Реферат: United Nations Essay Research Paper INTRODUCTIONTHE ISSUESThe
CHAPTER 2
CURRENT SITUATION
REFORM PROPOSALS
The United Nations has long been criticized for its sprawling bureaucracy and wasteful management practices, generating periodic calls for large-scale reform of the entire system. Since the Cold War’s end, those calls have become more insistent. Without a serious effort to make the U.N. more efficient, reformers say, the organization will be at a loss in the rapidly changing international environment.
Of the seemingly endless list of reform proposals, most fall into one of the following categories:
Security Council
Critics say the five permanent members of the council – the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, and China – no longer fairly represent the holders of wealth and military power in the world. Japan and Germany are the most obvious candidates for inclusion. Third World states also are pushing for representation on the council. India is the most frequently mentioned candidate. A related reform would dilute the overwhelming dominance of the great powers by eliminating absolute veto power by any of the five members.
Volunteer U.N. Army
Many experts see the impasse in Bosnia as further evidence that the U.N. needs a military force at its disposal that is independent of any member government. Supporters of such a force say it should have a mandate not only to keep the peace but also to intervene militarily to stop the kinds of mass murder and genocide seen in recent conflicts. Where would such forces come from? Some recommend using mercenaries from around the world, trained according to U.N. standards and rapidly deployed as the Security Council saw fit.
“The difficulty with the volunteer force is that it changes the nature of the game, because it gives the U.N. for the first time capacity of its own,” says Urquhart, a leading reform proponent. “It will not always be dependent on governments, most of whom chicken out at the last minute, and therefore it will become a different kind of organization with some very minor trappings of sovereign power. But if the U.N. is going to start to try to deal with civil wars and major disturbances of that kind, it’s going to have to have the capacity to do it.”
Secretary-General
Because they may now serve two five-year terms, critics say that secretaries-general tend to spend too much time campaigning for reappointment instead of doing their job. The solution, many reformers suggest, is a single, seven-year term. Urquhart also would like to see an improved selection process that opens up the field to a broader range of talented individuals, especially women, rather than simply settling for someone whose political views do not offend any of the 185 member governments.
“The way they appoint the secretary-general is absolutely ludicrous,” he says. “What’s the point of having a seventy-two year-old Coptic professor of international law as the secretary-general?” he asks, referring to Boutros-Ghali. “He’s a nice guy, but he’s hopeless, a zero leader with no charisma. There’s no organization in the private sector that would dream of appointing its chief executive this way.” More appropriate, Urquhart suggests, would be a leader like Mary Robinson, the president of Ireland. “She’s easily Europe’s best human rights lawyer, she’s been an enormous success as president, she has great charisma, and she’s a bright, tough lady.” (18)
Better Management
Reform advocates say the secretary-general’s diplomatic duties are too demanding to expect him, or her, to also be responsible for managing the vast U.N. system. The solution, says Luck of the United Nations Association, is to appoint someone, second in command only to the secretary-general, to manage the U.N. “We need to have a deputy secretary-general who is the chief operating officer of the system,” Luck says, “and let the secretary-general be the global troubleshooter and the voice of the international community and the peacemaker.”
Personnel
A related issue involves hiring and firing practices at the U.N. In 1992, just after taking office, Boutros-Ghali instituted a hiring freeze and suggested a number of steps to downsize the organization. But Thornburgh, who served in the U.N. Department of Administration and Management in 1992-93, thought the reform process was slow to get off the ground. In a 1993 report to the secretary-general, he listed a number of obstacles to improving the U.N.’s work force, including a glass ceiling preventing the promotion of women, a lengthy appeals process preventing the demotion or firing of non-productive employees and insufficient training.
Thornburgh sees little improvement in the past two years. “There’s just a lot of deadwood there, people who in more placid times might be acceptable,” he says. “The biggest deficiency is that the place is replete with expert diplomats and politicians but very thin in management talent, particularly at the middle-management level.”
Unitary U.N.
This concept, defined by Bolton and promoted by the Bush administration, would encourage member governments to consider the U.N. as a whole, rather than as a conglomerate of separate agencies. Such an approach, Bolton says, would make it easier to eliminate duplication and make the organization work more efficiently.
“If you look at the U.N. as an entire system and not just as a cluster of individual agencies you can assess where there is duplication and overlap,” Bolton says. The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, for example, both address the related issues of nutrition and health. “Under a unitary U.N. approach we would have tried to rationalize their operations to reduce the duplication in the work of the two agencies.” With the election of President Clinton, Bolton says, “this policy of looking at the U.N. as a system has now fallen by the wayside.”
CLINTON VS. CONGRESS
As part of his policy of “assertive multilateralism,” President Clinton supports the goal of reforming the United Nations. “Those of us who most respect the U.N. must lead the charge of reform,” he said at a June 26, 1995, ceremony in San Francisco commemorating the signing of the U.N. Charter. “Over the years it has grown too bloated, too often encouraging duplication and spending resources on meetings rather than results.”
But some reform advocates saw the United States under President Clinton has been no more effective than other member governments in pushing for real change at the U.N. “There is a lack of political will on the part of the member states to actually follow through on reform,” Thornburgh says. “They’re all pretty much the same, and the United States is no different.”
Indeed, lawmakers in Washington seem more interested in reducing U.S. commitments to the United Nations than in strengthening its ability to carry out American foreign policy. This attitude is especially apparent among Republicans, who in 1994 won the majority in Congress for the first time in forty years.
“Peacekeeping cannot solve the world’s problems and should not be expected to,” said then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C. “Some of us have said that all along. American leadership in the world should not be defined by how many U.N. peacekeeping operations we participate in.” (19)
As part of a drive to cut foreign aid spending, Helms has spearheaded proposals to cut U.S. funding if U.N. peacekeeping operations from thirty-two percent to twenty-five percent – the same percentage the United States pays for the rest of the U.N. costs – beginning in fiscal 1994.
Then Sen. Dole introduced a bill that prohibited the participation of U.S. military forces in any U.N. peacekeeping missions that would place them under the command of foreign nationals. The proposed Peace Powers Act not only poses a direct challenge to the president’s authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but also would effectively end U.S. military participation in most U.N. missions, as peacekeeping missions typically come under the military command of more than one country.
Another proposal, the National Security Revitalization Act, part of the House Republicans’ “Contract With America,” also would restrict U.S. peacekeeping missions and would withhold U.S. funding of U.N. agencies pending the enactment of reforms. But with attitudes toward the U.N. at a low point, there is little support for reforming the organization to make it more effective.