The United Nations

David Westbrook says: "The problem with the UN Security Council is far more serious than you credit. I am just back from the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, which numbers Secretary of State Cordell Hull among its former presidents (in 1940 and '41, no less). The current president, Anne-Marie Slaughter (also dean of the Woodrow Wilson School) argued that irrelevance of the sort that Richard Perle gloats over is a real danger. Michael Glennon (professor of international law at the Fletcher School, former legal advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) argued that the U.N. Charter security regime, especially art. 51 (which provides for self-defense), is textually incoherent and generally ignored in practice, even in conflicts widely felt to be legitimate (Kosovo). These are hardly Bush administration ideologues.

The question is not does international law exist (it does). The question is whether security concerns can be managed by international institutions, as opposed to the diplomatic and military relations among states. Rephrased, can the international law of war make the move to international institutions? Roosevelt believed in the possibility of, and the U.N. Charter attempted to establish, an international institutional regime that would, in fact, provide security. Some sixty years on, that regime can be said to have worked in only a handful of situations, and almost never well. Very few nations (and perhaps none with other options) rely on the U.N. to provide for their safety. There are many wars; the U.N. has ended very few. (Peacekeeping, a related but different matter, has been slightly more successful.) The question on the table is whether Roosevelt was, even in principle, right. It is hardly an easy question".

RH: Richard Perle's gloating shows that he has little understanding of what is going on. The St.Petersburg meeting of Putin, Chirac and Schroeder may well lead to the creation of a European "NATO" as proposed by Belgium. France left the military component of NATO (the most important), but it would be a leading member of the new organization. The US has warned that an independent European force would make NATO irrelevant. there is a real possibility that the UN and NATO would become irrelevant, leaving the US to face this new combination of European states, which might be joined by China. A grim prospect.

Ronald Hilton - 4/12/03