Introduction

The General Assembly at the United Nations in New York

All else being equal, nations do not like to relinquish their power. The purpose of national governments is (at best) to represent and protect the interests of its citizens. To do so, national governments need as much independence and power as possible. There is little use in taking foreign opinion into account (unless a nation risks becoming a pariah state; see the South African example). Committing the nation to obeying international treaties and laws binds a national government to concerns beyond its borders and limits its potential actions to those allowed by those laws. That being the case, why would a nation give up any of its independence and power to obey international treaties, laws, and organizations?

The answer is that, given the right circumstances, the benefits of such restrictions outweigh the disadvantages. Alliances bring security through strength, as long as all the parties in the alliance act rationally and in concert. For weaker nations, alliances may be worth the cost of binding the nation to a foreign partner. NATO is a fine example of this – Western European governments knew they had to form an alliance if they hoped to defeat the USSR on the battlefield. This imposes obligations on them (such as having to defend their neighbors), but the nations agree that it is worth the price. International organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) can arbitrate international trade disputes by rule of law, making the world more predictable and peaceful. Also, pledging to obey international law gives a nation credibility on the world stage, particularly when they act like they really mean it; other nations are more willing to engage with a government with a good reputation. Citizens of a nation want to believe that their country is just and good, and obeying international law is one way a government can create credibility in the eyes of its own voters.

Governments carefully weigh and debate the costs and benefits of joining alliances and organizations and of signing treaties. The politics may be complicated, with different sectors of society viewing the situation differently. Business elites might want the benefits of trade laws while nationalists might despise the idea of (in their view) subordinating the national interest to foreign laws.

The end of World War II created a unique combination of factors making international organizations seem a sensible choice. The devastation of the war, coupled with the potential for another one, drove nations back to the concept of international law rather than violence. The loss of wealth and power the imperial states suffered forced former enemies to ally with each other, or else face international irrelevance. This chapter will cover the development of two of the largest international organizations born to the postwar world: the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).

Before covering those organizations, this chapter will first narrate the history of two unique European communist states which were not part of the Warsaw Pact at the time of that coalition’s fall: Yugoslavia and Albania. Changes in Yugoslavia were particularly consequential because Yugoslavia’s breakup bucked the European trend of greater unity. In those countries, division and conflict were the rule, haunting Europe like the ghost of World War II.

Albania

Albania, a small nation on the Adriatic Sea across from Italy, was occupied by both Italy and Nazi Germany during World War II. As in Yugoslavia, the fascist occupiers were constantly harassed by communist rebels – in Albania’s case, by the National Liberation Movement. The Germans collaborated with local right-wing groups to rule Albania until the Red Army approached from the east; at that point, the National Liberation Movement ejected the Germans and their allies and took control of the country. Notably, the Red Army never entered Albania, so Albanian communism was a homegrown affair. The National Liberation Movement became a political party, the Democratic Front, and dominated national politics by dint of its fame for having resisted the fascists. In the December 1945 elections, the Democratic Front only allowed its own candidates to run for office, turning Albania into a one-party state. The monarchy under King Zog was eliminated and a Stalinist communist state established under Chairman Enver Hoxha, a former rebel leader, who would rule Albania until his death in 1985.

Under Hoxha, Albania became a particularly harsh communist state. It joined the Warsaw Pact, but was independent of Moscow. Hoxha railed against Khrushchev’s criticism of Stalin and disapproved of his liberalization policies. Hoxha’s Albania was fiercely anti-religious, autocratic, and isolated; it was sometimes called the “North Korea of Europe.”

Albanian – Soviet relations remained poor until they were shattered entirely by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. A month later, Albania chose to leave the Warsaw Pact. This was against Soviet policy and made Albania liable to invasion, like Hungary or Czechoslovakia. But there was no land route between a Warsaw Pact nation and Albania, and, therefore, no way for the Warsaw Pact to invade the country, a fact which surely inspired Hoxha’s courage.

Hoxha died in 1985 and leadership fell to Ramiz Alia. While Alia was as communist as Hoxha, he realized that the economy needed reforming, and so reached out to other nations, even Western ones, for support and trade deals. Alia accelerated reforms after the Romanian Revolution and the execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu -- he did not care to suffer the same fate. The spring 1991 elections were the first free, multi-party elections held in decades. The communists under Alia, now called the Party of Labor, won that election, but only held power for a year. In 1992, the Democratic Party (conservative) won the next election, ending communism in Albania.

The Democratic Party next won the general elections of 1996, though the socialists claimed that the elections were rigged. But it would not be politics which would instigate the Albanian Civil War the next year. It was economics.

Since the fall of communism in Albania, grifters and con men had launched various Ponzi schemes in Albania, and the country’s rudimentary capitalist regulations could not deal with them. Perhaps two-thirds of the Albanian people invested money in these schemes, which promised from twenty-five to one hundred percent profits annually. People sold their homes to invest in these schemes and get rich overnight. Even after the International Monetary Fund issued a warning, the government refused to stop the practice, as so many politicians owned shares in the rickety schemes.

The house of cards collapsed in January 1997, when the schemes could no longer pay dividends and many of the con men fled the country with their money. The people rose in violent demonstration, demanding repayment from the government. The situation degenerated to the point of anarchy. Military depots were looted and the country was flooded with weapons. Criminals formed large gangs which fought for control of the cities and vigilantes fought back to protect their communities. The national treasury was partially looted. As many as 2,000 people were killed in the chaos. The United States, Italy, the UK, and Germany conducted military operations to evacuate their citizens from the country.

In March 1997, the United Nations authorized an international peacekeeping force from European nations to enter Albania and restore the rule of law. In June and July, the conservatives lost the next elections and were replaced by socialists and other left-wing groups. The situation had stabilized so that, by August, all UN forces left the country.

Yugoslavia

Map of the Former Yugoslavia

The bloodshed and chaos in Albania, bad as it was, paled in comparison to what happened in Yugoslavia, which saw the worst violence in postwar Europe. Yugoslavia means “Land of the Southern Slavs,” an ethnic group living in the Balkans region of Southeastern Europe. Socially, the Balkans are quite distinctive, as the population includes many Muslims and most people are ethnically related to Russians. This gave Russia a sense of unity with the Southern Slavs, which they repeatedly used to play “big brother” to the people of the region. This was one cause for WWI – when the Russian Empire mobilized in support of Serbia – and became an issue in the 1990s as well.

After WWI and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, three territories of the erstwhile empire – Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia – were united with the Kingdom of Serbia to form Yugoslavia. The new nation was conquered by Germany in WWII, but then liberated in 1944 by communist partisans when German forces withdrew. The partisan leader, Josip Tito, established a socialist state. This communist nation was not allied with the USSR, much to Joseph Stalin’s chagrin. Despite the threat of Soviet invasion, Tito declared Yugoslavia nonaligned in the Cold War. The government he created was more liberal and less centralized than the Soviet Union. The US and NATO were ambivalent towards the country during the Cold War, but did offer economic aid. Tito kept arguments between the populations of the six regions (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia) of his country suppressed; these disputes included various ethnic and nationalist sentiments as well as religious differences between Christians and Muslims.

When Tito died in 1980, Yugoslav leaders decentralized the country further, granting more power to the provincial presidents. Furthermore, the fall of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 removed a major security threat for Yugoslavia, and people there were subsequently less interested in security through unity. This began a process of separation that would lead to the fragmentation of the country by 1992.

This process was not amiable; in particular, Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milošević took advantage of the situation to attempt to create a large nation built on Serbian ethnic identity. This was problematic because many Serbs lived in other provinces; as in other nationalist projects, Milošević demanded that those areas become part of Serbia, just as Hitler had demanded parts of Europe be absorbed into the Third Reich to reunite all ethnic Germans. Milošević leveraged his political position to gain control over the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA); since communism was failing as a unifying philosophy in Yugoslavia, Milošević replaced it with Serb nationalism and made it the purpose of the army. Non-Serbs deserted the army, leaving it a mainly Serbian instrument.

Milošević and other Serb nationalists announced a new nation, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, formed by a union of Serbia and Montenegro. They claimed that this nation was the successor state to the old Yugoslavia, but it only served as another tool for Serb nationalism, sending weapons and assistance to rebellious Serb communities in other provinces. The international community did not recognize the new state, but it survived until 2006, when it fractured into its two constituent nations, Serbia and Montenegro.

The West, at first, did not respond to the potentially explosive situation of aggressive ethnic nationalism coupled with military force. The West was focused on the decay of the Warsaw Pact and devoted too little attention to Yugoslavia. US leaders feared the fragmentation of Yugoslavia would create countries too small to be economically viable, and that the breakup would inspire separatists in other countries. Still, both Western Europe and the US waited and watched; no one wanted to commit to a unified Yugoslavia even as it was collapsing.

The fragmentation of the country led to seven conflicts, known collectively as the Yugoslav Wars, from 1991 to 2001. The province of Slovenia declared full independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991. This triggered a ten-day intervention by the Yugoslav People's Army against the breakaway republic, but negotiations including other European powers quickly ended the conflict with fewer than one hundred people killed, and Slovenia retained its independence. Unfortunately for the rest of the former Yugoslavia, this was the shortest of the Yugoslav wars.

Croatia suffered much worse. Serb nationalists there established a breakaway independent state, supported by Milošević and the JNA. Croats living in the new Serb state were driven out or killed. A UN-brokered ceasefire did not last long. By mid-1995, the Croats had rallied and recaptured most of their country, except for the area protected by UN peacekeepers; that area were re-integrated with Croatia in 1998, and Croatia remained an independent state.

Two other Yugoslav wars were notable. The first took place in the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared its independence from Yugoslavia in early 1992. The Bosnian War which followed was fought between Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), who wanted to preserve the present state of an independent country, Bosnian Serbs who wanted to create a Serbian ethnic enclave in the new country, and Croats who sought more territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war saw terrible abuses and ethnic massacre, mainly at the hands of Bosnian Serb nationalist Radovan Karadžić, who sought to wipe out all Bosniaks and give their land to Serbs. NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces to prevent ethnic cleansing, bringing Western Europe into the Yugoslav fray. The war finally ended in December 1995, with the Dayton Agreement, which created an autonomous Serb territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The second important Yugoslav war was in Kosovo, a province of Milošević’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, Milošević’s Serb nationalist government persecuted the ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo, censoring Albanian-language media and firing Albanian public servants and teachers. This led to an insurgency by Albanian Kosovars (the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA) who killed Serb policemen and soldiers in the hope that NATO would intervene in the conflict and stop the persecution. NATO did suggest a treaty which would allow its troops into Kosovo to act as peacekeepers, but Milošević rejected the plan. Unwilling to commit ground troops to the conflict, NATO, led by the US, bombed Serb targets in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to dissuade Milošević from continuing his persecution of ethnic Albanians. After two and a half months, the Serbs agreed to allow a UN peacekeeping force to enter Kosovo and administer the country.

By their conclusion in 2001, the Yugoslav Wars had killed approximately 140,000 people. Two and a half million people were refugees (those who fled their country for safety) and another two million internally displaced (fled to another part of their country). It was the greatest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II and one of the greatest in history. The wars included not just dead and wounded by combat, but also rape, torture, and murder of civilians as tools of ethnic cleansing. CIA researchers concluded that ninety percent of the massacres and other atrocities were committed by Serbian nationalist forces.

The United Nations realized that allowing these war crimes to go unpunished would only inspire other such events. In response, it established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to try those accused of war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars. Several Bosniak, Croat, and Albanian Kosovars were convicted of crimes at the ICTY, but most of the defendants were Serb nationalists. Slobodan Milošević himself was detained in 2002, and stood trial for sixty-six counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in the Yugoslav wars. He died in custody in 2006, before the trial could be concluded. Radovan Karadžić, the infamous Bosnian Serb leader, was convicted of genocide.

The European Union

The 27 nations of the European Union, 2023

Postwar Europe was in desperate shape. Physically, mentally, and socially shattered, Europe badly needed rebuilding. The task was beyond any single European nation, but perhaps not all of them together. And the postwar drive to prevent yet another major war would also require a stronger sense of community.

Western leaders feared that European poverty would lead to political success for socialists, be they local parties or Soviet invaders. They did not want to leave their defense against the USSR entirely in the hands of the United States, as it would make the Americans too influential in Europe; the US might use its advantage to extort the Europeans. Furthermore, imperial powers now needed to adjust their economies to decolonization, as they could no longer depend on colonies for their wealth, and economic integration in Europe was a possible solution. In any case, Europeans realized that, if they did not join in some kind of union, their continent would always be second-fiddle to the two remaining superpowers. Finally, the US pushed European integration as part of the Marshall Plan, the American economic assistance program for Europe. Since it was intended to lift all Western Europe out of poverty, the Marshall Plan demanded that European nations collaborate on economic integration if they wanted the money. Europe badly needed US assistance, so economic integration was, at least partially, forced on them.

Europeans were also tired of the national rivalries which had brought about the world wars and sought ways to heal the wounds, lest they lead to yet another catastrophic war. Although many clamored for punishing the German people, others realized that revenge would only precipitate another war. Other than economic integration, what would be the guiding philosophy around which Europeans could rally, to overcome the divisions of ethnocentrism and nationalism? The rising force in Europe, and the world, at the time was human rights. Human rights were, according to the Allies, the reason why World War II was fought; it was consequently a cornerstone of the founding of the United Nations (see below). Modern concepts of human rights are (according to Europeans) a Western creation, with their roots in Greek philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment. Since the Soviets did not follow all the Western concepts of human rights, it was also a good way for Westerners to distinguish themselves from the communists and claim moral superiority.

Therefore, the movement towards European integration had both economic and socio-political motives. And given that integration would require negotiation and compromise among former combatants, it was bound to be a slow, complicated, and often contentious project.

The first substantive step towards European integration was the Council of Europe, a multinational organization established in 1949 to protect human rights, democracy, and rule of law in Europe. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been established at the United Nations the previous year (see below), the Council already had an accepted standard of human rights from which to work.

The first important economic integration was the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. The purpose of the organization was to form a common market for coal and steel products among its member nations, which originally included France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, but expanded as integration spread in Europe. The point of a common market is for countries to join forces, acting as a single producer, buyer, and seller for the advantages it brings. The common market eliminates internal barriers to trade while imposing tariffs on outsiders; it also controls prices, production targets, and many other aspects of the industries involved. The UK government did not believe that such a common market would benefit its nation, and, therefore, did not join at the time.

The next step in integration was EURATOM, a multinational effort to develop atomic energy in Europe and thus split the costs and benefits of research. Even more consequential was the 1957 founding of the European Economic Community (EEC). This expanded on the idea of a common market, but far beyond coal and steel; it would include all trade and labor markets, banking, transportation, and customs regulations. A major hurdle for integration, however, was French President Charles de Gaulle (1958 – 1969), a conservative nationalist who wanted to use the EEC to further France’s national aims, or at least prevent it from hindering them. De Gaulle pushed for EEC policies benefiting France over other nations, and even boycotted EEC meetings for six months until the organization promised to compromise with him. Worse yet, de Gaulle prevented the UK from joining the common market. In 1963 and 1967, the UK finally applied to join the EEC, and France vetoed the request; de Gaulle wanted to remain the most powerful player in the EEC, and thus guide its policies in directions useful to France, but the entrance of the powerful UK would diminish France’s influence. It wasn’t until de Gaulle left the presidency in 1969, that the UK could join the EEC, which it did in 1973. The ECSC, EURATOM, and the EEC were merged in 1967 to form the European Communities, bringing all their spheres under a single governing body.

Although there were both benefits and disadvantages involved for countries of the European Communities, the twelve members felt that it was worth the effort, because in 1992 they expanded the common market to its current form, the European Union (EU). Established by the Maastricht Treaty, the EU absorbed the European Communities and their functions while adding new ones: common European citizenship, a single common currency (the euro), and shared foreign and security policies, among other things. The EU presently represents about 450 million people, pooling their economic resources and protecting their civil liberties.

The biggest problem for the EU is decision-making. Each of the 27 member nations has its own unique economy and society; how can these members decide on policies acceptable to all of them? The Maastricht Treaty established a complicated democratic system with various organs. The four primary ones are the European Council (composed of heads of states of member countries), the Council of the EU (the main decision-making body, composed of a rotating membership of member state ministers), the European Parliament (composed of officials elected by EU voters), and the European Commission (composed of commissioners nominated by their heads of state and confirmed by the EU Parliament). The purpose of this system is to combine direct democracy, as evidenced by voting for EU Parliament members, with indirect democracy (representation by heads of state who were elected in their own countries). This gives a voice to both EU individuals and their member governments, but it is a complex and often unwieldy system.

Countries must meet certain criteria for joining the European Union, to guarantee that they can uphold their responsibilities to the union. Countries must be functioning democracies with respect for human rights, must have a strong and stable market economy, and must be willing and able to abide by EU laws and treaties. Countries which want to join the EU, but do not meet these criteria, must improve their situations before being allowed to join.

The EU brings clear and measurable benefits to member states. Citizens of EU countries are, for most purposes, citizens of all other EU countries. They can live, work, and own property in any EU country without having to be naturalized there. They also enjoy freedom of travel throughout the EU. EU countries maintain strong human rights laws and safety standards. Most EU nations (those in the Eurozone) use a single common currency, the euro, which streamlines trade, as does the customs-free or borderless market. The EU pools scientific and technological research, creating far more technological progress than individual countries could. It also provides financial and technical assistance to poorer member states for economic and infrastructure development. Most EU countries see a twelve percent boost to their GDPs after joining the union.

Nothing as big and complex as the EU can be entirely beneficial; there are, of course, downsides. One of them is questionable economic responsibility, most clearly revealed by the Eurozone Crisis of 2007 – 2013. Several EU countries suffered various financial crises simultaneously, straining the union’s economy. Ireland suffered a major banking crisis as a result of a housing bubble; property owners and developers defaulted by the thousands and their lenders lost around 100 billion euros. Spain, Portugal, and Cyprus suffered similar bubbles and crashes.

Greece precipitated an even worse crisis in 2009, when its government finally came clean about its economic state. It announced that it was running a thirteen percent budget deficit, far more than permitted by the Maastricht Treaty. It had previously hidden its economic weakness behind shady, opaque accounting practices, but could hide it no longer.

The EU and IMF responded to these crises with bailout loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros to cover the national budgets; but, like the IMF’s structural adjustment loans, these loans came at a price. They forced the receiving countries to cut their social welfare budgets, pensions, and public sector wages to trim their budgets. This caused a wave of protests, especially in Greece where the austerity measures were worst. It also led to a resurgence of right-wing, nationalist, anti-EU political parties in those countries and across Europe.

ationalists argued that countries which had practiced greater responsibility, like the UK or Germany, had not caused the crash, yet had to pay for the bailouts. They thus questioned whether the EU was a good arrangement for them, an attitude known as Euroscepticism.
Another major EU problem is refugees, especially since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. While most Syrian refugees settled in the Middle East, tens of thousands entered the EU illegally and applied for political asylum. This means that states on the borders of the EU, like Greece, have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis as immigrants arrive and stay there; border states demand that the EU financially support them for this reason. Also, nationalist groups in the EU, already angry with the EU over the austerity measures of the Eurozone crisis, were now inflamed about having to follow EU policies and accept refugees. The nationalists fear that large numbers of refugees would change the ethnic and religious makeup of their countries and breed crime.

The greatest expression of Euroscepticism was Brexit (the British exit from the EU). EU laws do permit a nation to voluntarily leave the union, and pressure was growing in the UK to do just that. UK nationalists argued that, between the growing number of refugees and the price of bailing out other EU members, membership was no longer worth the price. Therefore, a national referendum was conducted in June 2016, to determine if the UK should leave. The vote was 52% for leaving and 48% against. True to its promise, the UK then slowly prepared to leave the union, negotiating new treaties with the EU. Brexit finally took place in January 2020, reducing the number of countries in the EU from 28 to 27.

The United Nations

The League of Nations, though well-intended and well-planned, failed to prevent World War II. One reason for this was the absence of the United States, which denied the League a strong partner; another reason is that collective security failed, as it required more commitment than the democracies would ask from their citizens. After the war, Allied leaders decided to try again at international governance to prevent another world war, rather than abandon the idea altogether. The original idea for the United Nations (UN) was President Roosevelt’s. The term “United Nations” had already been used in the Atlantic Charter to describe the Allies during World War II, and now the same nations would establish (and largely run) the new successor to the League of Nations.

The UN was officially founded on October 24, 1945. According to the UN Charter, the purposes of the new organization are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Therefore, the purpose of the UN is to prevent war and other international aggression, primarily by removing their causes.

Organizationally, the United Nations is divided into five primary organs. The first is the General Assembly, located at the UN Headquarters in New York City. This is the main deliberative body of the United Nations, where any member state can bring up topics for discussion. There are currently 193 member nations in the UN. The decisions of the General Assembly are generally nonbinding on member states.

The most controversial part of the UN is the organ which can make binding decisions – that is, decisions about economic sanctions and war. This is the Security Council, authorized to deploy military force on behalf of the UN, using troops from UN member states. Military force and sanctions can only be authorized by the five permanent members of the Security Council – Russia (formerly the USSR), China, France, the UK, and the USA. Nations with rotating observer status cannot vote on these issues. Notice that the permanent members (the P5) are the winners of World War II; this was done to solidify the world order after the war, so that the Allies would guide the world in the future. One important point about the Security Council is that each of the P5 has veto power over the votes; therefore, every decision at the Security Council must be unanimous to be enacted. The practical upshot of veto power is that most proposals at the Security Council are vetoed and never carried out.

To understand the Security Council, one must understand the power dynamics of international politics. As mentioned, the purpose of every nation is to protect its own safety and sovereignty, and each nation seeks the power to do so. Each nation makes a cost / benefit analysis of whether to join the UN or other organizations, based on perceptions of whether the organization would be a net gain for the them. For weak, poor nations, the UN is typically a net gain. The nation could use the economic assistance the UN provides and, because they are militarily weak, benefit from UN protection under international law and peacekeeping forces.

A powerful nation like the US or USSR needs neither economic assistance nor military protection, but the P5 nations have privileged status at the Security Council. Without veto power to protect their interests, the P5 simply would not join the UN, as there would be no motivation to do so. With veto power, the US can simply block any major endeavors at the UN which do not benefit it or its allies. The other P5 members can do the same. Particularly during the Cold War, this led to a situation where China and the USSR blocked actions proposed by the US, UK, and France, and vice-versa. Veto power is why so many people think the UN is useless, unable to make decisions. But the P5 calculate that they would be worse off, less influential, if they left the UN, particularly if their rivals stay in the Security Council. Therefore, they stay.

Most people only consider the roles of the General Assembly and the Security Council. A third organ, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development. This organ is probably the most successful in the UN, as it runs economic development and aid programs. It is critical to establishing public health in the Third World. The structural adjustment programs of the IMF, as we have seen, are a more controversial matter.

The fourth organ is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the primary court of the United Nations. It adjudicates disputes among states as if they were individuals in a civil court. The court has also heard cases related to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and so on.

Finally, the United Nations Secretariat serves as the administrative arm of the UN, assuring that the various organs have the support they require. It is led by the Secretary-General of the UN.

Aside from the major organs, there are also another UN 17 institutions which carry out the programs set forth by the other organs. These include specialized programs like the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Many criticisms have been leveled against the UN. Some claim the P5 is an example of powerful nations essentially dominating the global community by investing themselves with most of the world’s power, then using it to protect their own interests. For example, the UN supported the US war against Iraq for the purpose of protecting Saudi oil reserves, but the P5 were not interested in a war to protect Rwandans during the 1994 genocide, since it would not benefit their nations. Others note the membership of many autocratic nations in the UN, which gives them a voice in UN decisions. The UN is also sometimes seen as an expensive, ineffective organization with too little oversight.

While the UN has a checkered history regarding security and peace, it has been much more successful in material assistance and public health. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) provides food assistance to more than 80 million people around the globe. Nearly one-half of all the children in the world receive their vaccinations from UN agencies. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assists 70 million people a year who have lost their homes due to war or human rights abuses. There is no other organization in the world equipped to handle such massive material needs. UN peacekeeping missions continue despite past failures; over 100,000 UN troops are deployed at any time to prevent conflict.

In the end, the UN is maintained simply because there is no alternative organization. The UN is the one forum in which the entire world can come together to address its problems. Despite all its weaknesses, the world has decided to keep it.

International security is the UN’s main focus, but threat of military force is not the only tool the UN has for preventing aggressive war. Of greater importance is the establishment of universal human rights, of which the UN is the primary global champion.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Eleanor Roosevelt, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights

During World War II, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave an inspiring “fireside chat” via radio to the American people, explaining the purpose of the war. He said the Allies were fighting for “four freedoms” – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want – “everywhere in the world.” Thus, he transformed the war from a mere amoral struggle between nations to a crusade for global human rights.

After the war, the United Nations decided that a more specific definition of human rights was needed. The organization recognized the importance of human rights to maintaining peace, stating: “…it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” If Germany, Japan, and Italy had never abandoned human rights and democracy for fascism, the thinking went, then World War II would never have happened. If imperialism was relegated to the past, there would be no more anti-imperial revolts. Without dictatorships, there could be no revolutions. Without racial discrimination, there would be no genocide. Human rights, it was hoped, would guarantee peace where balance of power and collective security had failed.

In 1946, the UN established the Commission on Human Rights to draft a document which clarified and enumerated universal human rights so that it would apply, as FDR had said, “everywhere in the world.” Given the differences between ethical norms and forms of government around the world, finding a standard acceptable to all was a daunting task. The committee was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt and included 17 legal scholars from around the world to include many different social voices. The primary author was John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian legal scholar. Humphrey wrote the initial draft, and the other scholars edited from there.

After two years, the committee completed its work and the UN put the new Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to a vote at the General Assembly. The vote was 48 in favor of acceptance and none against, with 8 abstentions (the Soviet republics and satellite states, plus South Africa and Saudi Arabia). The declaration is not a binding treaty; it is a statement of rights, a foundation upon which binding treaties are created. From the UDHR, the UN created the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which are binding under international law. The three documents together are known as the International Bill of Human Rights.

Any statement of rights calling itself “universal” is going to draw protest. Just as many Westerners are proud that the modern concept of human rights is based in Western thought, many non-Westerners dismiss them for the same reason. Some Asian and African leaders rejected the UDHR, or at least parts of it, as being inapplicable with their own cultures. Newly decolonized nations were unprepared to accept European laws and concepts after they had just freed themselves from European imperial rule; they were instead interested in rediscovering and renewing their own cultures. This view of human rights is known as particularism, the assertion that one’s own cultural norms trump any universalist concepts of rights. Of course, depending on one’s role in society, traditional norms might not serve very well. Women who would benefit more from the rights in the UDHR than from their own cultural norms might prefer the Western model.

Some governments of majority-Muslim nations had a similar complaint. Saudi Arabia initially refused to vote on the UDHR on the grounds that it was not in line with sharia law. For example, common interpretations of sharia (and many interpretations are possible) forbid Muslims from leaving Islam, sometimes under penalty of death. Sharia blasphemy laws may be used to suppress legitimate discussions of Islam or Islamic governments. Iran rejects the UDHR as non-Muslim and therefore illegitimate. The governments of Pakistan and Turkey both accepted the UDHR as compatible with sharia.

Socialist countries also refused to sign the UDHR, claiming that they were based on “bourgeois” values such as individualism and private profit that were contrary to Marxism. Although the USSR signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973, it never maintained those rights in its country.

Some nations of the global South established regional human rights doctrines to substitute for the UDHR. The Bangkok Declaration of 1993 placed greater emphasis on economic, social, and cultural rights than did the individualist UDHR, because China, India, and other Asian nations considered economic development more important than individual rights and did not want those rights to limit or restrict economic growth. Since 1990, forty-five countries have accepted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, an alternative document to the UDHR that claims people have “freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah.”

This does not mean that Western governments, particularly the powerful ones, uncritically accept the UDHR. Human rights treaties constrict the activities of nations (if they truly follow them). Sometimes, it is useful for a powerful nation like the US to praise and uphold the UDHR, because it may then claim moral superiority over enemy nations which do not. For example, the US government relentlessly criticizes China, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba on their human rights records, and its claims are certainly correct. It is just that a powerful nation like the US will also ignore human rights conventions when it becomes inconvenient to follow them. The US has never ratified the 1976 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women or the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, though most nations have. Conservatives in the US and elsewhere do not like the idea that their national laws are subservient to laws created by foreign entities, or that the US is subservient to extranational bodies like the International Court of Justice. Since the P5 of the Security Council have veto power over any punishments, such as sanctions, there is no compelling reason for them to acquiesce. Such is power politics on the international stage.

Conclusion

International governance is one of the most contentious issues in politics, and opinions vary over whether it is worth sacrificing some national autonomy. As far as world peace is concerned, there is evidence that war is declining, and that international arbitration is a major factor. There is much more evidence that international cooperation has increased trade and improved public health. Since it is smaller than the UN, with a more limited mandate, the EU is easier to evaluate. The fact that several countries are applying to join the EU, while only one nation has left it, seems to indicate a general enthusiasm for the institution, even if the enthusiasm is lukewarm.

But the same goes for the UN. It must be remembered that membership in the UN is voluntary; as we have seen more nations trying to join than leave, this again indicates that the drive for unity is presently stronger than the urge for fragmentation in the international community, despite the downsides. When it comes to problems of a global scale, the UN remains the only forum for discussing and confronting them.