Читать книгу The Age of Consent - George Monbiot - Страница 9

Our global revolution requires no tumbrils, no guillotines, no unmarked graves; no revanchist running dogs need be put against the wall. We have within our hands already the means to a peaceful, democratic transformation. These means arise inexorably from an analysis of how the world is run, and why the existing world order fails. Each of the following three chapters examines one aspect of global governance, shows why the current system is not working, considers the possible alternatives, chooses those which seem to work best and then explains how we – the dissidents of the rich world and the citizens of the poor world – can, using only those resources available to us, replace the system which works for the powerful with one which works for the weak. The first of these tasks is perhaps the most pressing: altering the mediation of war and peace and the relations between nation states, and seeking to replace a world order built on coercion with one which emerges from below, built upon democracy.

The United Nations was conceived in 1941 by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, as an alliance against the Axis powers. As the Second World War progressed, its scope and membership expanded, until, in June 1945, fifty nations signed a declaration of principles – the United Nations Charter – whose purpose was to promote peace, human rights and international law, to encourage social progress, higher living standards and to prevent another World War.³³ The UN, in other words, was founded with the best of intentions. But these, like the motives surrounding every aspect of the postwar settlement, were mixed with some rather less elevated concerns. No one gives power away, and those nations which constructed the UN were careful to ensure that it reinforced rather than diminished their global pre-eminence.

This concern is reflected in the constitution of the supreme international body, which is charged with the prevention of war, the United Nations Security Council. If one nation is threatening or attacking another, the council may use whatever measures are necessary to force it to desist: it can order a ceasefire, for example; levy economic sanctions; send in peacekeepers; or, at the last resort, authorize the armed forces of the UN’s member states to take military action against the aggressor. At the international level it asserts (though with little success) what the state asserts at the national level: a monopoly of violence.

The Security Council mimics the notional constraints of the democratic state. By this means it claims to sustain a world order founded on right rather than might. The problem with the postwar settlement is that those with the might decide what is right.

There are fifteen members of the council, of which ten have temporary seats (held for two years and then passed to another state) and five have permanent seats. Each of the five permanent members has the power of veto: no decision can be taken by the Security Council unless all five have approved it. Unsurprisingly, the five permanent members are the three powers which founded the United Nations – the United States, United Kingdom and Russia – and their principal wartime allies, China and France.^* They granted themselves the ability to determine, for as long as the UN continues to exist, who is the aggressor and who the aggressed.

The power of veto was introduced partly in order to prevent those states in possession of nuclear weapons from attacking each other: had the other member states, for example, collectively decided that the Soviet Union was threatening one of its neighbours, and then sought to restrain it through military action, the USSR may have responded by offering to meet that force with greater force, provoking another world war. Indeed, during the Cold War the Soviet Union used its veto repeatedly, precisely in order to prevent the other states from restricting its attempts to expand its imperial domain. But, while the veto may have functioned as a safety valve, preserving a global peace at the expense of the weaker states being threatened or attacked by one of the permanent members, it has also proved to be an instant recipe for the abuse of power and the impediment of justice.

The problem with the way the Security Council has been established is that those who possess power cannot be held to account by those who do not. The key democratic question – who guards the guards? – has been left unanswered. The Security Council is, by definition, tyrannical. Those who defend the way the world is run point out that veto powers have rarely been used since the end of the Cold War^* and that the veto can, in theory, be deployed (as France and Russia tried to deploy it in 2003) to protect states from unauthorized attacks by other members; but the truth is that the threat of the veto informs every decision the Security Council does or does not make. Other member states know perfectly well, for example, that there is no point in preparing a resolution which the United States will reject. The US, and to a lesser extent the other permanent members, assert their will without even having to ask.

As other nations cannot hold them to account, the permanent members (or, more precisely, the two permanent members which have, since the UN’s formation, wielded real power) can blithely defy every principle the United Nations was established to defend. Since 1945, the United States has launched over 200 armed operations,³⁵ most of which were intended not to promote world peace but to further its own political or economic interests. The Soviet Union repeatedly used its veto to prevent other member states from interfering with its sponsorship of violent insurrection, and occasional direct invasion. The five permanent members also happen to be the world’s five biggest arms dealers, indirectly responsible for exacer-bating many of the conflicts the Security Council is supposed to prevent. The five nations which possess the exclusive power to decide how threats should be handled are the five nations which present the gravest threat to the rest of the world.

The problem is compounded – and this is not commonly understood – by the fact that the powers of the Security Council are not confined to the administration of peace. The UN Charter also grants the five permanent members vetoes over constitutional reform of the United Nations.^* Even if every other member of the General Assembly votes to change the way the institution works, their decision can be overruled by a single permanent member. Any one of the five can also block the appointment of the UN Secretary-General,^† the election of judges to the International Court of Justice, and the admission of a new member to the United Nations.³⁶

Those who benefit from this system argue that it simply reflects the realities of power: if the five permanent members were not using their vetoes to force other states to do as they bid, they would find some other means. This is undoubtedly true; but the problem with the way the council is established is that, rather than moderating the realities of power, it compounds them. It offers an immediate and painless means for a permanent member to prevent the rest of the world from pursuing peace or justice, whenever it suits its interests to do so. These special powers have rendered the UN General Assembly, in which every member state has an equal vote, all but irrelevant. The 186 member states which do not occupy permanent seats on the Security Council can huff and puff about how the world should be run, in the certain knowledge that real power lies elsewhere.

But even if the Security Council were to be disbanded tomorrow, and the supreme powers it possessed vested instead in the Assembly, the United Nations would still be far from democratic. Many of the member states are not themselves democracies, and have a weak claim to represent the interests of their people. Even those governments which have come to power by means of election seldom canvass the opinion of their citizens before deciding how to cast their vote in international assemblies. There is, partly as a result, little sense of public ownership of the General Assembly or the decisions it makes. At public meetings, I have often asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they know the name of their country’s ambassador to the United Nations. Seldom, even at gatherings of the most politically active people, do more than two or three per cent claim to know; on one occasion an audience of 600 mostly well-read, middle-class people (it was a literary festival) failed to produce a single respondent. In turn, many of the ambassadors, who are appointed, not elected, appear to be rather more conscious of the concerns of their nations’ security services than those of the citizens whose part they are supposed to take.