Why America Still Needs the United Nations

Shashi Tharoor

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Multilateralism is a means, not an end, and there is no more multilateral body than the UN. That may make it unwieldy at times, but the UN's inclusiveness is the key to the legitimacy only it can confer. The organization thus remains an essential force in international politics, and one the United States benefits from greatly.

Shashi Tharoor is UN Undersecretary-General for Communications and Public Information and the author of eight books, including the forthcoming Nehru: The Invention of India. These are his personal views.

This is why so many countries, including the most powerful ones, take care to embed their actions within the framework of the principles and purposes of the UN Charter. For examples of this, one need only peruse a random selection of speeches by countries explaining their votes on the Security Council, especially those concerning military action. The value of internationally recognized principles resonates across the globe and has been reified through 58 years of repetition -- including last March, when the council debated Iraq.

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To suggest -- as did some critics of the UN during the Iraq crisis -- that the organization has become irrelevant overlooks the message President George W. Bush himself sent when he appeared before the General Assembly in September 2002. In calling on the Security Council to take action, Bush framed the problem of Iraq as a question not of what the United States (unilaterally) wanted, but of how to implement Security Council resolutions. Indeed, these resolutions were at the heart of the U.S. case. Had the Security Council been able to agree that force was warranted, it would have provided unique (and incontestable) legitimacy for U.S. military action. The fact that the council did not ultimately agree, however, strengthens, rather than dilutes, the rationale for approaching it in such situations. The council's refusal to serve as a rubber stamp for Washington will give any future support it lends to the United States greater credibility.

Council resolutions do not serve only to codify the acceptable in the eyes of the world; they also, quite directly, lay down the law. In fact, several countries, from Norway to India, do not or cannot (as a matter of politics, policy, or constitutional law) commit forces overseas without the council's explicit authorization. Such a practice ensures that these countries will not be drawn into military adventures at the behest of one or a handful of powerful states. They send troops only when the Security Council, speaking in the name of the world as a whole, blesses an enterprise.

Nonetheless, since the Iraq crisis, some critics have suggested that "coalitions of the willing" will eventually eliminate the need for formal structures such as the UN. "Multilateralism á la carte," the thinking goes, will replace "multilateralism á la charte." But even ad hoc coalitions require structure: many states, when asked by Washington to contribute troops for Iraq, have hesitated to do so without the sanction of a UN resolution or a UN-authorized command structure. International institutions give the United States' potential partners a framework within which they can feel empowered on (at least notionally) equal terms -- and without which they are not willing to participate.

Put another way, the difference between a UN operation, in which everyone wears a blue helmet, and a "coalition of the willing" led by one big power is similar to that between a police squad and a posse. Posses are more difficult to find and to fund than are police. Similarly, developing countries in any coalition need financing in order to play their part, and such financing is more easily provided through the UN's agreed cost-sharing formula. Unilateralism is always more expensive than its alternative, and in today's tight world economy, the costs of international unilateralism may no longer be sustainable.

Even when a Security Council resolution is not legally required for an action, the UN's imprimatur can still prove extremely useful for the United States. A council decision does not just spread expense and political risk, by diluting Washington's responsibility for a course of action that might provoke resentment or hostility. It is also easier for many governments to sell a policy to their publics if they can describe it as a response to a UN resolution, instead of to an American request. The United States has already learned this lesson: for example, when it has tried to prompt countries to revise and update their domestic security procedures or laws on terrorism, it has discovered that governments are often happier to receive the same American expert as a UN adviser than as a U.S. one.

In fact, part of the value of the UN (including for Washington) is the respect in which its members hold the body. Such respect has permitted the United States, on numerous occasions, to advance its specific interests under the cover of international law. For example, UN sanctions on Libya helped the United States achieve a settlement over the Lockerbie bombing. And after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Security Council's two subsequent resolutions provided an international framework for the global battle against terrorism. Resolution 1373 required nations to interdict arms flows and financial transfers to suspected terrorist groups, report on terrorists' movements, and update national legislation to fight them. Without the legal authority of a binding Security Council resolution, Washington would have been hard-pressed to obtain such cooperation "retail" from 191 individual states, and it would have taken decades to negotiate and ratify separate treaties and conventions imposing the same standards on all countries.