Why the U.N. Fails: It Cannot Mediate

Saadia Touval

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 1994

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Summary:  Its diplomatic debacles in the past few years demonstrate one thing: the United Nations cannot mediate. It has too many mouths to speak with one voice, lacks the resources needed for political leverage, and diminishes the credibility of its own promises by its incoherence. Those problems are ingrained in the nature of international organizations, and no amount of revamping the United Nations will correct them. Instead, the United Nations should encourage self-interested states to mediate those conflicts they have the best chances of resolving. That is the best way to salvage the organization?s steadily diminishing prestige.

Saadia Touval is currently a Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. He is former Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University.

Only a few years ago it was widely expected that the end of the Cold War would lead to the rebirth of the United Nations. Between 1987 and 1991, the United Nations mediated a series of agreements that helped end fighting between Iran and Iraq, led to the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, established a broad-based coalition government in Cambodia, and ended El Salvador?s chronic civil war. This brief window of success encouraged the view that it was the Cold War that had prevented the United Nations from being an effective mediator. The East-West standoff, many surmised, had made the collective security mechanism, envisaged by the U.N. Charter and premised on great power cooperation, a dream deferred.

That dream has already lost much of its promise. In hindsight, those successes clearly stemmed from unique circumstances. Successful U.N. mediation was made possible by the exhaustion of local parties and the unwillingness of external powers to continue supporting clients whose usefulness had expired with the Cold War. Iran and Iraq accepted a U.N.-brokered cease-fire only after they had spent themselves in an eight-year battle of attrition. The Soviet Union was eager to withdraw from a losing venture in Afghanistan, and U.N. mediation provided it with the face-saving mechanism to do so. Once denied Soviet backing, the Vietnamese desired to reduce their commitments in Cambodia, as did the Chinese who, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, wished to dissociate themselves from the Khmer Rouge and improve their international image. In El Salvador, both superpowers wanted to disengage and pressured their respective allies, themselves discouraged by an inconclusive war, to modify their positions.

Those heady days inspired the false hope that the United Nations could be an effective mediator of international disputes. Since then, U.N. negotiators, however talented and experienced, have tried for years to resolve or reduce conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Haiti, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia, all without success. In fact, U.N. mediation seems to have extended or aggravated many of those disputes, as belligerents have been able to manipulate the organization?s obvious weaknesses. And today none of those U.N. failures can be blamed on the Cold War.

It is increasingly apparent that the United Nations possesses inherent characteristics that make it incapable of effectively mediating complex international disputes. Yet because of its brief period of success, an egregious gap has grown between popular expectations and U.N. abilities. As currently constituted, the United Nations has great difficulty performing many basic functions required of an effective mediator. It does not serve well as an authoritative channel of communication. It has little real political leverage. Its promises and threats lack credibility. And it is incapable of pursuing coherent, flexible, and dynamic negotiations guided by an effective strategy.

Those limitations are ingrained. They are embedded in the very nature of intergovernmental organizations, and no amount of upgrading, expansion, or revamping of U.N. powers can correct those flaws. Rather, it is time to recognize U.N. shortcomings and to quit dumping on the ...

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