Grading Badges
An odd article by Andrew Coyne in Maclean’s, in which he laments the usefulness of the United Nations and maintains that even if this country lost the Security Council seat because of the government’s pro-Israel stance, it was, in effect, a “badge of honour.” Judging from the response to his observation by highly capable professional diplomats, he might have stretched things a bit. But it was his following insight that raised a number of eyebrows:
What exactly do we have to show, after all, for our previous stints on the council? While we’re at it, what does the Security Council have to show for its 64-year existence?
These are words that sound more like those south of the border than in Canada. If Coyne desired, he could easily have laid out a litany of UN failures since it’s inception. Then again, other experts could have pointed out the many accomplishments that transpired under the Security Council watch and which the respected Canadian writer ignored.The real success of the United Nations can never be measured by what it’s done or failed to do. Those deeply involved in the world of diplomacy, with an experienced view of international complexity, hearken back to former Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s cogent observation of the international body: “The UN was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” This is a different measuring stick and tells a fascinating tale.The High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in 2005, concluded there have been fewer inter-state war in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. The UN helped to bring into being over 100 new states since 1945, most of them peacefully. Despite the brutal conflict in some wars, the Human Security Report of 2005 discovered that between the years 1992 and 2003, the number of armed conflicts globally declined by 40%. The number of battle deaths per year, and per conflict, has dropped dramatically since the UN was created. In 1950, as an example, the average conflict killed 38,000 individuals. That has now dropped 98% to 600.As stated in an earlier post, participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions has never been higher, with 98,000 men and women from 119 different nations (Canada is near the bottom in participation). It will take future research to determine just how many lives have been saved through the UN’s preventive measures, but it will likely number in the hundreds of thousands.What the United Nations has prevented is significant, and those bashing its existence often overlook the peace it has preserved. At times the UN’s caution has assisted Canada, as when, despite Stephen Harper’s steady pressure to engage, the Chretien government opted to stay out of George W. Bush’s Iraq war specifically because the United Nations refused to sanction it. It didn't provide this country just some diplomatic cover; it was, as we were soon to discover, the right thing to do.Coyne was correct in alluding to the organization’s pitfalls, but it would have been helpful had he also spoken of the numerous conflicts prevented and lives saved by the prudent deliberations of the Security Council. In losing our chance to have a seat on that Council, we missed a golden opportunity to assist in the prevention of future wars – hardly an exciting effect, but one highly characteristic of Canada, and certainly qualified to be a badge of honour.