The Crisis of Global Institutional Leadership

Throughout history, prophets and empires provided different conceptions of leadership: one relied mainly on moral authority, the other principally on sheer physical force. One called for peace among peoples, the other thrived by exercising control over people.

Similarly, at the institutional level, the state sovereignty-based system of international relations, in which states compete to advance their national interests, contrasts with the vocation of global institutions to promote common human concerns.

Global governance institutions, however, are established by states the most powerful of which seek to use the institutions not to promote common human concerns but rather parochial national interests. 

The League of Nations and the United Nations were, in the 20th century, the two principal international organisations with the stated purpose of providing universal leadership for peace and security.

 At the end of World War I, the League of Nations held the promise of global leadership based on universal values such as self-determination for the colonised people, and the commitment to banish war from international relations.

The League’s mandates were supposed to be a “sacred trust of civilization,” a triumph of universal values for peoples over the parochial values of the colonial powers. But the imperial powers came quickly to control and use The League to further their respective imperial designs. 

The League became a congress of European powers determined to defend colonialism against the rising tide of peoples’ demand for self-determination, and to fight communism while turning a blind eye to the danger of fascism in their own backyard. The result was a collective failure of leadership that led directly to World War II.

The United Nations came into existence in 1945 determined to avoid the mistakes of the League and promising global leadership based on universally shared human values and ideals.

However, the veto power in the Security Council, and the Cold War, meant that the UN would reflect the realpolitik balance of power brought about by the military realities of the results of World War II.
 
Nonetheless, there were some persistent attempts to provide global leadership based on common human concerns. First, there is the longstanding tradition of humanitarian, development, and peacekeeping work of the UN. Secondly, in the 1990s, former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali presented the international community with a set of ideas designed to strengthen the universal nature of the organisation’s leadership role.

Thus, his Agenda for Peace (1992), Agenda for Development (1994), and Agenda for Democratisation (1996) linked the leadership role of the UN to the promotion of peace, democracy and development.

At the Second Global Leadership Forum I organised in 1998 in Amman, Jordan, he argued that democracy was needed not only inside states but also among states in the international community.

The same concern with the leadership role of he United Nations was reflected in the series of conferences Boutros Boutros-Ghali organised for the international community: The Rio Earth Summit in 1992, The Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993, the Population and Development Conference in Cairo, 1994, The Social Development Conference in Copenhagen in 1995, and the Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995..

They all sought to enshrine basic principles that placed people’s welfare and need for peace and development above the national interest of anyone state.

Notwithstanding these efforts at global leadership, it must be admitted that the ability of the UN to provide global leadership is necessarily restricted, and has of late been further eroded.

Consider how, in 1996, the Security Council was unable to renew Boutros Boutros-Ghali mandate even although 14 out of 15 members voted for him. The veto of the US prevailed and Boutros-Ghali had to go. 

One would be hard pressed to speak of the leadership of the Security Council when it comes to the question of sanctions against Iraq, which have been reported by the United Nations’ own agencies, to have caused the death of some 500,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s. 

Denis Halliday, the British UN diplomat who resigned as coordinator of humanitarian aid in Baghdad in protest, held all 15 members of the Security Council responsible for what he described as “genocide” against the Iraqi people

Similarly, the decision of the US and UK to invade Iraq, in 2003, after failing to obtain a specific authorization from the UN Security Council was a dramatic reminder of the use of the Security Council to advance the national interests of the great powers.

Further, the ability of the US and the UK to block any UN cease-fire resolution in July of this year, to give Israel more time to complete its destruction of Lebanon further discredits the organisation’s claim to global leadership.

Consider how UN Secretary General Kofi Annan repeatedly appealed for an immediate cease fire after telling the Council about the unacceptable destruction and killing of innocent civilians the Israeli war on Lebanon was causing. He was ignored and essentially marginalised.

Only after it became clear that Israel had failed to achieve its military goals, did Washington and Tel Aviv turn to the UN, which they regularly deride, to help achieve some of the goals the war failed to realise.

Other global institutions suffer from the same restrictions on their ability to provide leadership based on common human concerns. This is reflected in their power sharing structures. The influence of the United States over institutions such as the IMF and WTO reflects the global power of the United States.

The more representative institutions, such as the UN General Assembly and the UN Economic and Social Council, are the least powerful organs.

This democratic deficit and the parochial pursuit of imperial interests by the great powers are thwarting the aspirations of global institutions to provide leadership that reflects common human needs and concerns.

Adel Safty is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. He is author of From Camp David to the Gulf; Democracy and Governance; Leadership and Democracy; and of the forthcoming book The Modern Machiavellians.