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.

As such examples demonstrate, it is clearly not in the U.S. interest to discredit the UN or the Security Council. For every rare occasion when the council thwarts Washington, there are a dozen more when it acts in accordance with U.S. wishes and compels other countries to do the same. To marginalize the council, then, would be to blunt a vital arrow in the U.S. diplomatic quiver.

BEYOND LIMITS

What about the Security Council's structural deficiencies? For all the carping about its outdated composition -- which, by common consensus, reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945 rather than 2003 -- no other body has acquired the kind of legitimacy it brings to bear on world affairs. The council may need reform, therefore, but until member states agree on how to go about making changes, it remains the only global body with responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.

Suggestions that the UN should be replaced -- by a coalition of democracies, for example -- overlook the fact that during the Iraq debate, the most vigorous resistance to the United States in the council came from other democracies. Nor is NATO a feasible alternative to the council, because its legitimacy is geographically limited, as is that of other regional organizations. NATO authorization might have been deemed sufficient for the Kosovo campaign. But in that war, the target was another European state, Yugoslavia. NATO's imprimatur would not have been enough to justify military action in Iraq, which is why the United States and the United Kingdom tried so hard to get the Security Council's benediction for that action.

In any case, the council's final vote (or lack thereof) on Iraq was not the only gauge of its relevance to that situation. Just four years ago, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia without even referring to the council (let alone securing its approval), many critics similarly argued that the UN had become irrelevant. But the Kosovo question soon came up again at the Security Council, first when an unsuccessful attempt was made to condemn the bombing, and then when arrangements had to be made to administer the province after the war. Only the Security Council could have approved the arrangements so as to confer on them international legitimacy and encourage all nations to extend their support and resources. And only one body was trusted enough to run the civilian administration of Kosovo: the United Nations.

The same pattern was not followed precisely in the case of Iraq, but the events were similar. Resolution 1483, adopted unanimously on May 22, granted the UN a significant role in postwar Iraq. That the United States chose to give the UN such a prominent position reflects not just British pressure but also Washington's own recognition that it needs the world body. Indeed, the very fact that the United States submitted the resolution to the Security Council was an acknowledgment by Washington that there is, in Secretary-General Kofi Annan's words, no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the UN. The body might have been written off during the war. But as with Kosovo, it was quickly found to be essential to the ensuing peace.

Of course, peace can be kept in many ways, and Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, and now Iraq offer four different models for how the UN can engage in postconflict situations. But peacekeeping (which includes mediation, monitoring, and disarmament) remains exactly the kind of mission where using the UN has advantages for Washington that greatly outweigh the negatives. First, there is the obvious attraction of burden-sharing: UN peacekeeping allows other countries to help shoulder the United States' responsibility for maintaining peace around the world.

Second, despite some well-publicized failures, UN peacekeeping works. The UN's "blue helmets" won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988; since then, they have brought peace and democracy to Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, and East Timor; helped ease the U.S. burden after regime changes in Haiti and Afghanistan; and policed largely bloodless stalemates from Cyprus to the Golan Heights to Western Sahara.