This autumn in New York, Australia will be contesting for one of the elected seats on the U.N. Security Council. Some domestic critics ask why bother with the United Nations? Some international critics ask why waste a vote on Australia? Both are wrong.
The U.N. matters, and having Australia on the Security
Council should matter to the world. The U.N. is both an idea, and an actual
organization with structures, procedures and personnel.
As an idea, the U.N. is the world's only body to house
the divided fragments of humanity. It symbolizes a world in which those
condemned to die in fear are given the chance to live with hope again, want
gives way to dignity, and apprehensions are turned into aspirations. This
symbolism finds expression in the three overarching normative mandates of
security, development and human rights.
As an organization, the U.N.'s performance reveals both
problems and achievements. It's an international bureaucracy with many failings
and flaws, a forum often used for finger-pointing, not problem-solving, and a
house divided against itself that struggles to survive.
Yet it remains indispensable. The world is interdependent
in areas as diverse as financial markets, infectious diseases, climate change,
terrorism, nuclear peace and safety, product safety, food supply and water
tables, fish stocks and ecosystem resources. Any of these can provoke military
interstate conflict. They are also drivers of human insecurity because of the
threat they pose to individual lives and welfare. All require joint action to
enhance security, improve welfare, reduce costs and bring order and regularity
to international affairs.
At the center of this interdependent, globalized and
networked multilateral order is the U.N. In the theater of world politics, the
UN has starred in major or minor roles in preventing and managing conflicts,
regulating armaments, promoting human rights and international humanitarian
law, liberating the colonized, providing economic and technical aid to the
newly liberated, organizing elections, empowering women, educating children,
feeding the hungry, sheltering the dispossessed and displaced, housing the
refugees, tending to the sick, promulgating global health norms and
regulations, and coordinating disaster relief and assistance: all on a 24/7 basis.
This is not always done well, efficiently,
cost-effectively, or in time. As with the comment about the dog that walks on
its hind legs, however, the wonder is not that it is done badly, but that it is
done at all.
Consider the use of force. Formerly, going to war was an
accepted attribute of the sovereignty of states. Since 1945, the U.N. has
spawned a robust norm against going to war except in self-defense against armed
attack or when authorized by the U.N. All nations are legally obliged also to abide
by U.N. sanctions imposed on international outlaws.
Why would Australia not want, and why should it not be
given, a periodic voice and vote in the deliberations and decisions that have
such a profound effect on its security and prosperity?
Australia has a unique set of knowledge, experience and
skills to offer to the U.N. It has successfully leveraged European heritage and
values in the Asia-Pacific setting to create a vibrant, multicultural, orderly
and peaceful society that is the envy of much of the world.
Australia last served on the Security Council 27 years
ago. By all objective measures (GDP, military capacity, foreign aid), Australia
should be an elected member once every 10 to 15 years. This is just as true
with respect to Australia's manifold contributions to the U.N. system, from
paying its assessed dues in full and on time to peacekeeping contributions,
development assistance and humanitarian and disaster relief. The energizing mix
of Asia-Pacific dynamism and rich European heritage ensures that Australia
normally offers high-quality yet practical and relevant ideas for improving
world governance.
The typical U.N. activity in peace and security is
peacekeeping. Australia has a proud, historic and continuing engagement with
peacekeeping as the 12th-biggest contributor. More than 65,000 Australians have
served with distinction in over 50 U.N./multilateral peace operations, starting
with the world's first peacekeeping mission in Indonesia in 1947-48 that
mediated the conflict between the Dutch colonial power and Indonesian
independence fighters.
Australia brings to peace operations a thoroughly
professional military, a fully disciplined force that has a commitment to
civil-military integration, and an exemplary history of subordination to civil
authority and the rule of law. Yet it can be postured for high-end operations
to defeat armed challenges, as in East Timor.
Backstopping military contributions to multilateral peace
operations, Australia has a ready reserve, swiftly deployable group of 600
police officers in the International Deployment Group, plus an Australian
Civilian Corps, plus the Australian Civil-Military Center to help develop
doctrine and provide technical assistance.
Australia can point to a proud and bipartisan record of
leadership in resolving some critical conflicts in its neighborhood and around
the region, including Cambodia in the 1980s and East Timor a decade later.
Australian troops operate, fight and die in Afghanistan under a U.N. mandate.
In all three cases, the toll in lives and legitimacy would have been hugely
greater without U.N. blessing.
Australia has a global train of interests as the world's
12th-biggest economy, sixth- biggest landmass, third-largest maritime zone and
seventh-biggest aid donor. With far-flung civilizational, commercial, strategic
and environmental interests and links, Australia has a direct and big stake in
a rules-based global order. The U.N. system is the biggest incubator of global
rules to govern the world, from trade, refugees and the law of the sea to the
use of force and the regulation of armaments. Whisper it quietly around
Washington corridors: The U.N. successfully disarmed Saddam Hussein of all
weapons of mass destruction
For better or worse, the key forum for addressing almost
all the critical global challenges in the next few years will be the Security
Council.
Australia can stand aside and join the nattering nabobs
of international negativism in complaining that U.N. decisions are always for
the worse. Or it can take its rightful seat at the high table to help ensure
they are mostly for the better.
**Ramesh Thakur, former U.N. assistant secretary general
and principal writer of Kofi Annan's 2002 reform report, is professor at the
Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and adjunct
professor at the Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith University.