October 24, 2020 is a landmark moment in the history of the United Nations (UN) as it would mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of this great institution. Scholars might argue and differ whether one can call UN great but any institution that can survive for around 75 years as a truly global institution with an impact that is second to none deserves a unique place in history and by extension can be called great.
To appreciate the largesse of UN as an institution, one needs to remember the context in which this organisation came up. After the World War II that destroyed millions of lives and turned many cities into dust and rubble, the world was yearning for a lasting peace.
The last three decades before 1945 were filled with violence, whose scale was unprecedented in the recorded human history and within a span just 20 years, the world had seen two world wars being fought. The great powers had decided to come up with an institutional mechanism to prevent world wars after World War-I ended in 1919. That institution was called ‘League of Nations’.
Many commentators call the United Nations as the successor of this League of Nations which had utterly failed to prevent World War II to take place. So, when one now looks back into history, United Nations as an institution stands out as a body that didn’t fail to prevent a third major global war. That in itself is a major marker of the success of the United Nations.
This is not to say that UN has no drawbacks in the way it functions or the way it has been functioning since 1945 but its drawbacks are almost dwarfed by the grandiose success of this institution in maintaining global peace and the international order.
Yes, countries have fought wars, nation-states have crumbled and dissolved (like USSR, Yogoslavia), Cold War started and ended and the world maybe on to a Cold War 2.0. But despite all that, the UN has been a key force in maintaining a global framework in which nation-states have been working largely and been interacting with each other as well.
From ensuring global peace to providing food to the deprived people across nations, the UN as a body has truly diversified its interests and works. This can be seen when one looks at the scale of work done by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to the United Nations’ World
Food Programme that has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2020.
United Nations has shown both ‘intent’ and ‘character’ to possess system-shaping capabilities. From the arena of environment (through its United Nations Environment Programme) to the arena of championing human rights globally (through United Nations Human Rights Council), the journey of United Nations in the last 75 years since its formation has been that of a roller-coaster yet a steady ride.
The UN has found that balance to ensure that the world doesn’t go back to what it looked like before 1945 and most of the international relations scholars would agree to the fact that the coming of UN and its existence since then made sure that a paradigm shift in the international order and the world cannot relapse to pre-1945 days of international chaos.
In its 75 years of history, the UN saw through the period of decolonisation in large parts of Asia and Africa. It made sure that the newly born nation-states got their memberships and became a part of the comity of nations.
The importance that UN has got over the years can be seen through the sheer value that the leaders of nation-states (barring few exceptions) attach into what UN’s views are about various matters and issues related to them. However, many argue that UN has relatively failed to keep checks on the mis-actions and misadventures of great powers when compared to the same set of actions by smaller powers and nation states.
Arm-twisting
This is an issue that the UN as an institution needs to work on with sincerity but truth be told, UN’s outlook is that of a liberal institution working within a hyper-realist world. Therefore, it seems that despite possessing the intent to take actions on each of its member-state in an egalitarian manner, its capabilities to do so are arm-twisted by the Big-5 that constitute the UNSC - US, China, Russia, France and UK. These five great powers are also the five biggest financers who funnel huge amount of money into making UN work on a daily basis globally.
So, it makes it hard for UN to take actions against any one of these five nation-states when they are caught on the wrong foot. The best example is of Covid-19. Enough amount of proof has been gathered by now that China has been responsible in making the world suffer through the spread of Coronavirus which has taken over a million lives and counting, making this one of the worst pandemics that the world has ever seen on this scale.
Still, no concrete action has been taken against China because it is a great power on the cusp of becoming a superpower, although an irresponsible power and UN is a ‘toothless institution’ when it comes to taking strong actions against major powers.
Despite these drawbacks, the world is a much better place with United Nations in it than without it.
Today, UN is facing a serious challenge of tackling coronavirus pandemic but it is working hard for shaping our future together. To sum up, the world needs solidarity today more than ever and what better than UN as an institution to fulfil this idea.
(The writer is Senior Research Fellow, School of International Studies, JNU)