WHILE SOON-TO-BE U.N. Ambassador John Bolton patiently endures rhetorical broadsides from Barbara Boxer, Joseph Biden, and their Senate colleagues for his alleged "disdain of the United Nations," it is worthwhile to pause and reflect on the merits and the track record of the U.N. security system. The United Nations is a diverse organization of many functions, but it was created for one primary purpose. As stated in the U.N. Charter's preamble, the organization was formed to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and to "maintain international peace and security." It is accordingly by such a standard that the United Nations' effectiveness must be judged.
United Nations enthusiasts often point to the fact that no general war between great powers has commenced during the U.N. era. Indeed, global conventional conflicts on the scale of World War I and World War II have not scarred the earth in the six decades since the writing of the U.N. Charter. While such restraint can be greatly attributed to the bipolarity of the Cold War, the deterrent effect of mutual assured destruction, and the subsequent emergence of American hegemony, proponents of the U.N. system can at least claim a correlative relation between the international body and the current enduring era of peace among the world's great powers.
Proponents of the UN can also point to the emergence of a global culture that condemns wars of aggression and imperialism. In the pre-World War I era, wars of limited expansion, such as the Franco-Prussian War of 1871,
and ambitious land-grabs, such as the European "scramble for Africa," were seen as entirely legitimate. Today such actions would be nearly universally condemned. In the contemporary chorus of popular opinion, Otto von Bismarck's calculated wars would not be heralded as great statesmanship, but rather denounced as detestable aggression.
This shift in global opinion was notably present in 1991. When Saddam Hussein's army poured over Kuwait's sovereign border to seize Kuwaiti oilfields, the United Nations and much of the world declared his actions illegal. This marked a substantial victory for those who had sought to de-legitimize aggressive military action and augment collective security. When the United States and its allies invaded to repulse the Iraqi aggressors, they were bolstered by the moral approbation of much of the world, as well as U.N. Security Council's approval. Many optimistically thought that a new post-Cold War era of collective security had finally arrived.
THIS OPTIMISM, however, would soon be shattered by the reality of geopolitics. While the "global community" mostly rose to defend Kuwait in 1991, it has largely failed to collectively defend anything since. Immediately following the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein massacred his own Shiite and Kurdish populations while the United Nations stood by. In 1994, the United Nations did nothing while 800,000 people were hacked to death by machete-wielding Rwandans. Following that, the United Nations failed to act against a European genocide, when Slobodan Milosevic decided to ethnically cleanse Yugoslavia. In the final reckoning, the 1990s should have proved a sad disappointment to the U.N. faithful. Much as political and strategic rivalry side-lined the United Nations throughout the Cold War, so would self-interested considerations continue to obstruct U.N.-based collective security in the post-Cold War era.
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