At a lunch meeting with the 15 U.N. Security Council representatives on Sept. 24, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suddenly exclaimed “the Security Council doesn’t do anything. Its operational procedures should be changed.” 

The representatives were so frightened they just stared at him. Ban had been known as a quiet person who rarely showed his anger in public.

Is the U.N. helpless? If so, what is the reason?                                                     

Only states are qualified for U.N. membership, whereas the membership of a state is individual people. Therefore, the U.N. has no jurisdiction over individuals and individuals are under the jurisdiction of each member state, even though the preamble of the U.N. Charter starts with the expression “We, the peoples of the United Nations.” 

The U.N. has two main purposes: the maintenance of peace and security among states and the promotion of the economic, social and cultural development of states. It is also responsible for the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms. But the charter also upholds the principle of nonintervention in states’ domestic affairs. These provisions reflect the ideals and realities of the contemporary international order. The U.N. wants to build a global community on one hand and tries to help states in their nation- and state-building efforts on the other. In this self-contradictory endeavor, the U.N. tries to promote universal values, while member states oppose such attempts by invoking the principle of nonintervention.

U.N. membership consists of three types of states: premodern, transitional and modern states in terms of industrialization and modernization. Premodern states’ economic foundations are basically agricultural; they are usually under authoritarian or pseudodemocratic rule and uphold state sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention as the main principles of international law. On the other hand, they are mostly newly independent states consisting of multiracial, ethnic and religious sectarian groups and are burdened with the dual task of nation-building and state-building.

Transitional states are characterized by rapidly dwindling agricultural sectors and rapidly expanding industry. They have either authoritarian or democratic political systems and strongly advocate nationalism. On the other hand, they uphold state sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention as main principles of international law. Among the transitional states, Arab and Balkan transitional states suffer from serious nation- and state-building problems.

Modern countries have liberal democratic political systems, and their economies are dominated by finance capitalism and service industries. Although they are nationalistic, they advocate individual sovereignty as well as state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention as important principles of international law. Western states belong to this category of states. They have a fixed territory with a homogeneous linguistic and cultural people and do not suffer from any serious nation- or state-building problems. Their nation-state system has been built over the 300 years from the Thirty Years’ War to World War I. In contrast, most premodern and many transitional states started their nation- and state-building processes only after World War II.

These three groups of states are treated as the same kind of state at the U.N., but they live in different worlds: They have different concepts of state, nation and international law, while upholding different political ideologies, civilizations and religious beliefs. They also live in different ages: the premodern states in the Agricultural Age; the transitional states in the Industrial Age; and the modern states in the Modern Age. Therefore, they are bound to have conflicts with each other at the U.N. They interpret the U.N. Charter provisions differently and have different views of and interests in international issues.

The heterogeneous nature of the U.N. membership and the contradictory principles and purposes of the U.N. make the U.N. incapable of fulfilling its tasks.

Member states, regardless of type, try to use the U.N. to ultimately promote their national interests first, not to turn the U.N. into a true global collective security organization. No state sacrifices its national interest for the protection of human dignity and humanitarian intervention. This is the main reason premodern and transitional states think of modern Western states as hypocritical, while the latter claim that human dignity is a national interest.

For the last 70 years, the U.N. has spent most of its time and resources to help premodern and transitional states build their nation and state. In the economic, social and cultural fields the Millennium Development Goals and the Post- Development Agenda are a typical examples. In the political and security fields the U.N. peacekeeping forces and the U.N. multinational forces are further examples. The paradox in the U.N. is that the ultimate goal of the U.N. is to build a true international community, but the immediate goal of the premodern and transitional states is to build the Western type of nation-state so that they can get out of their respective internal chaos, while the modern states try to transform the premodern and transitional member states into a Western type of liberal democratic state by restricting the principle of nonintervention and imposing a free market economy. On the other hand, some political leaders in premodern states and transitional states do not believe without democracy it is impossible to build a stable and prosperous nation-state. The leaders of Islamic State are such leaders.

In short, the types of member states have produced a three-level world order: The Western world order has dominated the transitional and premodern world orders. The leading countries of the transitional world order try to form a united front against the Western world order inside and outside the U.N. system. As long as states put priority on their national interests, the forces of globalization will hardly help the U.N. build a global community.

Under the three-level world order, the U.N. Security Council cannot function as a collective security system and can hardly maintain international peace and security because member states, particularly the permanent members, can rarely reach consensus on the definition of a threat to peace, breach of peace or act of aggression in the domestic and international conflicts of member states. It will be almost impossible for “failing states” to become full-pledged nation-states as long as they do not abandon their authoritarian political systems and refuse to accept the principle of humanitarian intervention no matter what the U.N. system does for their nation- and state-building efforts. Ironically, most of the newly independent states that were under the U.N. system of non-self-governing territories and the international trustee system are premodern and failing states. Even if all the pre-modern and transitional states become full-fledged modern states, there is no guarantee there will be no domestic or international conflicts, because member states will still interpret the purposes and principles of the U.N. differently and big powers would try to dominate small powers. 

The American and Russian leaders at the U.N. General Assembly on the 70th anniversary of the U.N. presented their views of the present world order. Obama was proud of the present world order because it is the product of the Western world. In contrast, Putin attacked that notion, saying the present world order was dominated by a single power center and the single power center ignores the principles and purposes of the U.N. and acts alone.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a former rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyung Hee University, and the author of “Globalized Korea and Localized Globe.” He can be reached at parksangseek@hotmail.com. -- Ed.