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While Europe may offer the most advanced case of liberal democracy’s retreat in the face of command-internationalism, a far purer strain of it can be found in the efforts under way to reform the United Nations. In rhetoric as in tactic, both regimes draw upon a rich European internationalist heritage which sees the smelting of nations as part of its utopian vision of peace and prosperity through institutionalized cooperation and socialist coordination. Both initially operated within limited frameworks, but then created self-perpetuating bureaucracies, ever striving to stretch their tentacles into more fields of activity. Both use the language of “historic inevitability,” pointing to irreversible technological changes, to mask what is actually a concerted effort to produce results that are not at all inevitable. And both are fundamentally skeptical of national sovereignty, public accountability, private enterprise and democratic freedoms, paying these values lip service while drawing up schemes to erode them and replace them with bureaucratic regimes that are at once powerful, interventionist and fiercely independent.
At the forefront of UN reform stands a little-known body with an unnerving name: The Commission on Global Governance. The CGG was created in 1992 at the initiative of Willy Brandt, head of the Socialist International and former chancellor of West Germany, and with the goal of designing a structural overhaul of the United Nations in the wake of the Cold War’s resolution. Timed to appear as an answer to U.S. complaints about the UN’s expensive, corrupt bureaucracy, the CGG set to work under the chairmanship of former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and former Secretary-General of the British Commonwealth Shridath Ramphal, and with the blessings of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Yet this group of twenty-eight commissioners consisted not of seasoned managerial fat-trimmers, but of precisely the opposite: A mixture of peace activists, environmentalists, socialists, development specialists and UN bureaucratsׁin effect, a dream team for massive bureaucratic expansion. It quickly became clear that the CGG’s mission was to make the UN not more efficient but more powerful at the expense of its member states; as Carlsson himself put it, the commissioners began their work “convinced that it was time for a new order in world affairs, a new style of managing our relations on this planet, and a new way of relating to the planet itself.”24
The CGG’s proposals, released in its 1994 report under the Sesame Street-like title Our Global Neighborhood, are far-reaching and at times frightening. Taken individually they amount to small changes to international institutions. Put together, these incremental reforms would make the UN less accountable to national governments or their citizens, by arming the world body with independent financial resources and even military force.
Take the CGG’s recommendations on international security. According to the report, the UN’s mandate to maintain world “security”—presumably referring to the jurisdiction of the Security Council, the only UN body currently authorized to employ force—should apply not only to clear-cut issues of military intervention, but to all “economic, social, environmental, political, and military conditions that generate threats to the security of people and the planet.” What specific security threats does the CGG envision? For starters, “the development of military capabilities beyond that required for national defense and support of UN action”—the implication being that the right to decide for any country precisely what military capabilities are “required for national defense” would belong not to sovereign states, but to the UN itself. Similarly: “Weapons of mass destruction are not legitimate instruments of national defense.” That is, even though many believe that only the presence of nuclear weapons prevented the Cold War from escalating into armed superpower conflict, the CGG calls for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. And in case that doesn’t go far enough, the Commission also calls for international supervision of all weapons: “The production and trade in arms should be controlled by the international community.” The goal: “the demilitarization of global politics.”25
As policy proposals, the CGG’s prescriptions are no different from those of pacifist movements everywhere. The difference is that the CGG wants to see them enforced by giving the UN a standing army- or, rather, “peace enforcement units.” “The UN needs to be able to deploy credible and effective peace enforcement units at an early stage in a crisis and at short notice.” This small force of 10,000 personnel would enable the Security Council to intervene rapidly in crises until more substantial peacekeeping units could be deployed. But it is not far from a small number of peacekeeping units to the much larger standing army some have advocated.
Of course, unchecked UN military intervention would never be approved by the Security Council given the veto rights held by the five permanent members. So, in the name of “democracy,” the CGG is intent on revoking the great powers’ veto. To this end, the Commission recommends a two-stage process. First, the Security Council would be expanded by adding five new vetoless permanent members and three non-permanent members. Then, “around 2005… the veto can be phased out.” With conservative irritants such as the U.S. and Great Britain out of the way, an expanded Security Council would likely be dominated by developing countries and European states sympathetic to the agenda of bureaucratic world socialism.
How will the UN afford this expansion of its activities? “Charges on the use of global resources such as flight-lanes, sea lanes, and ocean fishing areas,” for example. Or, even better: An international tax on foreign currency transactions or multinational corporations. With the effective use of global taxation, the UN could easily raise revenue on the scale of the entire U.S. federal budget.26
Other proposals are nearly as worrying. In the name of “the rule of law,” the Commission proposes that all UN members accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (the “World Court”) on all matters of international law. If states fail to comply with the Court’s judgments, the CGG proposes enforcement by the Security Council—soon to be free of great power vetoes. The Trusteeship Council, a defunct UN body once responsible for administering non-self-governing territories, is to be re-launched with “a new mandate over the global commons,” covering resources ranging from the atmosphere to outer space to the biosphere itself—a mandate which potentially encompasses everything on earth. Then, to dilute further the influence of national governments, the Commission wants to increase the role of “civil society,” namely the thousands of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in UN decisionmaking. Which NGOs will be allowed to participate is not specified, but early signs point to an abundance of environmentalists, development agencies and other do-gooders. Democratic representation and accountability are not on the agenda.27
What right does the UN have to intervene so extensively, since the UN Charter insists on the inviolability of state sovereignty? Well, the CGG calls for the Charter to be amended, arguing that “a global consensus exists today for a UN response on humanitarian grounds” when “the security of people is extensively endangered,” even by the internal policies of member states. At the same time, the CGG writes, “Military force is not a legitimate political instrument, except in self-defense or under UN auspices.” What makes force illegitimate when exercised by governments but legitimate in the hands of the UN is not explained. Nevertheless, the U.S. appears to have accepted this principle: All American military interventions since 1990 have taken place under UN auspices, from Iraq to Somalia to Bosnia to Haiti.28
When pushed on the sovereignty issue, UN reformers resort to Orwellian acrobatics, arguing that sovereignty is something that can somehow be “shared” without being violated in principle. Write CGG heads Carlsson and Ramphal:
Today, a sense of internationalism has become a necessary ingredient of sound national policies... In an increasingly interdependent world… the notions of territoriality, independence, and non-intervention have lost some of their meaning. In certain areas, sovereignty must be exercised collectively.29
It is unclear how sovereignty can be “exercised collectively” unless states divest themselves of sovereignty in favor of the collective. What is clear, however, is that this will prevent states from exercising sovereignty individually. Maurice Strong, a central member of the CGG and self-proclaimed socialist ideologue, argues typically that “it is no abdication of sovereignty to exercise it in company with others, and when you’re dealing with global issues that’s what you have to do.” For example? “That’s what’s happening in Europe.”30
