America needs the United Nations
Mark Mazower | Thursday, 5 June 2008
IN the run-up to a presidential election, US intellectuals compete hard to shape the foreign policy agenda. The race for the White House is a terrific incentive to find a new doctrine for a new administration. This time there is more than usual at stake, for we are in a moment of deep anxiety: the US's capacity for leadership is crippled and President George W. Bush's crusade to globalise democracy has run into the ground. With oil and food prices soaring, the 21st century's struggle over resources is heating up.
A new doctrine is certainly needed: for the first time in more than 200 years, we face the prospect of an international system not dominated by Europe or the US.
But is a post-American world inevitable? Not if we are to believe the advocates of a US-led league of democracies. Advanced most recently by Robert Kagan, the idea has circulated among Democrats and Republicans alike. John McCain, the Republican candidate, has come out in favour, and advisers to Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, have penned similar schemes. There is even a concert of democracies charter drawn up by Princeton professors. One feels the hope: with Iraq having buried the neo-conservatives, perhaps this will be the liberal internationalists' moment. Laudably, they seek a closer relationship with the US's allies than we have seen over the past eight years. Less laudably, but understandably, they are frustrated with the United Nations and impatient at Russian and Chinese vetoes blocking Security Council action. The problem first arose under the Clinton administration with Kosovo; recent stalemates over Sudan, Iran and Burma have increased the activists' dissatisfaction. We want reform of the UN, many proponents of a new league say, but we cannot wait for ever. They see Russia and China blocking what they call the "global liberal consensus". The US stands for universal values, and if the UN gets in the way, so much the worse for the UN.
Behind this talk of leagues and concerts and charters one finds a surprising nostalgia for a time - before the second world war and even the first - when great powers could be franker than today about their allies and their might. But the old days are not such a good model to follow. Never mind that in the 19th century, democracies and autocracies never actually lined up against one another in the way they are now being urged to do. The bigger question is why anyone should want to go back to the form of international politics that eventually ushered in two world wars. Let us remember where the UN came in. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, its founders, were themselves men of the 19th century who had drawn valuable lessons from the calamitous breakdown of great power understanding. Seeking to bring peace to a divided world, they did not believe that the first task for an international institution was to promote any particular set of values. Rather they sought to create a forum in which the world's major - and minor - powers would all have a stake. In short, their purpose in setting up the UN was to prevent precisely that division of the world into competitive alliance systems that is now urged upon us. Joseph Stalin was thus assiduously kept inside from the start. Even at the height of the cold war, the US and USSR made sure that both Communist satellites and rightwing authoritarian regimes were admitted as new UN members. The experience of two world wars and fear of a nuclear third made the principle of universality seem precious and overrode ideological differences.
Expanding membership increased the UN's legitimacy but it had a cost; it made it harder to manage and increasingly marginal to the world's affairs. Today almost everyone agrees on the urgent need for reform; the organisation is badly run, overstretched and inefficient, and the combination of a weak secretariat and stalemated Security Council is not working. But the truth is that we need a properly functioning, legitimate international body more than ever - especially since, for the first time in world history, we are moving into the uncharted waters of a truly multipolar system.
Multipolarity will be especially hard for Washington to swallow because, more than any other great power, the US has constantly equated its mission in the world with the spread of its own values. But no league of democracies will turn the clock back. Better for everyone if Washington - and the west in general - accepts that the short American century is coming to an end.
That would be better in particular for Americans. The next administration should not be distracted by the idea of a new international organisation to remake the world, nor another bellicose crusade for "western values" with its inevitable delineation of new enemies. In managing the transition to a multipolar world, proper consultation and scaling down expectations will allow common concerns to count for more. Promoting democracy and human rights as foreign policy goals will be more effective when accompanied by a more modest view of the US's international role. As for the UN, it is difficult to see how any other genuinely global body could offer the US more influence than the one it helped to create. If Americans want their values to prevail in the years ahead, they should work around the institutional framework they developed after 1945, not hasten its demise. Fixing the UN will be hard, replacing it impossible.
(The writer's Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe is published by Penguin this month. He teaches history at Columbia University.)
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A new doctrine is certainly needed: for the first time in more than 200 years, we face the prospect of an international system not dominated by Europe or the US.
But is a post-American world inevitable? Not if we are to believe the advocates of a US-led league of democracies. Advanced most recently by Robert Kagan, the idea has circulated among Democrats and Republicans alike. John McCain, the Republican candidate, has come out in favour, and advisers to Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, have penned similar schemes. There is even a concert of democracies charter drawn up by Princeton professors. One feels the hope: with Iraq having buried the neo-conservatives, perhaps this will be the liberal internationalists' moment. Laudably, they seek a closer relationship with the US's allies than we have seen over the past eight years. Less laudably, but understandably, they are frustrated with the United Nations and impatient at Russian and Chinese vetoes blocking Security Council action. The problem first arose under the Clinton administration with Kosovo; recent stalemates over Sudan, Iran and Burma have increased the activists' dissatisfaction. We want reform of the UN, many proponents of a new league say, but we cannot wait for ever. They see Russia and China blocking what they call the "global liberal consensus". The US stands for universal values, and if the UN gets in the way, so much the worse for the UN.
Behind this talk of leagues and concerts and charters one finds a surprising nostalgia for a time - before the second world war and even the first - when great powers could be franker than today about their allies and their might. But the old days are not such a good model to follow. Never mind that in the 19th century, democracies and autocracies never actually lined up against one another in the way they are now being urged to do. The bigger question is why anyone should want to go back to the form of international politics that eventually ushered in two world wars. Let us remember where the UN came in. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, its founders, were themselves men of the 19th century who had drawn valuable lessons from the calamitous breakdown of great power understanding. Seeking to bring peace to a divided world, they did not believe that the first task for an international institution was to promote any particular set of values. Rather they sought to create a forum in which the world's major - and minor - powers would all have a stake. In short, their purpose in setting up the UN was to prevent precisely that division of the world into competitive alliance systems that is now urged upon us. Joseph Stalin was thus assiduously kept inside from the start. Even at the height of the cold war, the US and USSR made sure that both Communist satellites and rightwing authoritarian regimes were admitted as new UN members. The experience of two world wars and fear of a nuclear third made the principle of universality seem precious and overrode ideological differences.
Expanding membership increased the UN's legitimacy but it had a cost; it made it harder to manage and increasingly marginal to the world's affairs. Today almost everyone agrees on the urgent need for reform; the organisation is badly run, overstretched and inefficient, and the combination of a weak secretariat and stalemated Security Council is not working. But the truth is that we need a properly functioning, legitimate international body more than ever - especially since, for the first time in world history, we are moving into the uncharted waters of a truly multipolar system.
Multipolarity will be especially hard for Washington to swallow because, more than any other great power, the US has constantly equated its mission in the world with the spread of its own values. But no league of democracies will turn the clock back. Better for everyone if Washington - and the west in general - accepts that the short American century is coming to an end.
That would be better in particular for Americans. The next administration should not be distracted by the idea of a new international organisation to remake the world, nor another bellicose crusade for "western values" with its inevitable delineation of new enemies. In managing the transition to a multipolar world, proper consultation and scaling down expectations will allow common concerns to count for more. Promoting democracy and human rights as foreign policy goals will be more effective when accompanied by a more modest view of the US's international role. As for the UN, it is difficult to see how any other genuinely global body could offer the US more influence than the one it helped to create. If Americans want their values to prevail in the years ahead, they should work around the institutional framework they developed after 1945, not hasten its demise. Fixing the UN will be hard, replacing it impossible.
(The writer's Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe is published by Penguin this month. He teaches history at Columbia University.)
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