One thing that becomes abundantly clear when you read history is that war will almost invariably expose the fault lines in our geopolitical system, no matter the era. When the imperial polarization and turmoil of World War I came to an end, it became evident that massive changes were underway. Massive empires were dissolved, maps were redrawn and new nations were established with nationalist fervor.
One of the biggest changes of the time was the creation of the international system. American President, Woodrow Wilson, presented the world with a new framework for international cooperation, one which, in theory, would ensure lasting global peace and security, known as The League of Nations. In an address to Congress in 1918, Wilson called for a “general association of nations formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” The creation of such a general association was presented as part of the President’s “Fourteen Points,” which laid the basis for what foreign policy scholars call Wilsonianism, a doctrine predicated upon promoting diplomacy and self-determination among all the world’s nations.
Its novelty at the time notwithstanding, the League of Nations would ultimately fall apart for a plurality of reasons: internal dysfunction and the United States’ ironic refusal to join being chief among them. Their failure to avert another world war didn’t help the League’s case either. In retrospect, one of the biggest problems of the organization was its lack of inclusivity. Consisting of only 63 members during its history, the League suffered from Eurocentrism, and its guiding principle of self-determination didn’t seem to apply to smaller, non-European countries. Newly formed Middle-Eastern nations, for instance, were excluded and subjected to a mandate system administered by France and Britain.
In our current age, the United Nations (UN) has seemingly fixed the latter problem by including 193 independent member states. However, this observation is surface-level. Just as WWI revealed the shortcomings of its era and WWII revealed how weak the League of Nations was in preventing conflict, Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed some glaring problems with the UN.
The Security Council is the executive organ of the UN, responsible for things like authorizing sanctions and peacekeeping efforts, as well as investigating disputes and recommending courses of action. It consists of fifteen members, ten who are elected by the General Assembly every two years and five members who have remained permanent members for decades — the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and, unfortunately, in the context of the Ukraine war, Russia.
While the UN is a step up from the League of Nations, it makes a very similar mistake as the League. The UN gives disproportionate power to the world’s great powers at the expense of smaller nations. The five permanent members of the security council have the power to veto any resolution that comes from the General Assembly. The ten elected members do not have veto power. This reality is understandably troublesome to many world leaders. At the 78th UNGA, which began earlier this month in New York, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, remarked, “Regardless of who you are, the current UN system still makes you less influential than the veto power possessed by a few and misused by one: Russia.” The fact that Russia wields such leverage to inflict such pain on one of its neighbors is a cruel irony. When UN member-states introduce a resolution to impose sanctions or condemn the war, Russia, by virtue of its veto power gained from being a permanent member of the Security Council, can stop the resolution.
The crucial change that needs to happen to fix this systemic problem is to abolish the concept of permanent membership in the Security Council altogether. Such a reform should not be limited to Russia’s removal as a permanent member — no country should be granted preferential treatment, and that extends to the United States. As Zelenskyy himself succinctly puts it, “Ukraine considers it is unjust when billions of people do not have their permanent representation in the Security Council.”
Imagine if Congress was staffed by “permanent members.” Picture the executive branch of America with a president and a cabinet with unlimited veto power at the expense of millions of people who would lack representation — such is the situation at the United Nations. Alternatively, a revolving roster of Security Council members could bring democracy to an organization which extolls self-determination as a key aspect of its charter.
It begs the question of whether the Security Council would be more effective if its members were chosen democratically. If the United States were voted off the Security Council in 2003, would the Iraq war have gone differently? If Russia were voted off the Security Council, would the Ukraine war have gone differently? Hypotheticals can be argued ad nauseam, but there is principally no reason why smaller nations should be subjected to the paternalism of the current system.
But why should the UN reform matter to West Chester students? The war in Ukraine has been a rare one in the sense that it brought foreign affairs to the minds of regular people in our community as well as the whole country. Adding to this rise in awareness was the fact that, according to CBS News, after only seven months of war, Pennsylvanians had applied to sponsor 7,335 refugees.
Yet matters of foreign policy are still often seen as distant irrelevancies, the business of professional diplomats and academics — not preoccupied nursing students or engineering majors. But no matter which way you spin it, universities are places for people of all cultures to not only gain professional acumen but a civic education. Students of American, British, French, Chinese or Russian citizenship have their countries permanently represented, able to veto in their interest. No such privilege exists for most other nationalities. Yemeni students, Ukrainian students, Armenian students — none of them would be able to see their countries strike down an unfavorable resolution. The shots are mostly called by European countries, just as in the League of Nations.
Who sits in a position of power on the Security Council matters a lot when you consider how much work the UN does to support education — something that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds as paramount. Creating a strong educational pipeline for all students regardless of their origin is the project of not only the UN, but also West Chester’s Global Engagement Office, since its founding in 1973. Keeping this in mind, shouldn’t smaller nations be more involved in decision-making, especially as it pertains to the development of education?
For students in the West Chester community, understanding these dynamics is very important. I say this as someone who has family members living directly next door to Ukraine in Poland; I have a direct interest in seeing things improve globally. But you don’t have to have that kind of familial tie. You don’t have to be on Model UN or go on study abroad trips, but living in a community requires overcoming insularity to some degree. It requires coming to terms with the understanding that your community members hail from all over the world, and that events abroad shape both their lives and yours.
Josh Czaja is a first-year Political Science major. JC1029473@wcupa.edu