The UN has been spectacularly absent in most of the recent violent conflicts between countries, showing the global organisation established after World War 2 to prevent such conflicts has lost its credibility, relevance and authority.
The UN was established in 1945 by 51 countries to maintain international peace and security.
Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine shows how the UN, supposed to be the global arbitrator in conflict between countries, has become obsolete. . It has been left to individual country leaders, the EU, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and the G20 to desperately try to end the hostilities.
The UN was also absent during Afghanistan’s descent into chaos last year when the Taliban took over and citizens fled the country en masse. The UN has also been largely silent about China’s continued threats against Taiwan.
Unless something is done about reforming the UN, the rule of law at global level will collapse. The decline of the organisation raises the spectre of copycat incidents of aggression by powerful countries against more vulnerable ones, making the world even more unstable.
The central weakness of the UN is the Security Council, which is limited to five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the UK and the US — with outsize powers. The five have veto power on key UN decisions. The Security Council is simply no longer relevant to the changing world.
The five permanent members have often abused their power for their own national interests, destroying the UN’s credibility and forcing other countries to turn their backs on the organisation as a place where they have a voice.
These abuses include the invasion of Iraq, which many countries outside the five permanent members opposed, and the invasion of Libya, which was also opposed by many members. These have undermined the UN.
The Security Council members have also dominated the election of UN general secretaries, which means appointments often did not get wider legitimacy among countries. As the world gets more uncertain, dangerous and complex, recent UN heads have often been bland, almost invisible figures who lack global support.
In the past UN general secretaries were larger-than-life figures with authority and credibility, many of them able to, through their own personal appeal, persuade national leaders.
The idea of a UN Security Council with permanent members is clearly outdated. So far, proposals for reform have been about increasing the number of countries on the council, but the idea of a limited number of countries having veto power should be abolished entirely. The UN should be democratised in such a way that a few countries — or regional blocs — do not dominate the organisation’s decision making.
The collapse in credibility of the UN has allowed countries such as Russia and China to act unilaterally.
Russia opposes Ukraine’s ambition to join Nato and the EU. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked Nato for “clear, feasible time frames” for the country to join the 30-country defensive alliance. Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin demands that Nato not position military formations near Russia’s borders.
Putin wants Nato to close military stations in former Soviet Union republics and allies in Eastern Europe, Central Europe and the Baltic, which are now alliance members. Essentially, Putin is arguing for a return to the pre-1997 Nato boundaries — the Cold War country borders.
Putin in the past has described Russia and Ukraine as “one nation”. Before the Russian invasion, Putin questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country. Putin believed that the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was tantamount to the “disintegration of historical Russia”.
In 2014, after Ukraine deposed its pro-Russian leader in a coup, Russia annexed Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula. The Russia government has since provided backing to separatists in the eastern region of Ukraine, which has been waging a conflict in which more than 14,000 people have been killed. Separatists in the eastern region, backed by Russia, have proclaimed two “republics” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. International organisations have in the past urged Russia not to recognise the separatists in the Eastern Donbas region.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Putin met on February 4 this year and issued a joint statement in support of each other, which was unprecedented in the range of commitments between the two countries. It is very likely Russia’s intention to invade Ukraine was conveyed to China and the latter did not oppose it. China has been threatening for years to invade Taiwan in a similar way and for similar reasons, saying the country is part of China.
The joint China-Russia statement stated the relationship is “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era” and there are “no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation”. It said: “Strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against developing countries countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third-world countries.”
In this crisis, all countries must condemn, apply sanctions and try to get Putin to back down. Given that China is unlikely to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the Brics democracies — Brazil, India and SA — should strongly distance themselves from Russia. In fact, Brazil, India and SA should quit Brics if Russia does not stop this war.
William Gumede is associate professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).
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