AHC: A More Effective United Nations

[Workable Goblin]

As the title. Given any PoD between 1945 and today, how could the United Nations be made more effective? Because this is likely to be misunderstood, by more effective I don't mean more powerful; that is things such as "oh, they have a standing army" or "oh, there's no veto power" are outside the bounds of this question. What I am asking for instead are ways in which the United Nations could do more or less what it did IOTL but...better. To provide a concrete example, I am asking how, for example, the United Nations might better implement such missions as the peacekeeping mission in Haiti (that led to a cholera outbreak that killed many Haitians), not how it could intervene in the Vietnam War despite multiple members of the Security Council not wanting such an intervention.

To kick things off, my suggestion is a fairly subtle change to the Charter that simplifies and clarifies the UN's structure. Specifically, I suggest that the Charter take a page from constitutions (or, if that's too explosive, corporate charters) and be more explicitly three-branch in structure, instead of having six "organs". It's not, of course, that ECOSOC or the Security Council would be going away, but they would be positioned more explicitly as committees of the General Assembly with particular constitutional structures (as opposed to separate entities). More importantly, the Secretary-General would be more explicitly positioned as the chief executive of the United Nations, responsible for keeping its programs running smoothly on a day-to-day level. This would hopefully clear up a lot of the internal bureaucracy of the UN by making it clear that the committees have oversight power, but aren't responsible for actually running individual agencies, as well as reducing redundancy by more explicitly laying out who does what. Ideally, this would help the UN run just that little bit smoother in all sorts of areas.

How well do you think that would work? What suggestions do you have?

 

[Kevin Renner]

I personally think the original charter should have required that member states have a level of personal freedom, free press, political expression and economic freedom at least at the level of late 19th century Britian or the US. I know neither nation was perfect but it's better than theocracies, one party states and Little Tin God dictatorships. Given the time frame in which the UN was founded I know that's not going to happen. The USSR and China both had to be accommodated. If you want to join, those are the rules. Liberal democracies tend not to go to war with each other. It might create a smaller UN to start with but perhaps using sweeteners (aka bribes) with reluctant states might help create a better world. Any world with less repressive governments, be they on the left or right, should be a better place. But then again it might have made things worse. I do not have a great amount of faith in human nature.

Change that have a level to guaranty a level or insure a level

 

[Workable Goblin]

I personally think the original charter should have required that member states have a level of personal freedom, free press, political expression and economic freedom at least at the level of late 19th century Britian or the US. I know neither nation was perfect but it's better than theocracies, one party states and Little Tin God dictatorships. Given the time frame in which the UN was founded I know that's not going to happen. The USSR and China both had to be accommodated. If you want to join, those are the rules. Liberal democracies tend not to go to war with each other. It might create a smaller UN to start with but perhaps using sweeteners (aka bribes) with reluctant states might help create a better world. Any world with less repressive governments, be they on the left or right, should be a better place. But then again it might have made things worse. I do not have a great amount of faith in human nature.

Change that have a level to guaranty a level or insure a level

That is in fact exactly the kind of thing I explicitly described as "out of bounds". The United Nations could not put any requirements on member nations in terms of "freedoms," because that would totally undermine its purpose (viz., to prevent a Second World War from breaking out). It would just become a global version of NATO, and probably not even that. To the extent that the United Nations could do anything to create a "world with less repressive governments," it could (and did, to some extent) do it through other mechanisms.

 

[Jonah Carter]

I personally think the original charter should have required that member states have level of personal freedom, free press, political expression and economic freedom at least at the level of late 19th century Britian or the US.

This directly contradicts the idea of national sovereignty that's been baked into the UN from the beginning. This UN would essentially only consist of Western nations, and this would basically be another League of Nations. You're also missing the fundamental point of the UN. It's just a forum for nations to discuss global issues, not a way for one group of nations to force their view of human rights on others.

As for what the UN could actually do better, I've seen a few ideas proposed. One of the most common is reforms to the bureaucracy surrounding the Secretary-General. There's effectively no accountability within the Secretariat, which for example made the Oil-for-Food corruption way worse. UN bureaucrats, including the Secretary-General's son, benefited personally from the program's funds or helped their friends do so. Some group with oversight over everything in the UN, not just the Secretariat, would have stopped that.

There are also some branches of the UN that just have no reason to exist anymore, and should either be done away with or have their missions completely changed. The Trusteeship Council, which I believe hasn't met since the 90s, is the most obvious example but there are others.

Security Council reform is perfectly reasonable but is always going to be opposed by at least one P5 member. They obviously won't accept losing their veto, and there's always some regional rivalry blocking new permanent members. (India and Japan are both reasonable candidates, but China would never accept either) If you want to do that, it has to be back in 1945. Once you have permanent members with veto power over any reform locked in, there's really no way to fix the way the Security Council functions.

If you're doing a full TL, I definitely recommend "What's Wrong With the United Nations and How to Fix It" by Thomas Weiss. I had to read it for Model UN, but it's a great book that discusses a lot of the proposed reforms and what stands in their way.

 

[Workable Goblin]

As for what the UN could actually do better, I've seen a few ideas proposed. One of the most common is reforms to the bureaucracy surrounding the Secretary-General. There's effectively no accountability within the Secretariat, which for example made the Oil-for-Food corruption way worse. UN bureaucrats, including the Secretary-General's son, benefited personally from the program's funds or helped their friends do so. Some group with oversight over everything in the UN, not just the Secretariat, would have stopped that.

There are also some branches of the UN that just have no reason to exist anymore, and should either be done away with or have their missions completely changed. The Trusteeship Council, which I believe hasn't met since the 90s, is the most obvious example but there are others.

Yes, this is what I was looking for. Stuff that could make the UN work better and (ideally) would not require Charter reform. Do you have more details on what specifically might be done in each of these areas?

EDIT: For the first, I imagine an "Office of the Inspector General" that isn't subordinate to the Secretary-General and has independent powers to investigate, censure, and dismiss or perhaps even refer for prosecution. Is that more or less what was being proposed?

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Here's an old thread but basically having Dag Hammarskjöld would be helpful, plus cool if the U.N. peacekeepers end up being called Hammershields.

Ashes of Katanga: a United Nations with teeth?

This is not an actual timeline, but yet again I create a poetic-sounding title to lure people in with false promises of a timeline! Actually I wanted to propose an idea: what if certain events, including Dag Hammarskjöld not dying, led to the U.N. to continue to operate with a strong...

www.alternatehistory.com

 

[David-Shiell]

Historically, everyone has complained about the UN. In practice, the UN is an exercise in self-frustration. The Security Council has an ironclad veto over the General Assembly. The Secretary-General is really just a Master of Ceremonies and nobody has any real control over the the various constituent agencies. The administrative bureaucracy is a law unto itself, and is dumping ground for unambitious yet well-connected cubicle gnomes.

For the most part, the UN's most glaring fault is the ultimate lack of accountability. Dead-weight agencies still exist, with people still getting paid, and nobody is called to account for it. Unlike nation-states with representative government and a functional rule of law, UN representatives and officials who misbehave do not have an electorate or constituents to answer to. If a UN cubicle gnome from Zangaro embezzled funds from a UN account, the worst thing that the UN could do is send him home, if that, and only if it caused enough of a public stench.

 

[Jonah Carter]

Yes, this is what I was looking for. Stuff that could make the UN work better and (ideally) would not require Charter reform. Do you have more details on what specifically might be done in each of these areas?

EDIT: For the first, I imagine an "Office of the Inspector General" that isn't subordinate to the Secretary-General and has independent powers to investigate, censure, and dismiss or perhaps even refer for prosecution. Is that more or less what was being proposed?

That was pretty much what I had in mind, a person or a small group appointed by the GA with the power to report or prosecute (probably not unilaterally dismiss) people. As far as the Trusteeship Council, I've seen suggestions that it be repurposed as an environmental agency, which I like as an alternative to just getting rid of it. Others probably don't have any reason to exist and can just be done away with. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that getting rid of these agencies tends to be a part of a larger UN reform package, which are always DOA. All of what I'm saying here would require charter changes, but they would be pretty uncontroversial.

Also, I really like your original idea to amend the Charter and make it more clear who runs what. A big problem in the UN is different bureaucracies getting into little power struggles over authority in a given area, so you wind up with 3 or 4 different groups doing what should really be the job of just one.

 

[KaiserWilhelm]

Put in the Charter that regional IOs have jurisdiction over threats to local/regional security. This ensures that the UNSC doesn’t get bogged down in issues that aren’t threats to global peace and security but do have local impacts. It also mitigates charges of the UN as an imperialist body.

 

[Jonah Carter]

Here's an old thread but basically having Dag Hammarskjöld would be helpful, plus cool if the U.N. peacekeepers end up being called Hammershields.

Ashes of Katanga: a United Nations with teeth?

This is not an actual timeline, but yet again I create a poetic-sounding title to lure people in with false promises of a timeline! Actually I wanted to propose an idea: what if certain events, including Dag Hammarskjöld not dying, led to the U.N. to continue to operate with a strong...

www.alternatehistory.com

As much as I like Hammarskjold, I don't think that him living longer would lead to any significant UN reform. The Secretary-General may be a more active role, which is good on its own, but Hammarskjold had enough bad blood with the Security Council by 1961 that he probably couldn't have gotten any big reforms through if he tried.

 

[jsb]

I personally think the original charter should have required that member states have a level of personal freedom, free press, political expression and economic freedom at least at the level of late 19th century Britian or the US. I know neither nation was perfect but it's better than theocracies, one party states and Little Tin God dictatorships. Given the time frame in which the UN was founded I know that's not going to happen. The USSR and China both had to be accommodated. If you want to join, those are the rules. Liberal democracies tend not to go to war with each other. It might create a smaller UN to start with but perhaps using sweeteners (aka bribes) with reluctant states might help create a better world. Any world with less repressive governments, be they on the left or right, should be a better place. But then again it might have made things worse. I do not have a great amount of faith in human nature.

Put in the Charter that regional IOs have jurisdiction over threats to local/regional security. This ensures that the UNSC doesn’t get bogged down in issues that aren’t threats to global peace and security but do have local impacts. It also mitigates charges of the UN as an imperialist body.

Are we forgeting just how much of the world in 1946 was under colonial rule? How do we count free countires that have colonies (declared or defacto) can they really be admitted to a free association?

 

[Rickshaw]

Are we forgeting just how much of the world in 1946 was under colonial rule? How do we count free countires that have colonies (declared or defacto) can they really be admitted to a free association?

Why ever not? Afterall the fUSSR was allowed two seats in the UN General Assembly - it's own and the Ukraine. Why? 'Cause the Ukraine when the League was established was independent after WWI. I can see the UK having Southern Rhodesia and other self-governing Colonies admitted, just as the USA could do the same as soon as they had them set up. Yes, it would created factions but it would only be in the GA which is afterall, basically powerless when compared with where the real power lies in the UN, the security council.

What people have to understand is that the UN was built on the bones of the League. It has flaws. It also inherited a whole raft load of international organisations which function today as the action arm of the UN (and they largely do a fine job IMO). Those flaws cause a lot of problems but in the main the organisation functions. It is a talking shop, not a World Government. Anything it does, it does via treaties/conventions and which individual member states have to sight up to and then bring into ratification through their own government via legislation. Before blaming the UN you should blame your own government - they signed onto the organisation in the first place, they then signed onto a treaty/convention and then put it through your parliament/congress/government. No one else is responsible.

What ever faults lie with the UN, they are caused by various governments of differing kinds/perspectives. The UN is what the member states make of it. The US acts as if the UN should be an arm of it's government and do what they dictate. Russian is similar but usually use it as a means to subvert whatever the US is doing. China similarly but to both the US and Russia. The UK/France act as if the UN is a way to prevent the US/Russia and to a lesser extent China going the whole hog in what they want to their detriment. The GA is a place where members can air their grievances and be ignored by everybody else.

 

[GeographyDude]

I personally think the original charter should have required that member states have a level of personal freedom, free press, political expression and economic freedom at least at the level of late 19th century Britian or the US. . .

That is in fact exactly the kind of thing I explicitly described as "out of bounds". The United Nations could not put any requirements on member nations in terms of "freedoms," . . .

This [minimum freedom] directly contradicts the idea of national sovereignty that's been baked into the UN from the beginning. This UN would essentially only consist of Western nations, and this would basically be another League of Nations. . .

How about the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which in some ways is a 22nd century document! And the one I’d really like to see is . . .

move quicker and more effectively against genocide . .

And since governments typically deny that they’re committing genocide, that would seem to be an opening which could be worked and played. I’m convinced that at least a plurality of genocide is using already existing famine and starvation as a directed weapon. This was the case in which West Pakistan squelched down the Bengalis in East Pakistan in 1971. And this was the case in Cambodia from 1975 to ‘78, yes, there was direct shooting and the killing fields, but the really big numbers was directed starvation to the hated former city people, especially in the northwest of the country.

And for realism, let’s say the UN’s able to effectively intervene in three quarters of genocide post-WWII.

 

[Jonah Carter]

How about the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which in some ways is a 22nd century document!

The UDHR is a little bit better, because it's at least something that most nations agreed on in principle, but you run into one big problem. How do you enforce it? The Soviet Union was clearly in violation of quite a few articles, but if the US ever accused them of it, they would just deny it. What do you do at that point?

And since governments typically deny that they’re committing genocide, that would seem to be an opening which could be worked and played. I’m convinced that at least a plurality of genocide is using already existing famine and starvation as a directed weapon. This was the case in which West Pakistan squelched down the Bengalis in East Pakistan in 1971. And this was the case in Cambodia from 1975 to ‘78, yes, there was direct shooting and the killing fields, but the really big numbers was directed starvation to the hated former city people, especially in the northeast of the country.

And for realism, let’s say the UN’s able to effectively intervene in three quarters of genocide post-WWII.

I think you may have something here. In terms of improving aid to places that have natural famines, there are definitely a lot of ways to increase funding and streamline the whole process. But the trouble with famine as a form of genocide is that the country doing it won't accept food aid even if it's being offered to them. If you want the UN to actually intervene in more genocides, you have to either make the US and USSR less willing to tolerate genocide from "their side" or take away the P5 veto. The first is unlikely, the second is outright impossible.

If you want to improve the UN's response to genocides, a good time to do it is the mid-90s. The UN's involvement in the Yugoslav Wars and especially the Rwandan Genocide were both complete failures, partly due to a lack of will from the member states which couldn't be helped, but also due to a lack of resources and unreasonable limits on when peacekeepers could intervene. With a big enough push around then, you can really fix the way peacekeepers operate and hopefully get the UN to fully endorse the Responsibility to Protect. Darfur is the next big genocide, and it could have easily been prevented if anyone actually cared to.

 

[52cardsshortofadeck]

The UDHR is a little bit better, because it's at least something that most nations agreed on in principle, but you run into one big problem. How do you enforce it? The Soviet Union was clearly in violation of quite a few articles, but if the US ever accused them of it, they would just deny it. What do you do at that point?

And of course, the US was rather arguably violating it too (oh hey there, Article 25).

Historically, everyone has complained about the UN. In practice, the UN is an exercise in self-frustration. The Security Council has an ironclad veto over the General Assembly. The Secretary-General is really just a Master of Ceremonies and nobody has any real control over the the various constituent agencies. The administrative bureaucracy is a law unto itself, and is dumping ground for unambitious yet well-connected cubicle gnomes.

For the most part, the UN's most glaring fault is the ultimate lack of accountability. Dead-weight agencies still exist, with people still getting paid, and nobody is called to account for it. Unlike nation-states with representative government and a functional rule of law, UN representatives and officials who misbehave do not have an electorate or constituents to answer to. If a UN cubicle gnome from Zangaro embezzled funds from a UN account, the worst thing that the UN could do is send him home, if that, and only if it caused enough of a public stench.

Of course, one could also aim to make that more effective...

 

[jsb]

Why ever not? ....
What people have to understand is ....
What ever faults lie with the UN, they are caused by various governments of differing kinds/perspectives. The UN is what the member states make of it. ....

I think you missed that my section was in response to Kevin Renner & KaiserWilhelm suggestion about a free only UN..or a local only UN......?

 

[Rickshaw]

I think you missed that my section was in response to Kevin Renner & KaiserWilhelm suggestion about a free only UN..or a local only UN......?

Yeah, so I was replying to a post before those.

 

[Retro_Reaction]

You could have the USSR refuse to join the UN, meaning that the UN effectively becomes a tool for the USA, more integration with NATO and a potential EU like trade agreement.

 

[Rickshaw]

You could have the USSR refuse to join the UN, meaning that the UN effectively becomes a tool for the USA, more integration with NATO and a potential EU like trade agreement.

Why would the fUSSR do that? It knew it had to be in the game to influence it's outcome. The one time they absented themselves from the UN Security Council was at the start of the Korean War. They paid the price for that when the Security Council agreed to the (essentially) US peace enforcing mission. They never made the mistake again.

 

[GeographyDude]

If you want to improve the UN's response to genocides, a good time to do it is the mid-90s. The UN's involvement in the Yugoslav Wars and especially the Rwandan Genocide were both complete failures, partly due to a lack of will from the member states which couldn't be helped, but also due to a lack of resources and unreasonable limits on when peacekeepers could intervene. With a big enough push around then, you can really fix the way peacekeepers operate and hopefully get the UN to fully endorse the Responsibility to Protect. Darfur is the next big genocide, and it could have easily been prevented if anyone actually cared to.

I’m not sure I’d label either Balkans or Rwandan intervention as complete failure. Disappointments, but not failures.

All the same, I thank you for focusing on the achieveable and the realistic. It certainly would make a big difference to the people of Darfur.

Everyone, please notice the three Darfur states in the west of Sudan next to Chad. I remember first hearing about genocide in Darfur around 2004, but most probably it had been going on for a while.

The red line shows the states which became South Sudan on July 9, 2011.

———————-

Now, personally I want more. I’m a child of the 1970s, was age seven at the beginning of the decade and just shy of seventeen at the end. So, yeah, I want to prevent genocide in my ‘70s. So, probably a couple of PODs starting in the mid-‘60s.