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Author : A. Gorelik
Acting Director, the UN Information Centre in Moscow
THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION is, to
a great extent, a faithful reflection of the stronger and
weaker points of mankind; therefore, "Don't blame
the mirror," as a Russian saying goes.
THE UN that was conceived as a political and military
alliance set up to prevent the third global conflict failed
to prevent the Cold War and, therefore, never devel-
oped into a real union. The "birthmarks" of the orig-
inal intentions can still be seen in the UN Charter and
in its structures, the dormant Military Staff Committee
being one of them.
Instead, the UN by trial and error arrived at what is called "global governance," its meaning
being much wider than "international relations," the term habitually used when the organization
was born.
Today, as globalization is spreading far and wide revealing mankind'sprospects and limitations,
"global governance" is gathering more importance. The word "governance," on the other hand,
smacks of voluntarism of those who intend to "govern" the world.
The "global cooperative" is probably the best definition. According to the commonly accepted
formula, cooperative is an autonomous association of people who united on their own free will
to satisfy their common economic, social and cultural requirements and to set up a commonly
owned and democratically controlled enterprise. Added to the list of requirements the term "po-
litical" completes the picture.
THE UN has an ideology of its own rooted in scores of concepts, declarations, agreements,
speeches, and statements. This "progressist" and mainly liberal sum-total of views preaches that
the world should become fairer and that equality should be encouraged. Political and military
measures alone cannot bring safety; this means that it will remain a chimera unless development
and overcoming of backwardness are viewed as the main goal; hence a lot of attention to the
social matters and social price of economic processes.
The UN "collectivist" ideology proceeds from the idea that the resources should be redistributed
in favor of the poor and that the worst forms of inequality should be liquidated.
Today, a more specific development concept or even "a new political economics for sustainable
development" is at the core of the UN collection of ideas.
So far the UN Security Council is a safety net of sorts rather than the last instance when it comes
to the war and peace issues. It is much too often involved in shaky compromises and pushes the
UN onto the marshy ground of vague mandates. Kosovo and Iraq are only two of the pertinent
examples that have revealed the pernicious nature of ambiguity.
We should remain realists. It seems that I am not the only one who would like to paraphrase
Nikolay Berdyaev to say that the UN exists not to get us to heaven but to only save us from hell.
Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
»
The Global Cooperative