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The United Nations and the International System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Oran R. Young
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Extract

A notable gap in existing analyses of the United Nations is the relative absence of systematic treatments of the links between the Organization itself and the international system in which it operates. These links constitute a complex dual relationship, both sides of which are worthy of serious analyses. The functions and activities of the United Nations are molded by the fundamental dimensions and dynamic processes of the international system. At the same time, however, the United Nations is itself an actor in the system and it is sometimes able to influence its environment significantly. Throughout the history of the United Nations the impact of the systemic environment on the Organization has far surpassed the impact of the Organization on the system. Nevertheless, the influence of the United Nations on world politics should not be underestimated, especially in its more subtle and intangible forms.

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Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1968 , pp. 902 - 922
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1968

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References

1 For a significant, though partial, exception to this general conclusion consult Inis Claude, L. Jr, The Changing United Nations (New York: Random House, 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Even such a shrewd observer as Claude tends to fall into this trap. See, for example, ibid., Introduction.

3 For a wealth of historical material dealing with essentially nonterritorial actors in world politics see Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

4 The phrase collective legitimization is Claude's. For an extended discussion of the concept see Claude, Chapter 4.

5 The absence of a logical partition would create serious difficulties for some purposes. It would, for example, make it extremely difficult to determine the relative importance of various roles at a given moment in time. It does not, however, create such difficulties for the analysis of trends over time encompassed in this essay.

6 For an analysis dealing with a number of these adaptations consult Young, Oran R., The Intermediaries: Third Parties in International Crises (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 4.

7 The problem of formulating a working definition of aggression has been worked over many times in the contexts of both the League of Nations and die United Nations. Consensus, however, has never been reached. The “first-shot” conception refers to die idea of defining aggression in terms of the initiation of overt hostilities. Though dlis conception was never very satisfactory, it has become manifestly inadequate widi respect to contemporary world politics.

8 A consideration of die peculiarities of such cases as die Congo (Democratic Republic of die), Cyprus, Yemen, Rhodesia, and South West Africa illustrates die range of problems associated widi such efforts at classification in real situations.

9 Hesitancy along diese lines rose sharply during die course of die Congo operation. It is important to add, nevertheless, that die Organization has continued to intervene in civil strife situations in cases such as Cyprus.

10 Above all, regulatory intervention alone is apt to be impossible in such cases since international operadons of significant proportions are almost bound to produce important political consequences at least on a de facto basis. And as soon as one moves beyond sharply restricted regulatory activities in such situations, political crosspressures begin to multiply.

11 The cases of the Congo and, presently, Nigeria illustrate this pattern.

12 Both the Rhodesian and South African situations harbor potentially explosive elements of this kind.

13 The equilibrium remains intact for the moment because the Africans have not yet taken drastic steps to move beyond the postulate that the Organization should take a clear-cut interest in African problems. It is unstable because African frustrations in this area are currendy rising sharply and becoming more and more focused on concrete issues such as Rhodesia and South Africa.

14 This is of course particularly the case with Communist China at the present time. During 1964 and 1965, however, the idea of an anti-United Nations spearheaded by both China and Indonesia gained substantial political currency.

15 This is especially evident in the case of the current interest in African issues. The proportion of the Organization's effective attention devoted to African problems in recent years has been both very large and growing markedly.

16 This is by no means to argue that membership for die People's Republic of China is undesirable. The point is simply diat many of the high hopes associated with membership for China are almost certainly unrealistically optimistic.

17 Some plausible exceptions to this conclusion are discussed at a later point in this essay.

18 In fact, the current activities of the United Nations often reflect a peculiar and ambiguous mixture of old and new patterns of political attitudes and alignments.

19 “Conservative” in this context refers to the overlapping interests of the superpowers in taking steps to preserve dieir positions of predominant influence in the international system. The linked developments referred to in die text tend to set in motion reciprocal pressures. In brief, the more the United Nations becomes an arena for North-Soudi contention die greater are the incentives for Soviet-American coordination and vice versa.

20 This is particularly evident in the African context with respect to the Portuguese colonies and the successors to the United Kingdom's colonialism in Rhodesia and South Africa.

21 Rhodesia, South West Africa, and South Africa all provide salient, concrete, and politically powerful vehicles for the pursuit of such interests in the United Nations in the current period.

22 Given the general patterns of change in die international system, it is becoming increasingly unclear whether the postwar notion of nonalignment has any remaining meaning except in the vaguest political terms.

23 The dangers arising from the 1967 confrontation in the Middle East and die continuing problems of West Berlin and Vietnam are sufficient to demonstrate this point.

24 For a brief discussion of the consequences of these changes see Young, Oran R., Trends in International Peacekeeping (Research Monograph No. 22) (Princeton, N.J: Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1966)Google Scholar.

25 The maneuvers through which the superpowers recently sought to make use of the United Nations to drive home their position on die nonproliferation treaty constitute a clear illustration of this point.

26 The fact that the superpowers have growing incentives to coordinate on some important issues does not in any way indicate that the numerous competitive aspects of their relationship will disappear. On many specific issues, therefore, the pressures for a policy of coordination are apt to be tempered by a temptation to play for proximate gains in terms of the East-West competition.

27 It would be a reversion to the notion of the United Nations as an effector of great-power agreements. It would not be a straightforward reversion to this notion, however, since the results might often be agreement among the existing superpowers to contain a rising Great Power.

28 The ranks of supporters, depending upon the specific nature of the actions in question, might well include die Republic of Korea (Soudi Korea), the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and, potentially, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Nordi Vietnam) and India.

29 Interestingly, such activities might not be affected in any drastic way by the entry of Communist China into the United Nations.

30 While the Great Powers can often exercise considerable control over the outcomes of debates in the United Nations, it has become increasingly difficult in recent years for them to control the allocation of effective attention within the Organization.

31 Interest in the “peacebreaking” potential of the United Nations in the effort to achieve political change is evident, for example, in current debates concerning such issues as Rhodesia and South Africa.

32 These devices include: 1) operations set up in such a way as to provide de facto sanction for efforts outside the United Nations to achieve political change (e.g., Indonesia in the 1940's); 2) efforts to disguise activities relating to political change under the guise of regulatory actions (e.g., the Congo); and 3) arrangements to give the Secretary-General carte blanche authority in specific situations either by passing ambiguous policy resolutions (e.g., the Congo after the death of Dag Hammarskjöld) or by moving to sanction his actions on an ex post facto basis (e.g., North Borneo and West Irian).

33 This shift is often complicated, however, by the temptation to cheat on projects of great-power coordination outlined earlier in this essay.

34 In other words, the context in which this problem is most pressing has shifted from the East-West arena to the North-South arena.

35 The most relevant case in point is the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This constitutes another point of divergence between the African bloc and the Asian group since the Asian experience with regional organizations has so far been even less promising than the African experience.

36 The space treaty negotiated toward the end of 1966, for example, constitutes an interesting attempt to implement the “removal from contention” notion. For a more extended discussion in which ideas of this kind figure prominently see Black, Cyril, Falk, Richard, Knorr, Klaus, and Young, Oran, Neutralization and World Politics (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

37 These partisan interests were quite evident in the early debates in the United Nations concerning the regulation of outer space. And they are presently increasing with respect to the problems of regulating the exploration and use of the resources of the oceans.

38 For illustrative examples consult Waltz, Kenneth, “The Stability of a Bipolar System,” Daedalus, Summer 1964 (Vol. 93, No. 3), pp. 881–909Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl and Singer, J. David, “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability,” World Politics, 04 1964 (Vol. 16, No. 3), pp. 390–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosecrance, R. N., “Bipolarity, multipolarity, and the future,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 09 1966 (Vol. 10, No. 3), pp. 314–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zoppo, Ciro Elliott, “Nuclear Technology, Multipolarity, and International Stability,” World Politics, 07 1966 (Vol. 18, No. 4), pp. 579–606CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 For a fuller discussion of this question see Young, Oran R., “Political Discontinuities in the International System,” World Politics, 04 1968 (Vol. 20, No. 3), pp. 369–392CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Since the models are not mutually exclusive, they do not add up to a logical partition. Once again, this would create serious difficulties for some purposes but not for those which underlie the present analysis.

41 The actors in world politics appear to be evolving at the present time toward an increasingly complex stratification pattern. Though it is not to be expected that states such as Communist China, Japan, France, and West Germany will reach the level of influence of the superpowers in the foreseeable future, these actors are growing markedly in terms of influence vis-à-vis the lesser states in the system. For further discussion of the diffusion of effective power in the international system as well as these evolving patterns of stratification in world politics see Young, The Intermediaries, Chapter 9.

42 While the role of ideology in general may not be declining, the fragmentation of integrated, worldwide ideological movements alters die impact of ideology on world politics considerably. Similarly, though alliances of various kinds remain important, die differences between rigid alliance systems and more fluid patterns of alliances in terms of their impact on world politics are striking.

43 Above all, it would mean carving out roles for die United Nations explicitly within a balance system rather dian thinking of die activities of the Organization as an alternative to die power politics associated with balance arrangements.

44 The classical balance-of-power system was “rough and ready” because it sanctioned large-scale hostilities of various kinds, delegated decisionmaking in the war-peace area almost entirely to individual actors, and accepted die possible destruction of individual actors as relatively normal. Each of these characteristics may be acceptable even in the contemporary world in limited forms. But the necessary limits in all these areas are almost certainly sharper and more extensive in die present nuclear and highly interdependent system dian they were in the systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

45 As the major “have” powers in the system, the superpowers must be affected negatively by largescale changes in the distribution of political values in world politics. Their interests in regulating the use of the United Nations as an instrument for the achievement of political change are therefore both overlapping and essentially conservative.

46 The notion of a system involving extensive political discontinuities is discussed at length in Young, , “Political Discontinuities in the International System,” World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 369–392CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 This is clearly the case already with respect to Soviet-American relationships. For a discussion contrasting their relationships in the European and Asian subsystems consult ibid.

48 This is evident, for example, even with respect to an issue like the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons where the position of the superpowers is strongly backed by idealistic sentiments. In this connection note especially the contrast between the passage of general resolutions and effective actions.

49 These notions are explicitly incorporated in Articles 2 and 4 of the United Nations Charter.

50 The differences between the concepts of state and nation are frequently overlooked in discussions of such questions. A state is an administrative unit involving central institutions of government and the ability to enter into sovereign relations with other states. A nation, on the other hand, is a group of people bound togedier by some combination of ethnic similarity, linguistic compatibility, shared traditions, and common culture. A nation-state exists when the state and the nation are geographically coterminous. Though current orthodoxies enshrine the nation-state as the fundamental unit of world politics, political realities now appear to be departing more and more from the conditions envisioned in these orthodoxies.

51 Significant pressures for change in some of these areas are already becoming evident. So far, the most influential pressures of this kind are those supporting various forms of weighted voting.

52 It is commonly (but mistakenly) argued that die growth of interdependencies in the international system must lead to the strengthening of international community. There is, however, no necessary link of this kind. As indicated in die text, new interdependencies may produce either positive or negative results from the perspective of international community.

53 The movement toward European integration, for example, constitutes an exception since it tends to foster partial integration even when this requires a reduction of global interdependencies.

54 For some fascinating comments on the relatively extensive links between “East” and “West” even in ancient times see Bozeman, Parts I and II.

55 Some writers have stressed the proposition that interdependencies within the units of world politics are increasing more rapidly dian interdependencies between the units. See, for example, Deutsch, Karl and Eckstein, Alexander, “National Industrialization and the Declining Share of the International Economic Sector, 1890–1959,” World Politics, 01 1961 (Vol. 13, No. 2), pp. 267–299CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The point to be emphasized here, however, is that important types of interdependence between units can increase simultaneously with the growth of interdependencies within units.

56 Many aspects of the current Vietnam conflict suggest that this pattern is a realistic and potentially dangerous one. In the long run it may well be the more general intangible and symbolic consequences of Vietnam rather than the extensive local problems raised by the conflict which will have the greatest impact on the problems of maintaining stability in the international system.