The United States and the United Nation

Sandy Levinson

Assume for the purposes of this posting that you, the reader, actually care about preserving the United Nations as an effective forum of international discussion and, on occasion, decisionmaking with regard to a variety of important issues. (If you hate the UN, as does John Bolton, then you won't find what follows of particular relevance.)

So, if you are willing to grant the assumption, isn't it obvious that anyone concerned about the UN must confront the ways that it is ill designed to achieve its quite inspiring purposes as set out in 1945? The most obvious example is the design of the Security Council and the current veto system, which is based entirely on "great power status" as measured in 1945: US, USSR, UK, France, and China. One doesn't have to be a Francophobe to wonder why France retains the veto power in 2007 (assuming the desirability of a veto power at all). One might even ask the same question about the UK, if truth be known. It's easy enough to defend the US, Russia, and China as veto-holders, but, obviously, one can name a number of other countries that might also qualify, especially if one doesn't strip the UK or France of its power: Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, for starters. We could also talk about the one-state/one vote system in the General Assembly. For someone who is critical of the US Senate and its maldistribution of voting power, it is hard indeed to figure out why one would support Fiji's having the same voting power as the United States or China, unless one is what might be termed a "sovereign state formalist" totally indifferent to the realities of population, resources, etc., etc., etc. Frankly, I see no more reason to support that at an international level than at the more local level of the US, though, no doubt, some of you would argue that there is a dispositive difference. I'd be genuinely interested to read such arguments.

In any event, the point is obvious: No one would consider it amiss to suggest that the UN should be subject to rational assessment with regard to its basic design, and one could be acknowledged as a "friend" of the UN even while calling for quite significant revisions of the 1945 Charter. So why is it that "we" (in this case the US populace or even what political scientists used to call "attentive publics," and not simply the readers of Balkinization) are having no serious discussion about the deficiencies in our own Constitution? Is it simply that we "venerate" the latter, while no one "venerates" the UN Charter? Is it that most people are so scared of popular democracy in the US that we prefer the devil we know (but never actually admit has devilish features) to what we fear might eventuate from a serious open discussion?

Oh, and by the way, George W. Bush, if he does not choose to leave the White House, will have 737 more days to enjoy all of the legal power granted the President of the United States. I confess that I am increasingly frustrated by the failure of any mainstream pundit, many of whom are as easily anti-Bush as I am, to note the constitutional origins of our present political crisis. Everything is reduced to pure politics, especially the runup to the 2008 election, with no attention being paid to the way that the Constitution indeed successfully structures our political order, for goood (at times) and, most definitely, for ill (at other times). There are many critics of the tendency of the press to turn all politics into "horseraces," with the main issue being who is ahead and who is coming up on the outside rail. But even horseraces are constituted by some very definite rules that structure possible outcomes.
Posted 3:58 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]