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The Future of the United Nations
Joshua Muravchik
Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward
AEI Press
November 2005
175 pages
ISBN: 084477183X
EAN: 9780844771830
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
Rocked by scandal and divided by the smoldering enmities
unleashed by the Iraq war, the United Nations faces its most
critical hour. The secretary general and other leaders have
offered their recipes for reform; in The Future of the
United Nations, Joshua Muravchik argues that only far more
radical reforms can salvage the UN as a useful institution. The central cause of the UN’s failure, Muravchik says, is
that it was structured as a proto world government, with the
power to make “law” and enforce peace. Member states were
asked to yield a measure of their independence in return for
the protections that the UN would offer them. But Muravchik
shows that this global “social contract” was a dead letter
from the start, because the protections were illusory. Initially, this failure was traced to the Cold War. But in
more than fifteen years since the end of the Cold War, the
UN has functioned little better, proving that there is a
deeper flaw in its architecture. If the world has been more peaceful since World War Two it
is due to the farsighted international policies of the
United States, not the peacekeeping of the UN. Today,
fearful or jealous of America’s unique superpower status,
some countries promote the UN as a counterweight to the
United States. If they succeed, says Muravchik, the world
will become a more dangerous place, especially for its most
vulnerable citizens. Instead of elevating the discredited political functions of
the UN, as most other reform proposals aim to do, Muravchik
offers a completely different formula for change: Boost the
humanitarian work of the UN, and reemphasize its role as a
place where sovereign nations can exchange ideas and form
coalitions in the face of common concerns, while stripping
it of the pretensions of world government.
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