You forgot my birthday, dudes…! The United Nations at 80

Desmond Clifford

The 80th anniversary of the United Nations has passed right under the radar.

From the ruins of World War 2 came a fresh commitment to promote peace and a universal concept of human rights. It had been tried after WW1, but the League of Nations failed dismally to meet its founding vision. The United Nations was under-pinned by stronger commitment. In 1945 even the major powers saw some benefit in a world order based on rules and permanent dialogue. And in some ways, it worked.

WW2 was followed by the Cold War, a strategic global conflict lasting nearly half a century. A combination of good luck and diplomacy, with the UN in the mix, prevented a global war until the collapse of Soviet communism reduced the heat for a generation.

It turned out history wasn’t over. For the last 15 years or so, international tension has grown, and military preparedness has once again become part of domestic politics.

The United Nations influence in preventing wars has been limited but not negligible. It provided a forum, a warning bell, a place of arbitration and, when merited, a mandate. In 1950, for example, it mandated the defence of South Korea when communist troops poured across the 38^th parallel.

The American-led force was formally the United Nations Command, and some 56,000 British troops served. It was the largest of the proxy wars of the Cold War.

In missions ranging from the Congo in the 1960s through to the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the UN helped establish or maintain peace.

Sometimes its mission failed – Srebrenica is branded in the collective memory – but as a rule of thumb, its effectiveness is equal to the political will invested in it.  Around a dozen UN missions remain active, mostly in African theatres that, sadly, the wider world cares little about.

Iraq

Even when the UN “fails”, in the sense of not preventing a conflict, it has provided moral and political context with important consequences.

The American and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 was launched, infamously, without a UN resolution.  Until then, Tony Blair was immensely popular in Britain and Europe. For some, including many previous supporters, his support for the American, rather than the UN, position was an unforgiveable breach.

The UN couldn’t prevent the conflict but acted, in the eyes of many, as the political arbiter. Had the UN endorsed the invasion, without any other facts changing, Blair would today be viewed differently.

The UN is the world’s largest deliverer of aid and has held the peace in some atrociously difficult places.

Traditionally Britain has filled the senior UN post for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief; the position today is held by the admirable Tom Fletcher.

Invisible

It is remarkable, then, that the UN has been practically invisible these last weeks in news reporting of conflicts in Iran, Gaza, Yemen and Ukraine.  Where were the late-night resolutions and diplomacy in New York?  Actually, the UN has been busy enough, it’s simply that the world doesn’t take the same notice of it now.

President Trump barely instructs his own ministers, let alone engages with the United Nations. He announces his intentions on social media, but the last thing he wants is diplomatic discussion.

We have entered an era of “strongman politics” – they are all men – where the big fish talk directly to each other over the heads of diplomats and agencies who then struggle to keep up.

Whether the UN Security Council, with Britain and France among its permanent members, reflecting a 1945 worldview, is a viable forum for rapidly shifting power structures is at least debateable.

It’s a dangerous world and the strongmen aren’t much bothered by the humanitarian consequences of military action. For some, civilian misery is a deliberate instrument of warfare and the United Nations and others will be left to manage the consequences when the fighting powers and the media have moved on.

Pacifism

Welsh politics generally sits in a well-meaning posture on international issues.  There’s a strong tradition of pacifism, markedly so on the left. Welsh institutions and civil society contribute commendably when they can, for example, housing people displaced by conflict in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Although defence and foreign affairs are not devolved, it’s reasonable to expect greater political scrutiny of the implications for Wales of a changing global security context.

As a non-sovereign nation – constitutionally, that is Wales’ current position – we look at defence through the eyes of the UK and NATO. The absence of real defence responsibility allows idealistic positions to flourish, and, historically, they have done. Is this sustainable?

Welsh political opinion robustly supports Ukraine, for example. Much of Britain’s “hard” support, in the form of armaments, is deliverable to Ukraine because the UK (including Wales, obviously) has a defence industry and a willingness to export to allied countries. If this wasn’t the case, there’d be little to offer Ukraine beyond asylum.

All of this needs deeper thinking in the context of debate about Wales’ future. Polls show growing interest in independence, so now’s the time to get more serious. Provision for Wales’ defence is obviously as important as any other aspect of policy.

Ireland, as a sovereign nation, has been thinking about defence more seriously in recent times.  Notwithstanding an honourable tradition of service in UN peacekeeping, Ireland free loaded on NATO and relegated defence among its national priorities.

Ireland spends well less than half of 1% of GDP on defence compared to NATO’s new target of 5% per country – a huge gap.  Ireland is not in NATO on account of its policy of neutrality.

But is Ireland honestly neutral today? It manifestly does not judge NATO as equivalent to Russia, China and N Korea. In any case, Ireland also finds that its de facto reliance on NATO protection provides no defence against either cyber warfare or Russian vessels making mischief in the Irish Sea.

Ireland is having to think through its options.

Scottish referendum

In the 2014 Scottish referendum, defence was of only marginal debating interest, and mostly about the UK nuclear submarine base rather than an independent Scotland’s own defence needs.

If there’s another referendum anytime soon, it’s certain defence will loom much larger and the pro-independence position will need some reassuring answers.

We, too, need to factor defence issues into national debate about Wales’ future. In all of politics, nothing is so devoid of democratic scrutiny as foreign policy and defence. It’s as if these topics get some sort of special pass exempting them from proper debate and accountability.

There’s a brain-dead “leave it to the experts” approach. No, don’t leave it:  democracy demands engagement, thought and positioning.

Far from doing less, the Senedd ought to take the changing global security context and its implications for Wales much more seriously.

Cymru Fydd

“Cymru Fydd” by William Owen Roberts is a novel set in a future where an independent Wales is wealthy and oppresses England in order to maintain its interests (you have to suspend your disbelief here, but all this makes sense in the novel’s context).

As a rich country maintaining privilege, Wales adopts the behaviours of other rich sovereign states: oppressive policing, flaky human rights, intolerance of opposition and aggression.

The novel upset some readers. It challenges the ways we like to see ourselves in literature: peace-loving, cultured, spiritual; a kind of cwtchy Welsh exceptionalism.

Think, for example, of the novels of Islwyn Ffowc Elis, like “Wythnos Yng Nghymru Fydd” (with which Roberts is explicitly contrasting) or Cysgod Y Cryman, a Wales where spiritual values and vision are dominant, if not always successful.

Roberts argues that a rich sovereign Wales would act, for the most part, like other rich sovereign countries – why would we expect otherwise?

The conceit is interesting. As part of a larger political unit, the United Kingdom, we subcontract all those tricky questions and get to adopt graceful positions unchallenged by grubby realities.

This is one of the reasons why our national debate has a long way to run: so far we’re barely serious about the issues.

As for the UN, happy birthday and, hopefully, many more.

Political influence

Can it return to a position of political influence, or has it effectively been discarded as a serious political institution by the shift in power structures?

Only time will tell but a world without an effective UN is a world without rules, rights and arbitration.  It’s a Darwinian arena where the weaker (Ukraine, Taiwan, Greenland?) get chewed up and the strong do deals to remain strong.

It’s the world of William Owen Roberts’ “Cymru Fydd; reality perhaps, but not the world we’d choose.