Towards a multipolar world order

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Now that we are clearly out of the Cold War, what next?

The Cold War was the consequence of a bipolar world order with two competing superpowers, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The US claimed to represent liberal democracy, the notion that rights start with the individual, and the USSR a more collective understanding of rights based on class.

That neither accurately represented their purported model of rights is clear. The US frequently supported corrupt, authoritarian regimes or regime changes purely on the basis that they were “anti-communist”. The USSR itself became increasingly corrupt and was willing to support corrupt regimes even if they were more often on the side of liberation struggles than the US was.

With the USSR out of the picture and Russia’s failed attempt at reasserting itself as the new USSR or Russian imperial state in Ukraine, where does that take us?

The obvious next step is a new bipolar Cold War, with China and the US as the poles. But is that inevitable? Is there not a better way?

It is worth reviewing the United Nations Charter, a document of great promise. Here is the original wording, proposed by South African prime minister Jan Smuts.

Preamble.

We, the United Nations, assembled in Conference to seek a new way of life for the nations, and to prevent a recurrence of the fratricidal strife which has now twice in our generation brought untold sorrows and losses on mankind, and to establish an international organisation to that end:

Do hereby declare, in this Charter of the United Nations, our common faith and objects, and the principles on which we seek to found an Organisation for the peace, progress and welfare of mankind.

Chapter I. The Common Faith.

1. We declare our faith in basic human rights, in the sacredness, essential worth and integrity of the human personality, and affirm our resolve to establish and maintain social and legal sanctions for safeguarding the same.

2. We believe in the practice of tolerance, in the equal rights of individuals and of individual nations large and small, as well as in their inherent right to govern themselves without outside interference, in accordance with their own customs and way of life.

3. We believe in the enlargement of freedom and the promotion of social progress, and in raising the standards of life, so that there may be freedom of thought and expression and religion, as well as freedom from want and fear for all.

4. We believe in nations living in peace and peaceful intercourse with each other as good neighbours, and in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.

The final version went through many revisions but maintains the essence of an idealistic call to principles and respect for human rights.

“But wait a minute,” you could well say. “Smuts was a white supremacist. So was Churchill, still seen by many as the heroic World War II leader — and he was also a staunch imperialist.”

You can see the original preamble as a document of both great hope and great hypocrisy.

Yet such a mix of hope and hypocrisy is not the end; the hope is always there as a counter to future hypocrisy. Consider the wording of the American Declaration of Independence:

… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …

Leave aside the 18th-century lapse of referring to all genders as men, the hypocrisy in “all men are created equal” being written by a slave owner, Thomas Jefferson, did not prevent these words from later being interpreted in a more inclusive form.

 So if we draw on the hope with which the UN was created, and move out of the shadow of the hypocrisy of its creators, where does that take us?

The UN Charter in its present form expands on Smuts’s words and demands equality of treatment of all nations as well as preventing and ending armed conflict and promotion of human rights.

Why isn’t it working?

Just as Jefferson is no longer around to keep slaves, Smuts, Churchill and others of their era are no longer with us to interpret human rights in an exclusionary way and surely the original UN aim of preventing conflict is just as relevant now as it was in 1945.

The biggest flaw in the way the UN is structured is that the Security Council is the only body that can make binding decisions and the permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US, have veto power. This means that if any of them operate in breach of the Charter, nothing can be done through the UN, which results in measures outside the UN, such as sanctions enforced by one of the stronger members.

The Security Council was structured that way to take into account the reality of the post-World War II landscape where the allies who beat Hitler were on the same side but distrustful of each other, particularly the USSR and Western powers. China changed status in 1971 when the UN recognised the mainland communist government despite the de facto defeat of its opposition in 1949. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia took over the USSR seat.

But this arrangement can’t be said to be compatible with equal treatment of all nations. Why should India, for example, set to become the most populous country in the world next year, not be a permanent member? Why is no country in Africa or South America a permanent member? Why does it make sense that a single permanent member can prevent effective action against a violation of the Charter? Examples include the US war in Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Another example is the trashing of the environment by large corporations that sometimes wield more economic power than a small to medium-sized government.

Hope: Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Jan Smuts during World War II. Smuts proposed the original wording of the United Nations Charter, drawn up to prevent and end war and promote human rights.

One approach would be to submit any disputes between states to the International Court of Justice for a binding resolution. But that approach would be too slow when a conflict was about to break out. 

Another approach would be to empower the UN’s peacekeeping force to deploy whenever a conflict was about to break out. This would require a considerable expansion of its capability and controls on how it was deployed. But wouldn’t this be better than a superpower appointing itself as the world’s police officer? 

The veto right of any member should also be reconsidered. Where consensus is not possible, that should not freeze the possibility of an intervention. Because any decision would be open to judicial ratification, this would ease concerns about arbitrary interventions contrary to the Charter.

The problems I raise are hard to solve. I doubt any quick fix would work. But at least incremental steps in that direction would be a start, and I see no evidence of that.

Two countries have a strong interest in pushing for a change in this direction, for different reasons — the US and Russia.

The US because its population is suffering war fatigue. Although former president Donald Trump went about it clumsily, he did capture this mood and President Joe Biden has continued with the de-escalation of US military involvement. Exiting from Afghanistan was seriously botched but US assistance to Ukraine has been carefully calculated to avoid sucking the US into the conflict.

Russia also has an interest in reforming multilateralism because it lacks both the hard and the soft power to achieve its objectives. Even if allegations are true that it manipulated UK politics to favour Brexit and US politics to favour Trump, both of these initiatives are past their peak. 

An increasing majority in UK polls admits that Brexit was a mistake and the Tories are in disarray. The 2022 midterms show that Trump is done. Ukraine has shown that the Russian military is not capable of a sustained campaign against well-trained, well-equipped motivated opposition.

If neither the US nor Russia has the appetite or the ability to be the world’s police officer, that only leaves China with the potential to take on that role. But does the Chinese government want that? More importantly, should it?

The best option is to fix the UN. My proposal has three components: an independent judicial body that can order interventions, a more inclusive decision process than the present Security Council and a stronger peacekeeping force.

This is a very approximate idea but you have to start somewhere.

Philip Machanick is an associate professor of computer science at Rhodes University.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.