There’s been quite some kerfuffle in the blogosphere over this statement by British minister Clare Short:
“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,” she said.
“Only really the UN can do that job,” she told BBC Radio Four’s PM programme.
“It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”
The Diplomad, for example, responded diplomadically (as opposed to diplomatically) with the post Flash! Clare Short is an Idiot!. It was while reading the post on Captain’s Quarters that I wondered what the source of the United Nations’s moral authority actually was.
To the best of my knowledge only three alternatives have ever been proposed as sources of moral authority. The first is, of course, the Hobbesian proposition that might makes right. This can’t conceivably be the source of moral authority for the United Nations since the UN has no might of its own whatsoever.
The second potential source of moral authority is the top-down notion that moral authority derives from God. This was the source of what was called the “divine right of kings”. It’s also the source of moral authority for the obviously virtuous. I don’t see that any of these are actually pertinent to the United Nations.
The third potential source of moral authority for the United Nations might be the bottom-up sort of moral authority that’s embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: the will of the people. The problem with this as a source of moral authority for the United Nations is that the United Nations is about as un-democratic an institution as is imaginable. By what stretch can the General Assembly be called democratic? Any body in which tiny Lichtenstein gets the same vote as China may be deliberative but it’s not democratic. Or the Security Council in which any of the World War II allies can veto any measure that doesn’t strike their fancy? Additionally, there is the problem of the monarchies and other autocracies that comprise a good part of the United Nations. Can societies that don’t believe in the moral authority of democracy convey moral authority on the United Nations through the power of democracy?
Is there something particularly democratic about the UN bureaucracy? I certainly don’t see it. Is there some special moral authority conveyed by bureaucratic process per se? I can’t imagine what that might be but it would seem to be the only possible source of moral authority for the United Nations. Perhaps this is the particular danger presented by the unfolding Oil-for-Food scandal. If the moral authority of the UN bureaucracy is conveyed by some mystical effect of following the appropriate processes when those processes themselves are not followed by that bureaucracy what becomes of the moral authority?
So I continue to be puzzled. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
You got me. The UN’s entire existence is simply as an agent of its member states; when the UN pretends that it is somehow independent or above them, bad things happen. The UN has no “independent moral authority” than its member states. Now, operationally, if there is already, in place, a UN managed rescue/relief/rebuilding operation, one might argue that American proposals “interfering” with the “established program” might be “counterproductive”. Since, at the moment, it doesn’t look like there is, then Bush’s proposal is as good as any, unles there’s a better one out there, of course, in which case, it may be the way to go.
The UN is a political tool– in dictatorships, for spouting official policy in a large room in New York, and for democracies, as tools of their domestic politics. Bush went to the UN for Iraq authority because of domestic political reasons, AND because of Tony Blair’s domestic political reasons.
Certainly, in the case of the Iraq war, you could say that American actions “violated the will of world opinion” based on UN actions, even “violated international law”, based on such as it is understood. But… the UN’s moral authority?
It doesn’t really have any: it’s a political tool. It’s a convenient way to criticize Bush in code, without having to look at the actual policy complained of (which ARE justfiable as the subject of complaints).
But, I guess, as elections are coming up one of these days, best to try to pitch the Blair government as more in tune with “the UN” and all that “moral authority”, and away from the Cowboy Bush (whose Iraq adventure, of course, could not have happened for OUR domestic political reasons without the moral authority– there we go again– of Mr. Blair.)
It seems that the UN has earned its real soubriquet and the best reason for de-funding it:
The UN is so WWII.
The UN: your father’s vision desperately in need of revision. And retirement, perhaps to an isle in the Indian Ocean.
Thanks for this post. Insightful…specifically your take on the sources of moral authority.
~D
Good post. I’d like to know if there are any good reasons to keep the UN in existence. Any thoughts here? Will post the same question on Belmont Club.
No veto-wielding member of the Security Council will ever leave it. The uselessness of the General Assembly has long been observed specifically by Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
Many of the organizations subsumed under the UN umbrella are useful: WHO, IMF, World Bank, and others. They would exist whether there were a UN or not. I personally see no reason whatsoever for the large standing bureaucracy of the UN.
The fundamental problem is that government requires consensus. Or, more precisely, any government without consensus will either be ineffective or tyrannical. There isn’t sufficient consensus among the nations for world government.