Sunday Times 2

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – As a new political twist to an old saying goes: the dogs bark but the military caravan moves on.

Despite ominous warnings from an overwhelming majority of member states both in the General Assembly and the Security Council—against a military attack on Ukraine—Russian President Vladimir Putin stood defiant when he ordered a full-scale invasion of a sovereign territory.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a hard-hitting statement, said the invasion was a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine–and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

But a lingering question remained: Has the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC), which is mandated with the task of maintaining international peace and security, outlived its usefulness.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS there is no more glaring example of how irrelevant the United Nations Security Council, which is the custodian of global peace and security, has become, than the debate at the UNSC.

Despite overwhelming opposition from both the Security Council member states and the General Assembly, he said, Putin went ahead with his planned invasion of the Ukraine, knowing well that he was grossly violating the UN Charter.

“What has transpired was a clear reflection of how the Security Council has outlived its usefulness, and demonstrated the dire need to reform it to meet the changing global order,” he added.

While the UN General Assembly has the ability to pass resolutions criticising individual member states, he argued, it has no power to enforce any measure.

“The UNSC does have the power to take action, but it is limited to establishing peacekeeping missions. More often than not, the five permanent UNSC members with veto power almost always exercise that power to defend their interests, regardless of how the issue being debated impacts world peace and security”.

Thus, it is a given, he said, that the Russian ambassador will veto any of security resolutions to which the Kremlin objects. There is really no other recourse that the UN can take to correct what is fundamentally flawed in its current structure.

“The time is overdue to reform the UN so that the Security Council reflects the changing geostrategic reality and its impact on the global order to ensure that the UNSC lives up to its founding premise to ensure peace and security,” he declared.

Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Presidential Professor of Political Science, told IPS this is precisely what the Security Council voted to halt when Iraq invaded Kuwait (in August 1990).

“Even if one mouths the fiction that Ukraine was created by the Bolsheviks, Ukraine is more of a “state” than Israel or all countries “created” after decolonisation. The UN is as central or peripheral as it always has been”.

The veto was agreed so that action against one of the P5 was unthinkable. The only remaining option is the General Assembly which would at least force China to take a public stand as to whether state sovereignty matters, said Dr Weiss, Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The CUNY Graduate Center.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the Department of Public Information, told IPS the U.N. could prove its useful role by taking initiatives—perhaps through back channels and the “good offices of the Secretary General” to offer practical proposal to defuse escalating tension.

He pointed out the role “discreetly played” by the first Asian secretary General, U Thant, to defuse the escalating Cuban Missile crisis and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold’s efforts to avert a big power confrontation over American pilots held by China and also over the conflict in the Congo.

Also a group of third world member states could move to make potential proposals, said Sanbar, who served under five different Secretaries-General during his tenure in office.

Asked about the irrelevance of the UNSC, Martin Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, told IPS: “This is an old claim. I remember all the handwringing after the Iraq war. The Security Council didn’t go away then, and it’s not going away now”.

Even though Putin launched this savagery during the meeting of the Council on Wednesday, “we need to remember that permanent members are not constrained by the Council. The veto ensures this.”

But that having been said, the Council still has value for efficient coalition building. While Russia can’t be meaningfully censured by the Security Council, the speeches from two nights ago make clear that Russia is isolated, thus making it easier for Ukraine’s allies to cooperate by imposing harsh sanctions, he noted.

“And Russia is not getting expelled because no proposal to expel Russia will make it through the Security Council to go to the General Assembly”.

So, the fact that diplomacy is going to shift away from the UN is not necessarily surprising. The US and Europe have a better sense of who stands with them and who supports Russia, and they can work with these allies to impose harsh sanctions quickly, declared Edwards.

Asked if there is a precedent for a member state acting in violation of the UN charter, being suspended or ousted from the UN, Dr Ben-Meir said although the UN Charter includes a provision for suspending any country that violates the charter, no country had ever been suspended or ejected, regardless of how egregious its violation of the charter might have been.

And while many UNSC resolutions have condemned specific countries, such as Israel for violating the Palestinians’ human rights, or threatened to take punitive action against a state, they have largely been rebuffed, as the UNSC fundamentally lacks an enforcement mechanism.

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