The United Nations, although frequently reviled by some
politicians, is a widely valued and respected organisation, and
very
much needed.
However, the effectiveness of the UN is
reduced, to a greater or lesser degree, by a number of inherent
weaknesses, including, for example:
giving a small number of older-established powers permanent seats on the Security Council
giving the permananent members of the Security Council the power of veto
giving each nation, regardless of size, a single vote in the General Assembly
allowing members to influence voting by making threats of sanctions and/or promises of favours
having enshrined in its charter the overriding concept of sovereignty, thus greatly limiting its ability to defend the people of the world from aberrant regimes
allowing members to choose to withhold all or part of their subscriptions and still be granted full rights of membership
having its main base in New York.
Reform is clearly needed. Unfortunately, there is no way to
reform it: even if the UN could be induced to contemplate
constitutional changes, and even in the unlikely event that
proposed
changes were not then vetoed, it would in practice take forever to
bring them about, wouldn't it? The only realistic and practical
option seems to be reformation, to start again with clean sheet.
That possibly sounds destructively radical, but it
may in practice be the most effective way to bring about the
required
reform. It is conceivable that a move towards reformation would in
fact stimulate the UN to reform itself. But I wouldn't rely on it.
In
any case, even if there really is a new beginning, most of what is
of
value in the existing structure should be readily recoverable.
So
how do we start again? We need to convene a new congress of
nations,
independent of the UN, billed as complementing the UN, but aiming
to
address the need for some radical reforms. It must be outside the
UN,
or else the constitutional weakness of the UN will inhibit its
progress and negate any chance of delivering useful results. Who
could possibly make this happen?
Though the
venture inevitably starts with just a conference, a talking shop,
it
must aim for the early development of substance, however slight.
And
if my diagnosis is correct, if there really is an enormous backlog
of
suppressed resentment, then things could progress very quickly
indeed
once they have started. Which is why I ask you to do it. It might
need little more than the initial stimulus to get the whole thing
moving with unstoppable momentum.
But it must from the
outset avoid the fatal flaws of the UN.
Although it can
only be formed by governments, it must aim to represent the
peoples.
Specifically, members must be willing to undertake to cede at
least a
small fragment of sovereignty. No matter how extremely unlikely
they
may be conceived to be, there must be circumstances in which all
members grant the body the right to act to protect the citizens
from
their government. And they should grant it the right to act as a
mediator in "self determination" disputes between the
government and any regional "separatists".
It
must be able to enforce the collection of subscriptions and the
discharge of other member obligations. Heaven knows how. But it is
certainly not acceptable to have members seeking to amplify their
influence by making payments conditional. At the very least,
defaulters should lose voting rights.
It must have a
rational voting structure. Granting power of veto to some nations,
even if based on their economic and military muscle, is no longer
acceptable. On the other hand, we cannot have "one nation one
vote": that gives too little weight to large nations. Nor does
it make sense to have voting in proportion to the population: that
would cause small nations to be swamped. In any case, such an
arrangement tends to be based on the assumption that each
government
speaks for the whole nation, which is usually a long way from the
truth. But it tends to be closer to the truth in small nations
than
in large ones. The European "Qualified Majority" system
recognises this, and the weights it gives to nations are about
right.
But we cannot afford to leave voting weights to political
negotiation. Simply agreeing to have votes proportional to the
square
root of population (as the European system does, with the
exception
of Luxembourg and Germany) will suffice: it is both practical and
statistically justifiable.
It would be nice to avoid
having a base, but in practice even a small secretariat to
organise
conferences need chairs to sit on. And ultimately, and possibly
fairly quickly, the new venture will need a permanent office and
conference facility. It must not be based in the USA. Nor, because
of
American influence, in the Americas. Nor in Europe. So where could
it
be? An option would be to consider somewhere like Perth, Western
Australia.
It is ringed by Africa, Asia and South America, and favours none of them.
It is possibly the most isolated, detached major conurbation in the world.
It is not a place which anybody in USA or Europe could possibly claim was too backward, primitive or dangerous for such an august gathering.
It is a long way from New York. :-)
They speak English. :-)
WJW/(before)17Jan10