In recent times, the United Nations Charter to “maintain international peace and security” and “achieve international cooperation in solving international problems”, has struggled with its objectives. Among its notable failures have been the Rwandan genocide, the UN Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq, the Srebrenica massacre, the Russian takeover of the Crimea, the Chinese incarceration of Uighurs and, of course, once again the bloody Israeli-Palestinian violence. The history of 172 peaceful settlements negotiated by the UN is woefully backloaded. Former US President Donald Trump had called the UN “a waste of time and money,” and withdrew the US from forums like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and even the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the midst of a pandemic, a course of action that has been reversed by the Joe Biden administration.
The inefficacy and the systemic misuse of their ‘veto’ power by the five Permanent Members (P5) of the UN Security Council has diminished the UN’s ability to take pre-emptive measures or implement mitigative/de-escalation actions in a conflict. Yet again, the US vetoed a UNSC Resolution that was critical of Israel’s recent conduct – the standard playbook ‘veto’ favouring the Israelis was for a record 53rd time, thereby encouraging Israel’s disproportionate retaliation. The hypocrisy of the US cover afforded to Israel still does not belie the reality of Israel being the nation that faces the highest number of UN resolutions against it in the world – in just 2020, it had almost three times compared with the rest of the world (17 versus 6). Yet, Netanyahu cared two hoots for the same and routinely called the United Nations, ‘shameful’, ‘biased’, ‘house of lies’ etc., and bashed on regardless. It was the behind-the-scenes move by Egyptian leader Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, with Joe Biden’s acquiescence, that was able to stitch a ‘formula’ for truce, sought by both sides, last month. This was seemingly intractable with the ponderous framework of the UN.
The same homilies-laden approach of the UN was equally ineffective in last summer’s India-China border hostilities when it urged “exercise maximum restraint”, or subsequently in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and later in condemning the Junta takeover in Myanmar. The UN’s ‘motherhood and apple pie’ statements notwithstanding, status quo ante has not been restored in these situations and they have settled into their own dynamics of power balances.
More importantly, forums like the UN are structurally susceptible to vested and unmasked ‘power play’ that brooks no morality or ethics. China had brazenly vetoed the UN move to designate Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist, four times. While the UN itself remained incapable of correcting the systemic lacunae, it was the direct and concerted diplomatic pressures from the US, UK and France that finally led to China vacating its objections. Of course, the UN designation of ‘terrorist’ has little impact on the ground. The likes of Hafiz Saeed, Zaki Ur Rahman, Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim continue plying their trade with impunity in a country that repeatedly beseeches the intervention of the UN, in another country!
Success in deterring modern-day conflicts or perpetuating the status quo is predicated on the security shield afforded by belonging to a strategic alliance or ‘bloc’, that commits to military intervention by fellow members. If Azerbaijan was openly supported by Turkey in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, landlocked Armenia had to settle for platitudes as support from the western powers as it wasn’t a full-fledged member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). Similarly, the substantial bind, bite and commitment of the Taiwan Relations Act’s provision that “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defence services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defence capabilities”, ensures that China’s sabre-rattling has not translated into precipitate action so far. The Mutual Defense Treaty (United States-South Korea) provides for “mutual aid, if either faces external armed attack”, besides allowing the US to station military forces. This defence treaty, more than any other lever, has deterred threats from North Korea or China.
While the still-incubating status of the Quad dialogue/alliance (US, India, Australia and Japan) has remained in the realm of symbolism and posturing, the commitment towards the aspired ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ has led to occasional naval exercises and the sailing of aircraft carrier-led strike groups, But it is no “Asian NATO” yet. Despite India’s philosophical-moral clarification that the Indo-Pacific concept was “for something, not against somebody”, the cold reality of the need to counterbalance China remains the foremost urgency. The memory of last summer, when Donald Trump at best offered to be “ready, willing and able to mediate”, exposed the limits of plain vanilla ‘good relations’ as Indian troops fought off the Chinese challenge, against all odds and minimal external support. The American ‘aid’, in terms of military weaponry and other wherewithal, was in any case ongoing and made commercial sense. What was lacking was a formal and actionable ‘military alliance’ that is tangible enough to deter Chinese aggression, as it does for Taiwan or South Korea.
Conceptually, the Quad is a workable arrangement for India’s security needs in the foreseeable future. Aspiring to get a permanent seat in the UNSC may indeed be a matter of justifiable right, but it won’t be any game-changer on the ground. Big, unwieldy multilateral forums have demonstrated extreme inability to deliver on their objectives in recent times – the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) or the 41-member Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC, which boasts of Palestine as a member), were conspicuous by their silence and irrelevance in the recent Israeli-Palestinian violence. Interestingly, the Riyadh-based IMCTC is led by former Pakistan army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, who had once threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”! The Chinese hyperrealists have never bothered too much about multilateral forums, but the Quad has unsettled their calculus and irked Beijing. Herein lies the differentiated barometer of implications between gargantuan, bureaucratic and manipulatable multilateral forums versus sharper, leaner and more clearly committed ‘alliances’.
(The writer is a former Lt. Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
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