Time to do away with ‘ dysfunctional’
The conscription of an additional 300 000 troops in Russia is a sign that President Vladimir Putin is hunkering down for the long haul in the Ukraine war, which was launched by a Russian invasion on 24 February this year.
Despite the escalation of violence and the endless supply of weapons from the West, mainly the US and Western European countries, the United Nations Security Council has failed to de- escalate the crisis, which indicates it is no longer a useful institution when it comes to making peace in the 21st century. There is a clear case for dismantling the council and establishing a new global collective security system. The images of millions of Ukrainians, and citizens of other countries fleeing the Russian assault at the outset of the war evokes memories of the millions of refugees from the violence of the first and second world wars. The brutality of the Russian attack on Ukraine cannot be questioned and the urgency of a mediation process is self- evident. Efforts to mediate ongoing and future crises in which one or more members of the permanent five members of the Security Council — Russia, China, France, the United States and the United Kingdom — are involved will be confronted by the same systemic failure.
The council’s inability to intervene through mediation and preventive diplomacy has led to the resurgence of power politics and the proliferation of authoritarian regimes that are prepared to defy the will of the international system of rules and regulations governing the conduct between states.
The founding principles of the UN as the world’s self- designated purveyor of international peace and security have become paralysed by the realpolitik of the permanent members of the Security Council, which was already a feature of the Cold War, and which has rendered it impotent and ineffectual in preventing and resolving violent conflict.
After the subjugation of the fascist and totalitarian powers at the end of World War II, the wartime allies decided to construct a new framework for the post- war world order. The UN was the progeny of this endeavour and its primary purpose was to ensure that there was an institutional mechanism that, according to the UN Charter of 1945, would encourage its members to “settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that the international peace and security, and justice are not endangered’”.
Through the mechanisms of the Security Council and the General Assembly, the UN was provided with the ability to oversee the peaceful settlement of disputes. Specifically, Article 33 of Chapter VI of the UN Charter states that “the parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement”.
To operationalise these interventions, the broad range of institutions in the UN could be used. The UN is the composite formation of its Secretariat, the member states and its numerous agencies. But the Security Council is the most powerful of these institutions and it has a primary responsibility to create and establish the framework conditions for other branches and institutions of the UN to contribute toward the peaceful resolution of disputes. What seemed initially to be a resourceful array of mechanisms and processes to resolve conflicts were soon to be confronted by the structural limitations and the egotistical imperatives of the superpowers that dominated the Cold War era. The superpowers ( the US and the Soviet Union) and their client states in the UN framework, formed de facto alliances along ideological lines and institutionalised an oligarchy of power.
This appropriation of global power manifested itself through the dominance of the Security Council in all major decisions and meant that the UN’s ability to resolve conflicts and build peace became structurally paralysed. Rarely, if at all, did the interests of the US or the Soviet Union converge. The greatest threat to international peace and security, therefore, arose from the conflict between the Security Council’s most powerful members. The Cold War period witnessed over 150 armed conflicts which claimed about 25 to 30 million lives. In this climate of East- West competition the mechanisms and strategies to manage and resolve conflicts relied on coercive political negotiations in the context of the prevailing superpower rivalry.
In effect, the involvement of other collective security organisations and third parties was restrained and possible only in conflicts in which the great powers did not have a direct stake or in which they had shared interests.