2. INTRODUCTION
This article critically reviews the place and meaning of the UN and its
peacekeeping/peace-enforcing missions throughout the world since the
early 1990s. It suggests that the UN’s practice of global governance often
took place in the 1990s by means of techniques of surveillance designed to
achieve order and compliance on the part of rogue states in the interna-
tional community (Iraq and North Korea mostly). The case of the United
Nations’ surveillance system in the context of the global monitoring of
weapons of mass destruction since the end of the Gulf war is exemplary of
the post-Cold War deployment of global surveillance disciplinary tactics in
international relations. The argument that this article makes is that the
UN’s general modality of governance as surveillance, particularly after the
failure of peacekeeping in Somalia and Bosnia, slowly but surely gave way
to a new method of visualizing/understanding the UN on the part of the
international community. In the second part of the 1990s, Western states
who had turned to the UN to achieve governance, either through forceful
peacekeeping (Somalia, Bosnia) or surveillance (North Korea, Iraq), decid-
ed that other agents/institutions could implement Western visions of glob-
al governance in places in crisis (Rwanda, Kosovo) better than the UN.
Thus, in the latter part of the previous decade, the UN abruptly stopped
operating as an agent of global governance for the West. The UN’s mostly
surveillance-based modality of governance gave way to the impression
that, in matters of global order, the UN was a “vanishing mediator.” At
that time, the practice of governance (through surveillance or peacekeep-
ing mainly) left the UN and moved on to “substitute” agencies and inter-
national actors, such as NATO or Non-Governmental Organizations.
After detailing how the UN functioned as an agent of surveillance and
governance in the early 1990s, this essay will explain the notion of the UN
as “vanishing mediator.” It will argue that the UN became the unintended
but necessary victim of Western regimes of global governance that had
moved to more useful and disciplinary methods of enforcement (using
NATO in Kosovo for example). Finally, in the last section, this essay exam-
ines what has happened to the UN and its mission of global governance in
the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. I will argue that,
interestingly, the war on terrorism launched by the United States after
September 11 and the US military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS40 【Vol.3
3. have allowed the UN to regain a distinct and unique status and standing
in international affairs and in matters of global governance in particular.
No longer an agent of disciplinary governance and surveillance for the
West as it was in the early 1990s, and finally free from its paralyzing role
as a “vanishing mediator” (albeit a failed “vanishing mediator” as we will
see) in the late-1990s, the UN has recently been able to play a more inde-
pendent role, and especially in relation to the new US policies of preemp-
tive intervention and forceful hegemonic order. In an age when the United
States, behind its President George W. Bush, has decided to almost single-
handedly dictate for the rest of the planet what governance will be and
look like (and it mostly means getting rid of regimes that support terror
and in return imposing a US-based model of democratic governance), the
UN has found itself in a strange position as an international agent capa-
ble at times of confronting US military and hegemonic tendencies.
Constantly reminding its member-states, and particularly the United
States, that the principal issue is to find ways of globally combating ter-
rorism effectively and collectively, and not by individually and sometimes
blindly embarking upon risky, unpopular, and at times militarily aggres-
sive interventions in countries where links to networks of terror or sources
of mass insecurity and destruction are tenuous at best (in Iraq for exam-
ple), the UN has become a voice of global sanity and reflected resistance in
the face of US global ambitions. In so doing, and since the Security
Council’s stalemate over Iraq in January-February 2003 in particular, the
UN has been able to shed its image of “vanishing mediator” and has
instead endorsed the cause of global justice, fairness, and respect for the
rule of law, something which the current modality/practice of US-led glob-
al military governance obviously lacks. Before I address these more recent
considerations in the last section of this essay, I first return to the place
and time where and when the UN, in the post-Cold War era, started its
global governance missions: in the early 1990s, by imposing surveillance
regimes over North Korea and Iraq.
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 41
4. Ⅰ. THE UNITED NATIONS AND SURVEILLANCE AS GOVERNANCE
For the international community, whose authority was generally rep-
resented by the United Nations and its agencies in the early 1990s (partic-
ularly since the Gulf war), North Korea and Iraq had a lot in common.
They were both parts of the United States-formulated “rogue states” doc-
trine and, as such, North Korea and Iraq had been treated as similar
types of cases. As then US President Bill Clinton remarked, both states
were “unwilling to comply with the will of the international community.”1)
Still, and more interestingly, North Korea and Iraq shared another, more
material, experience at the time. They were both under the constant
scrutiny of the United Nations and some of its member states. Due to a
lack of space and time in this essay, I will only present the case of the
UN’s surveillance regime over North Korea.2)
1. North Korea
Between the Spring of 1993 and the Summer of 1994, North Korea’s
threat to block on-site inspections by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) personnel3)
of its nuclear-processing sites (some of which
were suspected of housing nuclear weapons facilities) revealed North
Korea as a key rogue state in the post-Cold War era. Despite signing the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1987 and being bound by this
treaty’s safeguards agreement,4)
North Korea decided to reject the interna-
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS42 【Vol.3
1) William Jefferson Clinton, “Status on Iraq,” Communication from the President of the
United States, January 4, 1995, 104th Congress, 1st Session, House Document 104-11.
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office), p. 1. It is interesting to note how
Clinton’s successor in the White House, George W. Bush, tried to modify this approach in
2003 when his administration claimed that Iraq and North Korea were two drastically dif-
ferent situations (hence going to war against one, Iraq, would not necessarily imply war
against the other, North Korea).
2) For more on the regime of surveillance by the UN over Iraq, see François Debrix Re-
Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 72-8.
3) The IAEA was created in 1957. The IAEA is an intergovernmental agency related to the
UN. It is relatively autonomous but reports regularly to the General Assembly and the
Economic and Social Council. In certain cases, it may report directly to the Security
Council. Recent events in North Korea and Iraq have clearly demonstrated the close links
between the IAEA and the UN. For more on the IAEA, see The United Nations, Basic
Facts about the United Nations (New York: UN Publications, 1992), pp. 223-4.
4) North Korea ratified the safeguards agreement in April 1992. This agreement is part of
the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) system and allows international inspectors from the
5. tional legal process that entitled IAEA and UN experts to control and veri-
fy North Korean facilities at any time and under any circumstance.
On March 12, 1993, North Korea upped the ante and announced that
it would withdraw from the NPT.5)
In the summer of 1993, the North
Koreans went further in their rejection of the NPT regime. They let the
surveillance cameras remotely placed on nuclear sites by the IAEA run
out of film.6)
IAEA officials immediately ordered North Korea to let inter-
national inspectors visit the testing sites.7)
With the support of the UN’s
Security Council, the IAEA turned to the United States and chose to rely
upon satellite intelligence technology in order to see what the North
Koreans were apparently attempting to hide. Spy photos and other intelli-
gence information were produced and showed that, at an undeclared but
suspected test-site, North Koreans were trying to hide nuclear reprocess-
ing equipment.8)
In May 1994, Pyongyang was about to allow UN and IAEA inspectors
to return to the nuclear sites when the crisis exploded again. Without any
prior notice, North Korea “shut-down its 25-megawatt reactor” and “with
IAEA personnel barred from the site, removed all of its fuel rods.”9)
This
second showdown with the IAEA and the UN was more serious than the
first one. Adhering to its rogue states doctrine, the United States indicat-
ed that it would ask the UN to impose economic sanctions on North Korea.
If such sanctions were imposed, Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader,
would be likely to respond by using military means, probably directed at
South Korea.
Beyond the issue over the shutdown of the nuclear reactor and North
Korea’s compliance with its international obligations, the Spring 1994 cri-
sis between North Korea and the international community had another
dimension. For the UN and most of its member states (particularly
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 43
IAEA to periodically verify declared nuclear facilities. To facilitate those inspections, the
country party to such an agreement is required to provide a list of its nuclear testing sites.
This agreement also entitles the IAEA to monitor a country’s nuclear resources and uses
by any means deemed appropriate and recognized as such by the NPT.
5) Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign
Policy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), p. 139.
6) Tim Weiner, “Shift on Cameras by North Koreans,” New York Times, October 30, 1993.
7) Michael Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Non Proliferation (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 93.
8) Ibid., p. 95.
9) Klare, supra note 5, p. 140.
6. Western states), the crisis was about imposing transparency and clarity in
a country that was hermetically sealed from the rest of the world and that
stubbornly refused to abide by the new post-Cold War principles of good
conduct of the international community. The main issue with North Korea
was undoubtedly nuclear non-proliferation. But the desire to open North
Korea to full transparency offered an extended perspective on this diplo-
matic crisis. Opening up North Korea or forcing transparency there could
become the springboard for this nation’ s final acceptance of the newly
declared and apparently universally unchallenged neoliberal and democ-
ratic rules of governance of the post-Cold War world.10)
The strategy of opening North Korea to the outside world, starting
with its nuclear program, instead of isolating it, explains many of the
diplomatic maneuvers that took place throughout the summer of 1994.
Among the many diverse negotiators who came to Pyongyang in 1994 to
try to resolve the stalemate, American emissary Bill Taylor was, if not the
most successful of all Western envoys, at least the most symbolic one in
the context of global transparency.11)
Hoping to add to the visibility of
North Korea (only partially achieved by means of satellite surveillance),
Taylor had the support of the US administration and, more importantly,
brought with him international television crews such as CNN and NHK.
These media were able to broadcast some of the first scenes of North
Korean life that could ever be seen by the rest of the world. Although
these TV images had a great commercial impact on the networks that
were given the opportunity to capture them, they also played a symbolic
part in the overall surveillance and transparency regime of UN-sponsored
governance in North Korea.
In October 1994, Pyongyang finally appeared to bend to international
surveillance pressures by signing what was referred to as an “Agreed
Framework” with the United States. This agreement imposed three major
conditions to North Korea in exchange for US promises of technical and
economic assistance. Specifically, North Korea would freeze its existing
nuclear activities; it would not build new reactors; and finally it would
allow the return of regular inspections by the IAEA and the UN.12)
In the
fall of 1994, after a crisis of eighteen months and the work of a long and
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10) For more on this dimension, see Debrix, supra note 2, pp. 69-71.
11) Mazarr, supra note 7, pp. 153-4.
12) Klare, supra note 5, p. 173.
7. sustained disciplinary surveillance aimed at opening up North Korea to
the rest of the world, the infiltration of global tendencies and values had
taken a significant step forward, specifically but not exclusively in the
case of North Korean nuclear compliance. Even though since then, and
interestingly as a result of the abandonment in the late-1990s of this UN
regime of surveillance, the North Korean nation has once again rejected
the basic norms of order/governance of the international community, it is
perhaps more than ever placed in a relationship of dependence vis-à-vis
the rest of the world as it periodically raises challenges to the United
States, Japan, and South Korea in an attempt to try to force Western
states into bilateral economic assistance. To some degree, in North Korea,
UN-sponsored surveillance showed in the early to mid 1990s that, given
certain conditions, it could facilitate international governance.
2. Surveillance, Discipline, and International Governance
Governance has been understood by some scholars as “the establish-
ment and operation of social institutions—in other words, sets of rules,
decision-making procedures, and programmatic activities that serve to
define social practices and to guide the interactions of those participating
in these practices.”13)
Governance is not an act of unilateral power or cen-
tralized control that is applied to governed subjects (states or individuals)
by means of force or violence. It is rather the establishment of a complex
and intricate web of interaction and interdependence between individual
units and institutional elements that come to form a society. Governance
is a horizontal mode of organization that does not require vertical struc-
tures of power to produce social relations.
Governance, it has been argued, can be “without government.”14)
But
it cannot be without discipline. Governance, national or international, is
more likely to take place and offer durable social structures when the cen-
tralized exercise of power and control is done away with and disciplinary
mechanisms take its place. What governance requires is discipline or, as
Michel Foucault suggested, the deployment of three complementary prin-
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 45
13) Oran Young, “Rights, Rules and Resources in World Affairs,” in Global Governance:
Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience (ed., by Oran Young, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 4.
14) James Rosenau and Ernst Otto Czempiel (eds), Governance without Government: Order
and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
8. ciples of (disciplinary) social ordering: clarity, docility and utility.15)
The
application of these principles is what Foucault called “governmentality.”
Governmentality is the discovery and operationalization of “techniques of
instrumental rationality to the arts of everyday management.”16)
To pro-
duce governance as governmentality, what is required is the ability to
devise the appropriate mechanisms of docility and utility that will manip-
ulate the social elements in need of management (the governed subjects)
in such a way that their differences, their proliferation, and possibly their
disorder will be effectively regulated. In this manner, subjects can be gov-
erned without having to be tortured, repressed, physically marked or even
killed.
In the early-1990s, as practices of global governance turned to the
United Nations, governmentality and disciplinarity became major comple-
mentary modes of social organization in the international community.
This took place mostly through the exercise of UN surveillance as wit-
nessed in North Korea. In North Korea (but also in Iraq throughout much
of the 1990s), the UN sought to achieve order for the purported benefit of
the international community by imposing a regime of calculable distribu-
tions. As has been clear since the creation of this international institution,
the United Nations does not possess the ability to enforce international
rules, procedures and principles on its own.17)
The UN does not have
autonomous power but, rather, is dependent upon the amount of force and
intent that its members are willing to provide. Yet, the UN in the early
1990s possessed another important form of power, what can be called dis-
ciplinary power. The UN cannot force states into abiding by the principles
of international law supposedly recognized by the international communi-
ty by using traditional (military) means. But it can place some states (the
so-called rogues) in a programmed, controlled, and managed international
environment where these “outlaw” states are deterred from fulfilling their
self-interested objectives. This is what the UN and its agencies did in
North Korea in the early 1990s. In the early years of the past decade, the
UN could thus be viewed as a “monitory regime” of international gover-
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS46 【Vol.3
15) Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage
Books, 1979).
16) Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality
(ed., by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991), p. 102.
17) Debrix, supra note 2, pp. 16-7 on this matter.
9. nance or, perhaps, what one might call a “disciplinary regime” of gover-
nance.18)
Disciplinary governance, through its insidious power of surveillance,
has the distinct advantage of keeping members of the international com-
munity satisfied by giving the appearance that the “outlaws” have been
tamed, but not directly violated. The dilemma over forceful intervention
and/or disciplinary governance was clearly demonstrated in another test
case of post-Cold War governance. In Somalia (from 1992 to 1994), the UN
chose to abandon its surveillance mode of governance used in Iraq and
North Korea, and opted instead for a more direct modality of governance
through peacekeeping interventions that, in the end, proved costly and
fatal. Today, Somalia, instead of being closely monitored and contained,
remains as disorderly as it was prior to the joint UN-US intervention. The
issue that the UN was sent to solve in Somalia was no doubt of a different
nature than that of the weapons of mass destruction it could more easily
control by using disciplinary power and surveillance in North Korea and
Iraq. But what the UN lost in Somalia was a clear sense of utility or, to
put it differently, an adequate notion of how regimes of docility can be put
to the service of international utility.19)
In a way, this is perhaps also some-
thing that the United States has lost track of since the arrival of George
W. Bush in the White House in 2001 (as we will see below).
Ⅱ. THE UNITED NATIONS AS “VANISHING MEDIATOR”
From the mid-1990s on, UN surveillance as a modality of global gov-
ernance became widely discredited. Although not unsuccessful at imple-
menting its postulated goals of uniformity, docility, and disciplinary power
(as described above), surveillance as governance fell victim of what was
believed to be the UN’s inherent failures at keeping and maintaining the
peace in places like Somalia and Bosnia. As the end of the decade
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 47
18) This notion of the UN as a “monitory or disciplinary regime” is derived from Nicholas Onuf’s
work. See Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and
International Relations (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 146-7.
19) Thus, although contemporary to the Somalia intervention, the North Korean and Iraqi
operations by the UN and its agencies have demonstrated the disciplinary potential of the
UN whereas, by contrast, “the international community’s efforts in Somalia clarify UN
limitations.” See Thomas G. Weiss, “Overcoming the Somalia Syndrome —‘Operation
Rekindle Hope’?” Global Governance, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1995), pp. 171-87.
10. approached, member states of the UN, starting with the United States,
began to withdraw their support and funding, refused to provide more
peacekeeping troops, and called for the removal of Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali whose initial Agenda for Peace was thought (not
incorrectly) to have been the new blueprint for UN action in the early
1990s. Suffering from what some scholars termed a “Somalia syndrome,”20)
the UN’s operations of global security and governance were suddenly in
crisis. As Western states were more interested in calling in NATO for
forceful interventions (as finally happened in Bosnia after 1993, and later
in Kosovo in 199921)
), the UN’s mission of surveillance slowly but surely
receded. Instead, the UN practice of governance was suddenly restricted
to post-conflict nation rebuilding, police management, and humanitarian
operations where the UN’s logistical and institutional apparatus, its abili-
ty to work closely with NGOs, and the know-how of some of its specialized
agencies (like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the
World Health Organization, and the Department for Humanitarian
Affairs) became desirable. While these UN agencies were able to conduct
important tasks in a perspective of global governance, their operations
were generally secondary to interventions by other institutions (NATO in
particular) or to conflict (as happened in Rwanda in 1994). Thus, the gen-
eral sense was that UN peacekeeping and its accompanying surveillance
and disciplinary machinery had been relegated to secondary or tertiary
ranks in the mid to late 1990s perspective on international governance.
This change of attitude on the part of mostly Western states toward
the UN had important practical consequences for all sorts of humanitari-
an actors, and NGOs in particular. From now on, before assuming a pro-
tective role for NGOs, the UN was more likely to be seen as an agent that
would let a humanitarian situation unfold. Only after NGOs had inter-
vened in the first place and established a humanitarian basis, a modicum
of humanitarian governance in places in crisis, the UN would then finally
consider whether or not to provide some of its logistical and normative
support, but only so long as this could take place in a fairly risk-free fash-
ion. This was clearly evidenced in November 1996 when a humanitarian
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS48 【Vol.3
20) Weiss, ibid., pp. 171-87.
21) For more on NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, see Audrey Lustgarten and François Debrix,
“The Role of the Media in Monitoring International Humanitarian Law: The Case of
Kosovo,” Peace and Change, Vol. 30 (forthcoming 2005).
11. crisis involving Hutu refugees who had fled from Rwanda ignited in Eastern
Zaire where they were cramped in camps riddled with cholera and were
the target of many periodic attacks at the hand of Tutsi populations from
Zaire. Instead of exerting its post-conflict mission or perhaps using disci-
plinary surveillance as it had done before in North Korea in the early
1990s, and thus sending the message that it was unwilling to let future
humanitarian tragedies go unchecked, the United Nations instead let
some of its own humanitarian agencies but mostly various NGOs assess
the situation first and then provide first-aid relief under the spotlights of
Western cameras.22)
According to this new scenario that unfolded in
Rwanda and Zaire, NGOs were sent first and, subsequently, judging from
the signals that the NGOs displayed, the UN Security Council chose
whether it was appropriate for the UN to act or not. The UN of course
decided not to intervene, and thus only superficially contributed to a
vision of joint UN-NGOs governance as humanitarian assistance in
Rwanda in 1994 first, and later in Eastern Zaire throughout November-
December 1996.
In practice, the Rwandan crisis of 1994 and its extension into Zaire in
1996 actually contributed to the development of a new but unexpected
conceptual model of UN-NGOs interaction and governance. What can be
called a “substitute theory” of non-governmental humanitarian gover-
nance emerged then.23)
Based on the example provided by NGOs’ actions
in Rwanda and Zaire, this approach suggests that, in the absence of an
effective, prompt, and disciplinarily effective UN response to what is
determined to be a severe humanitarian crisis, it is up to specific NGOs,
the most appropriate for the specific tasks at hand, to meet the basic
requirements of international humanitarian governance. NGOs’ humani-
tarian actions could of course still be commensurate with the UN’s and in
general Western states’ post-Cold War governance policies. But the “sub-
stitute theory” model implies that the UN would let NGOs assume the
majority of the humanitarian governance task. This is precisely what the
UN did in Rwanda and Zaire by letting medical NGOs take care of and
report about the situation both in the first months of the conflict (April-
May, 1994) and later all the way until the end of 1996 with the refugee sit-
uation in Zaire. This “substitute theory” of NGOs’ interventionism and
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 49
22) I recount this episode in Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping (supra note 2), pp. 203-4.
23) Ibid., pp. 202-3.
12. governance suggests that, if UN-led governance (by means of peacekeep-
ing or surveillance) cannot effectively impose order in what have been rec-
ognized to be troubled regions of the globe, other agents that are less tied
to the politics of sovereign states and are technologically more flexible can
perform a similar task more swiftly and often more adequately. In other
words, other international agents can implement global governance in
practice in a more effective and less politically ambiguous fashion than
the UN.
Practical global governance by NGOs in the mid to late 1990s and the
simultaneous incapacity of the UN to act and impose regimes of discipli-
nary power and surveillance finally allow us to critically reconsider the
role and place of the UN in global governance designs at the end of the
twentieth century. Based on the developments presented above, I argue
that the UN in the late 1990s moved from being an agent of governance
through surveillance to being what I have called a “vanishing mediator.”24)
“Vanishing mediation” is an important notion to understand the symbolic
and strategic position of the UN in the late 1990s. The concepts of “vanish-
ing mediation” and “vanishing mediator” are Hegelian notions that were
revived by critical political theorists Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zˇ izˇek in
the 1980s and 1990s.25)
A vanishing mediator is a person or institution
whose main purpose is to perform a specific intervention, to fulfill a par-
ticular ritualistic mission. The mission asked of the vanishing mediator is
to operate change, or at least, an “illusion” of change.26)
The vanishing
mediator is an agent that makes possible a rite of passage from an old
social or political system to a new one, but who also must disappear once
the new order or system it announces has been established.
The role and place of the UN in the symbolic and ideological landscape
of post-Cold War global governance in the late 1990s were those reserved to
a vanishing mediator. Once again, one must locate vanishing mediation in
the context of a rite of passage. The passage made possible by the UN was
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS50 【Vol.3
24) Ibid., pp. 205-7.
25) Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986, Vol. II, (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988). And Slavoj Zˇizˇek, For They Know not what They Do:
Enjoyment as a Political Factor, (New York: Verso, 1991); and Tarrying with the Negative:
Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).
26) Both Zˇizˇek and Jameson agree that the mission performed by the vanishing mediator is
first and foremost an exercise in illusion and make-believe. It does not matter if a change
of ideology actually takes place as long as an illusion of change takes place.
13. from one specific international order (the Cold War system of international
relations) to a new one (the New World Order of global governance champi-
oned by Western states after the Cold War). UN’s peacekeeping and sur-
veillance missions in the early 1990s were designed to be the selected
moments of change, the specifically visible and highly identifiable points
where the old anarchic and dualistic system of split hegemony (between
the East and the West) was to give way to a new visible neoliberal order of
governance controlled by liberal-capitalist transactions and liberal-democ-
ratic policies on a global scale. In an ideal perspective (which however did
not materialize), once the United Nations’ visually mobilized operations of
governance had achieved this goal (and had facilitated this passage to a
new order of global governance), the UN would then have had to simply
operate a “withdrawal into the sphere of privacy.”27)
The United Nations at the end of the 1990s was, however, a case of
failed vanishing mediation. As the Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda episodes
blatantly demonstrated, the United Nations’ operations of change were
unsuccessful efforts of vanishing mediation. The relative disappearance of
the United Nations after the Bosnian and Somali crises, and its replace-
ment by NATO (in Bosnia and later Kosovo) and NGOs (in Rwanda and
Zaire), do not correspond to the fate reserved to a successful vanishing
mediator. Rather, these cases evoked a different mode of disappearance or
vanishing. It was the disappearance of an international agent who had
become all-too visibly painful for many Western states (starting with the
United States) and their global governance designs. Vanishing mediation
was supposed to be based on the principle of the final invisibility of the
mediator, who then gives way to the high-visibility of newly created insti-
tutions, structures, and orders. In the case of UN governance in the 1990s,
the reverse actually took place. As the new international order was con-
fronted to the opposition of contingent singularities in regions and soci-
eties that the United Nations should have transformed, the UN’s failures
and operational difficulties became instead the most visible events. Global
governance in the late 1990s was less assured than ever as the pictures
from the UN’s failed missions in Somalia, Bosnia, and later Rwanda
demonstrated the artificiality and vulnerability of the early 1990s UN
governance system.
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 51
27) Zˇizˇek, supra note 25, p. 183.
14. Paradoxically, the failure of the UN’s mediation in the latter part of
the 1990s may have brought relief to the international organization.
Detached from its messianic role and its ideological positioning, the
United Nations in the late 1990s was no longer placed at the center of
global governance operations (surveillance, peacekeeping, humanitarian,
or otherwise). Boutros-Ghali’s early 1990s vision of a new global order
organized around a new disciplinarily powerful global UN diplomacy had
taken a back seat to other strategies of international compliance, inter-
ventionism, and governance.28)
Boutros-Ghali himself had been replaced
by Kofi Annan whom some considered to be a more pragmatic Secretary
General. At the end of the decade, if and when the UN was still to be used,
it was more as a vague and broad legal and institutional reference or
framework than as an effective agent or implementer of global gover-
nance. Accordingly, in the late 1990s, the UN was relegated by the inter-
national community to a less daring and less visible role, to the type of
place and function it was believed to occupy before the end of the Cold War
when it was far less proactive in matters of international order and gover-
nance. Interestingly, it would take the events of September 11 in the
United States, and several subsequent unilateral US military actions, to
give the United Nations a new global mission in the early twenty-first cen-
tury, a new role and place in the structure of global governance. I now
turn to these post-September 11 considerations and to their implications
for the UN and global governance.
Ⅲ. THE UNITED NATIONS AS A NEWLY EMPOWERED AGENT OF
CHANGE, RESISTANCE, AND GLOBAL JUSTICE?
A recent symposium in the American foreign policy journal The
Washington Quarterly on the role of the United Nations after September
11 and the war in Iraq suggested that the UN had four main tasks to
undertake in this new era. First, the UN should monitor and further solid-
ify the existing global non-proliferation regime for nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons of mass destruction.29)
Second, the UN should take the
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS52 【Vol.3
28) Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, 2nd ed. (New York: United Nations
Publication, 1995).
29) Richard Butler, “Improving Nonproliferation Enforcement,” The Washington Quarterly,
Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 133-45.
15. lead in the global struggle against terrorism.30)
Third, the UN should
update and improve its post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building
operations.31)
And fourth, the UN should expand its existing mandates to
fight the spread of global epidemics such as AIDS for example.32)
The par-
ticipants in this symposium were rather upbeat and optimistic about the
UN’s ability to perform such new or renewed tasks. Although none of the
participants in the Washington Quarterly symposium directly said so, they
all assumed that the United Nations after September 11 had rediscovered
a new sense of hope and purpose. The UN, these scholars implied, was
once again capable of tackling some of today’s main obstacles to the real-
ization of global governance in the twenty-first century. What caused such
a drastic change of attitude on the part of UN experts? What suddenly
allowed the United Nations to escape its late 1990s status as a “vanishing
mediator” to become a new beacon of international hope, justice, and glob-
al security?
While the specter of global terrorism may be a tempting answer to
such questions, a more appropriate answer has to do with the attitude and
beliefs of the United States vis-à-vis much of the world after September
11, or perhaps since George W. Bush began his term in the office of the
presidency in January 2001. Even before he made it an official doctrine of
US foreign policy, Bush’s views on foreign relations were based on the
ideas of preemption and offensive engagement of potential enemies.33)
Contrasting the strategies of containment of rogue states and constructive
engagement of foreign leaders developed by his predecessor Bill Clinton,
Bush placed the United States on a path toward unilateralism. As
European Union Commissioner for external relations Chris Patten has
noted, even before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 53
30) Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, “Combating Terrorism,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26,
No. 4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 163-76.
31) William Durch, “Picking up the Peaces: The UN’s Evolving Postconflict Roles,” The
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 195-210.
32) See J. Stephen Morrison and Todd Summers, “United to Fight HIV/AIDS?,” The
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 177-93.
33) A recent justification and defense of the new American doctrine of preemptive diplomacy
and war is David Frum and Richard Perle’s book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on
Terror (New York: Random House, 2003). The doctrine was elaborated in a 2002 document
emanating from the White House. See The National Security Strategy of the United States
of America, September 2002, at <http:// www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/print/
20020912-1.html>.
16. under Bush was functioning in a “unilateralist overdrive” mode.34)
Former
French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine referred to this new US foreign pol-
icy posture as a matter of self-interested hyper-puissance or hyper-power.35)
The term “hyper-power” is well chosen. Hyper-power suggests that,
once control and domination have been achieved and a large part of the
world’s territory has been carved out to form this superpower’s main
geopolitical and economic zone, this unchallenged super-state does not
stop here. Instead, this state must constantly seek new territorial, politi-
cal, and economic opportunities, and going to war is its main continuous
strategy of foreign policy.36)
A hyper-power is thus akin to ancient
Mediterranean and Far-Eastern military empires, always preoccupied
with having to fight the next war, and desperately seeking new enemies.
The war on terror since the aftermath of September 11, 2001 further
boosted US unilateralism. As is now well known, the United States did
not wait for the UN’s approval to launch a war against the Taliban-led
regime in Afghanistan in October-November 2001. Although this interven-
tion received the overall support and legal backing (a posteriori though) of
the international community and the United Nations, it is worth noting
that the United States first chose to act, and only subsequently sought to
obtain legal validation for this military intervention. The United Nations
had no difficulty accepting the US claim of self-defense against the
Taliban, but this move was already indicative of Bush’s post-September 11
foreign policy preferences. If anybody had any doubt whatsoever as to the
new approach to US foreign policy and military action, the decision to go
to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on the grounds that he was still
developing a program of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that
the UN’s inspection regime had been incapable of deterring him would
confirm the newly established trend. After months of unsuccessful
attempts at trying to mobilize UN member-states, particularly inside the
Security Council, against Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003, the United
States, with only the help of those other states “willing” to go along, final-
ly launched its military campaign against Saddam’s regime in March
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS54 【Vol.3
34) As quoted in Thomas Weiss, “The Illusion of UN Security Council Reform,” The
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn 2003), p. 156.
35) Quoted in Weiss, ibid., p. 152.
36) Critical philosopher Slavoj Zˇizˇek has recently developed a rather similar argument. See
Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (London: Verso, 2004), pp. 19-23.
17. 2003. Against the will of the UN expressed at the Security Council (where
several permanent veto members refused to vote in favor of a military
intervention), the United States nonetheless chose to attack Iraq to, as
Bush would claim, put an end to Saddam Hussein’s program of WMDs, to
break the suspected link (since then discredited) between the Iraqi gov-
ernment and al Qaeda, and to restore democracy to the Iraqi people.
The UN’s standoff in late 2002 and early 2003 against this unilateral
US decision to go to war in Iraq and not allow the UN inspectors more
time to complete their investigation was a bold and unexpected move on
the part of the UN. Although this move was spearheaded by some crucial
member-states (and not by the UN itself), it is symptomatic that these
states’ opposition to US ambitions took place at the United Nations and
within the context of the UN system. By making their claim for the exten-
sion of the inspections regime in Iraq and their larger point about US
hyper-power designs at the UN, these member-states like France,
Germany, Russia, and to a lesser extent China appeared to have the sup-
port of a majority of states and people in the international community (US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that the United States repre-
sented an unprecedented international coalition notwithstanding). By
mobilizing the UN in this kind of endeavor, these states also were able to
cloak their own (often self-interested) preferences behind a veil of global
legitimacy and legality, something which the United States and its few
allies could not really claim as they ignored the will of the United Nations.
While many in the United States, particularly in conservative foreign
policy and national security circles, argued that the inability of the United
Nations to authorize the intervention of the United States in Iraq was fur-
ther proof that the international organization had failed and was for sure
irrelevant in matters of international security and global governance,37)
the outcome was strangely and interestingly positive for the UN. Within a
few months of the beginning of the conflict in Iraq, the United States
found itself in the position of actually having to ask the UN for assistance
and support. With a protracted conflict in Iraq on their hands, and having
to face guerrilla and terrorist attacks almost daily, the US-imposed and
run administration of Paul Bremer and the US military command soon
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 55
37) See, for example, the views of Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol in their book The War
over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission (San Francisco: Encounter Books,
2003).
18. started to realize that restoring order and establishing democracy (not to
mention finding WMDs) after the removal of Saddam Hussein was going
to be much more arduous than they had anticipated. Involved in a vast
post-conflict reconstruction operation for which they were ill-equipped in
the first place (not enough troops, not enough planning, not enough expe-
rience in this domain), US troops found themselves in a situation some-
what reminiscent of what had happened to them some ten years earlier in
Somalia where US special forces had been sent to perform peace-making
operations for which their traditional offensive training had not prepared
them.38)
Thus, and quite ironically, a few months only after rebuffing the
United Nations by deciding to go to war in Iraq, the United States went
back to the UN and asked the international institution to provide neces-
sary post-conflict rebuilding assistance for both Iraq and Afghanistan. The
United Nations, as the United States’ insistence, returned its personnel to
Baghdad in late Spring 2003 (the UN had moved most of its non-essential
and non-Iraqi personnel to neighboring countries immediately before the
first US strikes on Baghdad in March 2003). In Baghdad, under the super-
vision of UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN established its
post-conflict reconstruction headquarters. Working closely with the US
administration of Paul Bremer, the UN took charge of rebuilding public
facilities (schools, hospitals, roads), restoring basic public amenities
(water, electricity), and making sure that food and medical supplies
reached those Iraqis most in need. Interestingly though, the UN was by
and large kept away from discussions regarding the political reconstruc-
tion of Iraq. In this domain, as well as with the issue of creating new Iraqi
police forces, the United States and Great Britain still retained much con-
trol over most crucial decisions, for the time being at least.
Things took a dramatic turn on August 19, 2003. On that day, the UN
headquarters in a Baghdad hotel were destroyed by a terrorist attack. 21
UN officials died, including top UN official Vieira de Mello. In the days
that followed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan decided to withdraw all
UN presence from Iraq, declaring the situation unsafe for any UN person-
nel and unfit for any UN post-conflict reconstruction effort. As of October
2003, all UN non-Iraqi staff was removed from Iraq.39)
After the late 2002
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38) I have written on this matter in Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping, Chapter 3.
39) See “UN Won’t Return to Iraq until Security Assured: Annan,” Agence France Presse,
January 28, 2004, no page given.
19. and early 2003 diplomatic standoff at the UN Security Council against the
US push for war, these August 19, 2003 attacks on the UN represent a
second major turning point in post-September 11 US-UN relations. After
the refusal to sanction the US military intervention of March 2003, the
UN revealed a strangely unexpected capacity of resistance and opposition
to US unilateralism. This resistance at the Security Council though did
not prevent the United States from launching its military campaign. Still,
seeds of a different UN attitude were sown in the winter of 2002-03. The
fall of 2003 would further confirm this change of perspective on the part of
the UN, and on the part of many states in the international community
now willing to work with and within the United Nations structure to chal-
lenge US hyper-power, over Iraq mostly. Indeed, after the August 19
attacks and the subsequent pullout of UN personnel, and with a political
and military situation fast deteriorating in Iraq and to a lesser extent in
Afghanistan too, the United States started to grow desperate for UN sup-
port and assistance. With political pressures inside the United States
mounting, the US president began to indicate that the United States
would be willing to relinquish authority to an Iraqi-elected government as
early as June or July 2004. But, if the United States were to relinquish
authority to a democratically elected Iraqi government, much reconstruc-
tive work would have to be performed. Political institutions would have to
be created. A culture of democracy and participation would have to be
instilled. A new Iraqi constitution would have to be crafted. And a general
sense of social justice, fairness, and political security would have to be
restored. Clearly, the mostly US military occupation of Iraq was and still
is ill-suited to allow these kind of political transitions to take place. By
contrast, the UN has both the experience and the global legitimacy to per-
form these tasks of political governance for the new Iraq. In the late
1990s, as previously indicated, in places like Kosovo or East-Timor for
example, the UN was mainly used for democracy-instituting and post-con-
flict reconstruction tasks. Unfortunately for the United States after
October 2003, the UN was no longer present in Iraq to provide similar ser-
vices. Thus, once again in a fairly ironic twist, the United States in the fall
of 2003 found itself desperately needing the UN in Iraq.
After several months of negotiation, compromising rhetoric, and
appeasing discourse on the part of the Bush administration, the United
Nations was officially asked to return to Iraq in early 2004, mostly in
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 57
20. order to help prepare the return to Iraq’s self-rule scheduled to take place
on July 1, 2004. The United Nations, in the person of its Secretary
General, replied on January 27, 2004 that Iraq was still not sufficiently
secure for the UN to return. Kofi Annan further stated that the UN could
not return to Baghdad until “appropriate security measures” were provid-
ed by the US command.40)
If the United States wanted to help restore an
Iraqi-based (and supposedly sovereign) government in Iraq, the Americans
and their allies would have to do it by themselves. This was clearly a seri-
ous rebuff for the United States, and the Bush administration in particu-
lar that, as Columbia University Middle Eastern Studies Professor Gary
Sick recently put it, was “extremely anxious to [now] have the UN play a
constructive role.” This “constructive role,” Sick continued, was two-sided:
first, the presence of the UN could provide the United States with “a
degree of legitimacy that a lot of Iraqis do not feel applies to the
Americans alone;” and second, the UN would bring “a tremendous amount
of technical expertise in these transitions from one form of government to
another.”41)
More importantly perhaps, the UN’s apparent refusal to return and
deploy a full-blown peacekeeping mission in Spring 2004 was a direct blow
to the United States’ ambitions as a hyper-power. The United States
under Bush had chosen Iraq as a test case for its new policy of global uni-
lateralism. American unilateralism is the United States’ post-September
11 model of global governance, one which relies on military superiority
and the spread of US ideas of democracy, free trade, and institutions
building. According to this uniquely American model of global governance,
there is no place for any international agent other than the United States
itself and a few of its friends and allies (the so-called coalition of the will-
ing). Certainly, there is supposed to be no place for the United Nations in
this new unilateralist global governance model. Yet, in complete contradic-
tion to this alleged model, the one place where this new approach was sup-
posed to be launched for all of the world to see-Iraq-turns out to be a land
where the United States has no choice but to call upon the UN for help.
Both to gain legitimacy and to provide the necessary “know-how,” the UN
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40) Ibid., no page given.
41) See “Interview: Gary Sick Discusses US Attempts to Convince the United Nations to
Return to Iraq,” National Public Radio, Transcript of “Day to Day” Show with Host Alex
Chadwick, January 19, 2004, no page given.
21. was called back in repeatedly throughout the Spring of 2004 to help boost
the United States’ so-called unilateralist governance operations in Iraq.
Interestingly though, in response to such a desperate appeal on the part of
the United States, the UN chose to resist, defy, relent, and thus endlessly
postponed the moment when it would return to help in Iraq. While one
could claim that this attitude on the part of the UN has been childish,
petty, vengeful, and selfish (as many Iraqi people have been suffering), it
is nonetheless partly justified. Legally, the United Nations did not con-
done the US intervention in the first place. It is technically under no oblig-
ation to intervene on behalf of a member state that did not follow the
proper course of international law and whose actions may have posed a
larger threat to international security. Moreover, the UN can remind the
United States and some of its allies involved that, as occupation forces or
administrators of another sovereign state’s territory (and, as of August
2004, the United States is still largely present in Iraq through its mili-
tary), they primarily have the responsibility to maintain order, security
and peace. Finally, the UN did stay in Iraq and in fact sent more of its
administrative and technical personnel once the military campaign of
March-April 2003 was over. The UN worked in Iraq and stayed there on
behalf of the Iraqi people until the occupation and administration forces
could no longer guarantee the safety of UN’s staff. The UN has a duty to
the Iraqi people, but also to the people of the world represented by the UN
personnel who are from all member-states.
In any case, the UN’s resistance to US governance designs in Iraq is
likely to usher in a new era for the international organization. As of the
writing of this article, the UN continues on this resistant path. Recently,
the UN indicated to the United States that Iraq was not ready to hold
democratic elections as early as the summer of 2004 as the United States
had initially hoped.42)
Instead, the earliest possibility for elections in Iraq
has been set for January 2005. Moreover, despite Bush’s half-hearted
acceptance of the fact that he would need the support of the international
community after all in order to stabilize Iraq (and that he probably would
have to work through and with the UN to achieve this), the United
Nations is still not back in Iraq. Now that technically Iraq has been given
its sovereignty back (in principle at least), it is possible that the UN might
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 59
42) See, for example, Betsy Pisik, “UN to Study Elections in Iraq,” The Washington Times,
January 27, 2004. Online edition, no page given.
22. return sooner than it wished. Still, the developments of the past six
months in Iraq further demonstrate the unwillingness of the UN to cut
corners on post-conflict reconstruction and governance issues. If recon-
struction and governance are to take place in Iraq (and popular elections
are no doubt a crucial step in this direction), these need to be performed
well and professionally. A half-baked form of governance and democratic
transition, quickly put together and imposed onto the Iraqi people to allow
US troops to escape the Iraqi quagmire as soon as possible (as it looks like
was the main American impetus in June-July 2004) is unlikely to be satis-
factory for the UN.
CONCLUSION
After September 11 but, more importantly, after the US intervention
in and occupation of Iraq, the United Nations has discovered a new global
symbolic and political function. This function is still about global gover-
nance, even if, for the moment at least, the UN is not the main agent of
governance. The UN’s new role is to resist, challenge, and at times coun-
teract US unilateral and hyper-powerful global governance schemes,43)
not
so much for the sake of being anti-American (as many US neo-conserva-
tives believe), but rather because, in Iraq primarily, the US model of uni-
lateralist governance has proven to be unsuccessful, warlike, and possibly
dangerous and unjust to many people in Iraq and beyond (and in the
United States too). Obviously, the United Nations is not alone in this task,
as many of its member states, openly or more secretly, have supported this
kind of approach. Let us be clear. I am in no way advocating that the UN
should automatically reject some of the ideas and principles that the
United States believes in. Fundamentally, the United Nations, like the
United States, believes in democracy, human rights, security, and order.
And the UN has also demonstrated that it is willing to develop ways of
globally fighting terrorism wherever and whenever it must be opposed.
But it seems also that the UN has made it clear in the recent past that it
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS60 【Vol.3
43) International Peace Academy President David Malone detects a similar attitude on the
part of the UN. Malone suggests that the challenge for the UN is to see whether it can con-
tinue to “engage the United States, modulate its exercise of power, and discipline its
impulses.” See David Malone, “Conclusions,” in The Future of the UN Security Council
(ed., by David Malone, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publisher, forthcoming 2004); also quoted
in Thomas Weiss, “The Illusion of UN Security Council Reform,” p. 156.
23. will be unwilling to accept and perhaps will be downright opposed to the
idea of letting unilateral global governance in the hands of one single mili-
tary power (even if it is the world’s super-hegemon or hyper-power) go
unchallenged and uncriticized, and particularly when such a unilateralist
approach to world governance does not result in the implementation of
greater local and global justice. In the early twenty-first century, I would
argue that this kind of UN, with this type of resistant attitude, has more
to offer to the international community and to global governance practices
than it may have had in the entire previous decade.
The United Nations and Global Governance（DEBRIX）2005】 61
