Dear Editor,
President Ali’s appearance before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) highlighted the growing impotence of that institution, which was to be at the centre of the promise of multilateralism after WWII. All countries – now 193 – were to be involved in not only preventing future wars, but would ensure that the members cooperate to promote trade and human rights, end hunger and health epidemics etc. However, the promise was undermined from the very onset when the victorious nations arrogated permanent membership and veto power over the decisions of the UN Security Council (UNSC). Only the UNSC is authorized to enforce decisions of the UNGA using military intervention if necessary. But the two “hot” wars being presently waged in Ukraine and Gaza, even though the UNGA voted that the invaders withdraw, vividly illustrates the UN’s impotence. As such our appeal to the UNGA about the more than a half-century of depredations by Venezuela to annex two-thirds of our national territory, including our latest initiative to involve several UN organs like the ICJ, will ultimately be for naught.
A corollary to the arrogance immanent in their veto power in the UNSC, is the role of those same nations in betraying the UN’s promise of ending wars by immediately launching a “Cold War” between the US/West vs USSR/China. This erupted in the very hot Korean War, followed by the Vietnam War and innumerable skirmishes in proxy states. The ouster of the PPP government in 1964, following the instigation and facilitation of ethnic violence, was our “encounter”. By 1989, the USSR crumbled and we saw the emergence of “unilateralism”, with the US as the sole global hegemon in a unipolar world. But that did not last long and we are now in the throes of a new Cold War, this time between the US and China, which both have veto power in the UNSC.
As in the previous Cold War, blocks are coalescing around the two protagonists and there is talk about a new “multipolar” world in opposition to the hegemonic US and its “rule-based order”, with fears of new crisis. At a similar inflexion point before WWII, when Britain was the hegemon emerging from WWI and fascism was about to emerge, the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci had written: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” But the talk of multipolarity is premature and we see the “morbid symptom” of fissures within BRICS, for instance, represented most recently by India’s rejection of China’s yuan for trade exchanges. India is implicitly rejecting China’s de-dollarization and signalling a commitment to maintaining the US dollar as the dominant currency.
But this does not ineluctably mean a move towards multilateralism, with the UNGA emerging out of the crisis with some degree of power to more effectively represent the interests of the majority of its members, such as Guyana. And this is in the face of the “Pact for the Future” that world leaders adopted at the “Summit of the Future” on 22 September. They optimistically declared: “The adoption of the Pact demonstrates that countries are committed to an international system with the UN at its center. Leaders set out a clear vision of a multilateralism that can deliver on its promises, is more representative of today’s world and draws on the engagement and expertise of governments, civil society and other key partners.”
The Pact summarizes all the initiatives the UNGA had approved over the past decades, such as financing for the SDGs and closing the SDG financing gap, ameliorating climate change, reducing global disparities in science, technology and innovation etc. But the crunch will come at the implementation of the “transformation of global governance”: “The Pact resolved to make the multilateral system more effective, fit for the future, just and representative, inclusive and networked, and financially stable. It includes the most ambitious and concrete progress on Security Council reform since 1963, including a commitment to increase the representation of developing countries, recognizing the special case of Africa, and to develop a consolidated reform model in the future.” But since there is no mention of removing the vetoes in the UNSC we can predict that nothing will change.
So our government should not hold its breath, depending on the UN to resolve our crisis with Venezuela. We have to cultivate alliances with countries sharing common interests but ultimately, keep our powder dry.
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev