The Oct. 12 announcement that Canada had, for the first time, lost an election for a United Nations Security Council non-permanent seat leaves many Canadians extremely disillusioned with the UN. The loss to Portugal is especially painful.
There is a lot to be said about the UNSC, as well as the UN itself, but before we do look at those institutions, I’d like to discuss why Canada deserved a seat regardless.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Portuguese military spent the first decade reorganizing, re-equipping, and restructuring itself in light of the fact that Russia was not going to charge across the Iberian Peninsula after decimating France and West Germany.
In the 21st century, Portugal, like many European countries, has operated in low-key operations with minimal troop commitments. Portugal’s NATO commitment to ISAF, currently an all-time high of a whopping 250 troops, is its largest commitment in the last 20 years.
Furthermore, the Portuguese have strict operational caveats, which prevent them in proactively engaging targets, meaning the Portuguese can only “shoot back.”
These caveats have been a major sticking point within NATO, and have left Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands to bear the brunt of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
Canada, on the other hand, has contributed tens of thousands of troops to various United Nations-led and United Nations-mandated missions around the world in the last decade.
Canada has contributed troops to Somalia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Haiti and several other missions.
Other than “boots on the ground” (the presence of armed, combat-capable troops), Canada has helped to train military and police around the world, especially in war-torn countries, where the rule of law is weakened by inept and corrupt policing. Canada is participating in both PTTs (Police Transition Teams) in Iraq and OMLTs (Operational Mentor Liaison Teams) in Afghanistan (to Portugal’s credit, they provide one OMLT, but this is their main military focus in ISAF anyways). The RCMP has been training Haitian national police for years.
Furthermore, we should question Germany’s status as a “shoe-in” for a seat. It holds a commanding position in the European Union, being the largest state in size, population, and economy.
Its lack of a significant colonial history in Africa (something the Portuguese do not lack) prevents alienation of Africa, and a balanced Middle-Eastern foreign policy does nothing to make Arab or Islamic states oppose Germany, with the notable exception of Iran, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel has frequently been a critic of.
While my knowledge of Asiatic-German foreign relations is probably lacking, Germany generally has done a good job of keeping everyone happy with them.
This being said, Germany’s contribution to international security, while not as questionable as Portugal’s, still merits analysis. Germany has and continues to make sizeable contributions to KFOR, NATO’s UN-mandated security mission in Kosovo, as well as UNMIK, the UN’s mission to Kosovo.
However, the Bundeswehr (the German military) operates with similar operational caveats as Portugal, despite having one of the largest and best-equipped contingents in Afghanistan.
Despite leading NATO troops in northern Afghanistan, the part bordering three former Soviet republics as well as China and Pakistan, the German military’s performance in ISAF has been so underwhelming and their contingent so underutilized that German troops fail combat fitness tests — in short, the German military is, quite literally, physically incapable of fighting a war. So I dispute this assertion that Germany should be a shoe-in.
I’m not going to speculate on why Canada did not get a seat. Politicians have spent most of the day pointing fingers; the Liberals blame Harper for Kyoto, and the Conservatives, surprise, blame Ignatieff.
Regardless, this decision raises larger questions about the Security Council and the United Nations. The UN, as a global body, is a collective security agreement itself. However, the UNSC has only voted to undertake two collective security missions in history — the Korean War, which the Soviet Union did not vote on as it was absent, and the Gulf War.
Both missions were led and largely carried out by the United States and served American interests. Other than these two missions, United Nations peacekeeping missions have only been successful if backed by a Western military with a significant troop contribution.
Look to the success of the mission in the Congo, UNOC, or Cyprus, UNIFCYP, and the failures of UNAMIR in Rwanda or the African Union missions in Somalia and Sudan. The Security Council is, perhaps, a useful body for debate, but for action and conflict resolution, unilateral military action or the actions of an alliance/ transnational group, such as NATO or EUFOR, will in the foreseeable future be far more efficient and successful.
The UN is a joke, is it not? Other than security, the General Assembly is used by ridiculous caricatures like Muammar al-Gaddafi or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make outrageous speeches and wild accusations, all the while causing the world to ignore useful discussion and debate that takes place in the GA.
Using an example oft-cited by critics of the UN, the UN Human Rights Commission, the predecessor to the UNHR Council, had a membership composed of countries with horrid human rights records, like the PRC, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria and Iran. Furthermore, the UNHRC’s critiques focused disproportionately on Israel.
Is the UN a waste of time, then? I say not.
The UN, admittedly, has major faults. It has, thus far, been an unmitigated failure in maintaining world security. It still lacks a proper human rights regime that will encourage and promote proper debate, criticism, and proliferation of universal human rights. However, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Many UN organizations have done and still do fantastic work, and genuinely improve the plight of humanity. The WHO and UNICEF, both UN agencies, have almost singlehandedly eradicated polio from the face of the Earth. They continue to work to eradicate and prevent malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other plights the industrialized world has long ago done away with or has proper treatment to cure.
Tens of millions of children in the developing world rely on UNICEF for education and basic healthcare needs. Ninety-million people, 58 million of them children, rely on the UN World Food Programme to eat each year.
Will the UN bring about world peace? I think not. International security remains the domain of realpolitik and anarchy, and the concept of universal human rights shall forever be flawed so long as we cannot agree on such fundamental principles, like that children should not work in factories or fight in wars.
However, I truly believe that participation in the UN may one day bring about the end of the coughing death from tuberculosis, the distended stomach of starvation, and the crippling darkness of illiteracy.
Let’s not let this setback rob us of our will to be a member of the international community.
–Hashem Hamdy
Fourth-year political science