negotiations in the quoted cases had been conducted or with the American intermediation or with that other “friends” states, not sure with the intervention of the organization that would have the assignment to do it.
Now, there are requests of adjustment or radical reform of this and other international organizations to adjust them to the changed world conditions. I have spoken of other organizations, because the evil that torments the UN seems to be diffused. It has a well precise name: ultra-conservatism and it influences the UN, but also the WTO (World Trade Organization), the OCSE (Organization for the Cooperation and Safety in Europe) and in small degree, but not less dangerous also the European union. If we want to understand which conflicting strengths are in struggle inside these organisms we cannot synthesize everything in a contrast between rich and poor, between First World and Third World.

It is undeniable that especially in the UN two groups of pressure well delineated exist. On one side the nations that make part of the Safety Council and their allies, on the other one the neutral countries and the Asian and African nations that possess the majority in the Assembly of the United Nations, but this involves well little real power. The same is also repeated in the WTO with a difference of not little importance and that is the opposition between the American block and the European Union, united politically from lasting alliances, yet separated on the economic plan from incompatible views on the future of the so-called “globalization.” We will try to analyze more in depth the two situations. The current of thought that would like to maintain the status quo inside the United Nations is the same that affirm that the actual world situation can be considered satisfactory. This is right departing from their point of view of industrialized and militarily strong countries. The wars happen distant from their borders or, as it happens in Europe, in zones considered not strategic. These states don't have any interest to transform the faculty of the United Nations to intervene in case of international aggression in a true power of international police. The United States were the first to affirm this with conviction with the presidential directive #25 of May 5 1994 that declared that it didn't subsist any possibility that their own troops had been employed in actions that didn't see threatened the national affairs.

Instead, the reformers invoke a great democratization of the institutions of the UN (the same request that has done in the European Union, where the French-German powers have constituted a block similar to that existing on world level). They affirm that if the United Nations had born as organization for the defense of the peace among state-nation with the same right, this has to be truth also today, after that with the decolonization of the African and Asian continent, the number of the entities that correspond to the description quoted above has increased notably. The opponents that follow the so-called “Power Politics” in the sixties and seventies had taken as pretext the fact that those nations were too young and turbulent to make possible a division of the command with them. The time has passed and the history has taken its course. Nations as the South Africa or Tunisia have made giant footsteps on the road of Democracy and India together with Pakistan has also become a nuclear power. Therefore, It owes to ask which are really the reasons that prevent a widening of the Safety Council and the functions of the United Nations.

Perhaps the researchers are committing an error focusing each other entirely on the political discourse, skipping that economic. If we not only analyze these contrasts in the UN, but also in the WTO, we can see that the alliances can change and still to favor the powers that have maintained the world order for half century. The European Union is notoriously in minority inside the WTO; despite it would have to be the contrary, if the countries of the third world wanted to oppose the American power. Yet it is not so, because a lot of nations (above all South American and Asian) place their own economic affairs before those political, surrendering on the plan of the diplomatic independence in exchange for a stable or apparently stable national economy. The United States have enough strength either in the WTO either in the International Monetary Fund to guarantee this political line. We bring two examples that taken separately they would be at the antipodes.
On one side the Benin, small country of Western Africa with little more than five million inhabitants. For twenty-five years, until the end of the eighties, it had been governed by a Stalinist dictatorship that had isolated it from the world economy, impoverishing it beyond every measure. Then, to the beginnings of the nineties, a “democratic” revolution has miraculously transformed it in an example for all the members of the International Monetary Fund. Respectful of the directives of the Fund in any case, it has received a treatment of favor that has made it a faithful American ally in every institution where the principle “a head, a vote” is in force. On the other part we have Italy, member of the European Union, G7, NATO, privileged commercial partner of the former socialist countries and lighthouse (at least hearing the words of its rulers) of the Mediterranean Sea. Well, also for Italy, the word of the experts of the IMF can have a political value. When one of the of the IMF societies of revision releases a note that it concerns our public accounts or our expenses for the social welfare, it is treated as a binding directive for every sovereign state, so much more for poor Italy.

Seeing how the political affairs and those economic are woven on world level, it is not difficult to understand the struggle between expansionists and not-expansionists that is happening inside the European Union. Politically, a widening of the union toward East would be desirable. This would allow widening of the European inside safety zone, fixing the border next to Russia. The Union has an enormous advantage in comparison to the other international organizations. In fact, its institutions can emanate some acts that are directly effective inside the national law system. This limitation of sovereignty has allowed and presumably it will continue to allow a lasting peace among the members. When a state enters the Union, it has to introduce in its own juridical system that whole of principles and norms that is defined “acquis communitaire.” It also includes fundamental truth as the respect of the laws of the man and the popular democracy that could result in real revolutions in the politics of the possible new members of the East.

Unfortunately, the political advantages are overcome from the economic reticence of certain states. Great Britain is an evident example of it. Despite its history is characterized by a forced isolationism that only desultorily let involve it in the affairs of the continent (these moments have coincided however with events of enormous importance as the Napoleonic wars or the two world conflicts), its affiliation to the Union seemed to have modified notably this habit. This at least until the creation of the Euro zone. Once more the economic affairs (the safeguard of a strong coin as the pound) have surpassed the political reasons. Same behavior would also have held Germany if it doesn't need to maintain completely opened the connections with the large European market that see the nation of Berlin just in its center. The new century is opened with tendency of a continuous integration among states, this is evident. However, we are not going in the direction that it was thought in 1945, that is toward a world integration, on the contrary we are in front of the formation of over-state entity at regional level not only united by political affairs, but above all economic. These newborn macro-states maintain all the defects of the aboriginal single entities, only acquiring the advantage of the stability. The division in regions of the world is not certain a novelty, but until recent times it had limited to the ideology skipping the commercial market. Perhaps, really the European Union has constituted the inversion of tendency. Unfortunately, with the actual state of the facts, we cannot see any amelioration. The conflicts and the wars between the macro-regions for the moment are limited to the monetary and oil reserves, but nobody can know for how much time the dawning divisions won't be resolved with the use of the weapons.

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