Being the indispensable power can tempt one into being indisposed to accept the constraints of multilateral diplomacy. But being indispensable does not confer the authority to dispense with the legitimacy of the UN as the only entity that can speak in the name of the international community. The reason for much disquiet around the world with the precedent of NATO action in Kosovo was not because their abhorrence of ethnic cleansing is any less. Rather, it was because of their dissent from a world order which permits or tolerates unilateral behavior by the strong and their preference for an order in which principles and values are embedded in universally applicable norms and the rough edges of power are softened by institutionalized multilateralism.
Painful Dilemma
In today's unstable world full of dangerous and complex conflicts, we face the painful dilemma of being damned if we do and damned if we don't:
1. To respect sovereignty all the time is to be complicit in human-rights violations sometimes.
2. To argue that the UN Security Council must give its consent to humanitarian war is to risk policy paralysis by handing over the agenda to the most egregious and obstreperous.
3. To use force unilaterally is to violate international law and undermine world order.
The bottom-line question is this: Faced with another Holocaust or Rwanda-type genocide on the one hand and a Security Council veto on the other, what would we do? Because there is no clear answer to this poignant question within the existing consensus as embodied in the UN Charter, a new consensus on humanitarian intervention is urgently needed. The Charter encapsulates the international moral code and best-practice international behavior by states and regional organizations. The urge to humanitarian intervention by powerful regional organizations must be bridled by the legitimating authority of the international organization. The only just and lasting resolution of the challenge of humanitarian intervention would be a new consensus proclaimed by the peoples of the world through their governments at the United Nations and embodied in its Charter.
Notes
1. Ramesh Thakur is Vice Rector at the United Nations University, Tokyo.
2. See Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur, eds., Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: International Citizenship, Selective Indignation and Collective Action (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000). The present paper has borrowed liberally from that book.
3. Richard Falk, "Reflections on the Kosovo War," Global Dialogue 1:2 (Autumn 1999), p.93.
4. "The future of Kosovo: An indefinite NATO presence," IISS Strategic Comments 6:1 (January 2000), p.1.
5. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1998) (New York: UN Secretariat, November 1999), para.502.
6. Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (New York: UN Document A/55/305 S/2000/809, 21 August 2000.
7. Ibid., para.50.
8. Ibid., para.51.
9. For a discussion of issues associated with geographic representation in the UN system, see Ramesh Thakur, ed., What is Equitable Geographic Representation in the Twenty-first Century (Tokyo: United Nations).
Dr. Ramesh Thakur
Professor and Vice-Rector, The United Nations University, Tokyo
