At the Interface of Realism and Idealism
The counter to this, however, is that the permanent membership of the Security Council is already weighted disproportionately toward the industrialized countries. The shift of the decision-making locus to the "G-8 plus" disenfranchises the developing countries even more. If this trend continues, the UN will lose credibility and legitimacy in most of the world―and hence also experience a still further erosion of remaining effectiveness.
The United Nations lies at the interface of power-based realism and values-based idealism. This is a creative tension that must be resolved in specific cases without abandoning either the sense of realism or the aspiration to an ideal world. The Kosovo learning curve shows that the UN ideal can neither be fully attained nor abandoned. Like most organizations, the UN too is condemned to an eternal credibility gap between aspiration and performance. The real challenge is to ensure that the gap does not widen, but stays within a narrow band. Only the UN can legitimately authorize military action on behalf of the entire international community, instead of a select few. But the UN does not have its own military and police forces, and a multinational coalition of allies can offer a more credible and efficient military force when robust action is needed and warranted. What will be increasingly needed in future is partnerships of the able, the willing and the high-minded with the duly authorized. Anything else risks violating due process. East Timor offers a better model than Kosovo of a more prudential and effective multilateral intervention blessed by the UN Security Council. But without the lead of Kosovo, would East Timor have followed?
To avoid the appearance and charges of double standards, the UN system needs to be ready, willing and able to confront humanitarian catastrophes wherever they occur. The unavoidability of selectivity should not become an alibi for the strong using force against the weak. That will only heighten disorder. One veto should not override the rest of humanity. Otherwise we might see more NATO-style actions with less or no UN involvement―and thus less order and less justice in the global community. Formal amendment of the UN Charter is neither feasible in the foreseeable future nor necessary. In the 1990s, the veto-wielding powers generally abstained from the use and misuse of that power. The history of Russian and Chinese policy in the 1990s in the Security Council with respect to Milosevic is essentially one of cooperation, not obstructionism. The major powers need to return to the shared management of a troubled world order.
Many of today's wars are nasty, brutish, anything but short, and mainly internal. The world community cannot help all victims, but must step in where it can make a difference. However, unless the member states of the UN agree on some broad principles to guide interventions in similar circumstances, the Kosovo precedent will have dangerously undermined world order. Not being able to act everywhere can never be a reason for not acting where effective intervention is both possible and urgently needed. Selective indignation is inevitable, for we simply cannot intervene everywhere, every time. But community support for selective intervention will quickly dissipate if the only criterion of selection is friends (where the norm of non-intervention has primacy) versus adversaries (where the right to intervene is privileged). In addition, we must still pursue policies of effective indignation. Humanitarian intervention must be collective, not unilateral. And it must be legitimate, not in violation of the agreed rules which comprise the foundations of world order.
