United Nations Legitimacy

The United Nations (UN) is a multi-national body, which has the primary purpose of joining all of the world’s countries together with the set goal of maintaining peace and bringing development to the world. With this heavy task at hand the UN must have a sense of legitimacy. For without legitimacy any action or proposition set forward by this entity could be viewed as not having any real affect, or illegitimate. This sense of legitimacy, as argued in “Legitimacy, Power, and the Symbolic Life of the UN Security Council” by Ian Hurd, states that the legitimacy comes from the symbol that the worlds greatest powers come together in the Security Council for peace and positive development. I argue that the overall sense of legitimacy clearly comes from the Security Council and without it the UN would appear as an illegitimate body.

            The Security Council consists of 5 permanent states, The U.S, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France, with 10 other non-permanent states. This body’s purpose is to maintain global security when needed and to project force as well. The Security Council itself derives its power from the symbol of power and the projection of that power if needed. Within the Security Council 5 of its permanent members are the leading superpowers in the world the power is there. For if 5 nations that were not leading superpowers were permanent members of the Security Council it would lose legitimacy for the ability to project power would be lost. This projection of power in the Security council also leads to the overall legitimacy of the United Nations.  Without it any decree, or action for that matter, handed down by the United Nations would have no backing by powerful states to enforce it and therefore be illegitimate. It is power that fuels the United Nations legitimacy. 

Legitimacy of the Security Council

Legitimacy of the Security Council

International organizations and social institutions are powerful essentially due to the legitimacy of those institutions.  As argued in “Legitimacy, Power, and the Symbolic Life of the UN Security Council” by Ian Hurd, the legitimacy of these organizations, like the United Nations, stems from the strong belief in its symbols by powerful countries. The United Nations runs on symbols and the symbolic power of the Security Council leads states to compete for rewards with respect to the agenda, membership, and peacekeeping.

The struggles over the symbolic power of the Security Council are brought about by the issues and agenda, which carry significant symbolic weight. States often work hard to keep a favored issue on the agenda to receive the rewards of symbolism and recognition. These rewards of having issues on the agenda add to the power of the state. 

Since the council is an extremely influential body and the number of seats is relatively limited, just becoming a member of the Security Council adds a great deal of power to certain countries as well. All of this added power comes from the Security Council having a significant extent of legitimacy, because with organizations and institutions, legitimacy is essentially power.  The Security Council is solely responsible for preserving world peace, however, the council may not have been as successful without its legitimacy.  Countries will often make efforts to earn the approval of the council for operations to earn legitimacy and ultimately become more successful in what they are trying to accomplish. Without legitimacy, The Security Council would have to rely on persuading others by using force or threats, which would be a failure and wouldn’t exist.  The United Nations, and more specifically the Security Council, would not be as successful and powerful without legitimacy as well as the symbols, which add an overwhelming consensus of trust on the organizations.

Politically Neutral Organizations

In the wake of the devastating tragedies of World War II, the victorious countries decided that in order to maintain a lasting peace, regulating organizations would have to be created. Out of these revelations came organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the World Bank. These groups generally have the same goals set for them in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference. Without organizations outside the control of any one state government, it would be much harder to keep and maintain world order. These groups are successful at sustaining such an order because it is in a state of anarchy. Therefore, groups outside of any nation or state’s government can successfully control the political and economic world because said groups are politically neutral.

            In our state of anarchy, states compete to earn the status of hegemon. This competition can, as it has in the past, lead to struggles between countries that can damage our current state of relative peace. Although there is certainly not a worldwide ceasefire, there has been this relative peace, in other words, there have not been any more world wars among nations since the creation of such international organizations. Groups such as the United Nations were created to regulate world order and have been successful in doing so. When arguments arise between states, one course of action it to bring in an outside organization to mediate the struggle and help the different groups come to a resolution. An example of this situation is the recent conflict between the United States and Syria. Although there was debate on whether or not the United States should intervene in Syria and either punish them for crossing the “red line” by using chemical weapons or aid those affected by the use of such dangerous weapons, the final result was a compromise between nations that was mediated by the United Nations. The compromise came between the United States and Russia, an ally of Syria who did not want the United States to intervene in the country, and asked that the Syrian government hand over all chemical weapons to the United Nations to be safely destroyed. The Syrian government obliged, giving all chemical weapons to the United Nations where they were safely destroyed. This compromise would have been extremely difficult to reach had the United Nations, as a politically neutral organization, not helped create it. Had the world not been in a state of anarchy, a higher government supposedly would have dealt with conflicts such as this one, however, it is unlikely such a government would remain politically neutral. Anarchy is what allows conflicts such as these to arise, and international organizations are what prevent such conflicts from destroying our relative peace.

            In the case of the United States-Syria struggle, the United Nations proved to be extremely helpful in having all parties generate a compromise that would help solve the conflict. The anarchic system allows for such conflicts to come between states that are struggling for more power and organizations such as the United Nations, who are politically neutral, preventing said conflicts from destroying relative peace among the world order. If the world were not in anarchy, there is a possibility that a compromise would not have been reached between states because more players would have been looking for more self-gain.

The Failure of International Organizations

           In the era of globalization, economic, political, and social aspects of different states are able to connect faster than ever could have been imagined. The homogenization of markets and consumers across the globe due to global economic schemes has led many to believe that globalization is a roaring success of the twenty first century, but I would argue that these successes are lackluster and artificial. Despite the alleged “cooperation” between varieties of states under the guise of globalization, the fact remains that states will never be truly connected due to the inherent state of anarchy which defines the state system. States today are allied and partners in trade, but the innate sense of independence of each state upholds will never truly allow for a functioning international organization.

            While I fully concede that international organizations offer the ideal alignment of states and may provide grounds for state communication and understanding, what is ideal is not always realistic. States may play well together on the international playground when their goals are in accordance, but when the interests of individual states diverge and tension emerges, international organizations do little to act as a buffer or facilitate a compromise. From a realist point of view, each state acts in its own interest, to preserve and perpetuate their goals and successes. These goals are not tossed aside when a country aligns itself with a multi-state body such as the United Nations, and as a result, the core of these corporations may consist of many conflicting viewpoints and aspirations.

            One instance of this breakdown of multinational organization occurred very recently; in the wake of the Syrian use of chemical weapons, many state leaders found it necessary to intervene. Military intervention was proposed in order to respond to the breach of international law, and while many states supported this idea, Russia did not due to a strong alliance with Syria on account of the fact that Syria houses a Russian naval base. Due to the proportionally large amount of power which Russia possesses in the United Nations, they were able to veto any international attempt to right the wrongs of Syria. A terse standoff was reached within the United Nations as state interests conflicted, and in spite of this, the United States proposed acting in Syria on their own accord. Domestic politics aside, the willingness of the United States to act unilaterally truly portrays the fallible nature of international organizations. They are convenient for the states involved until the action they wish to see is not accomplished, and then the legitimacy and effectiveness of the international organization crumbles.

            While there is no denying that our increasingly connected world has an ability to foster relations between populations and economies, this is due to the fact that state interests are being met, not because state cooperation is on the rise. Though in theory international organizations are entirely plausible, and encourage communication and cooperation between states, the reality of the situation is that states seek to serve their self interests. The independent desires of each and every state cannot be met through one organization, and as a result these international organizations will never truly live up to their expectations. 

Legitimacy vs. Power

            Power is not something that is just automatically given to a person or organization, but rather it is developed through association with established sources of strength and legitimacy. Ian Hurd makes this same argument in his article, “Legitimacy, Power and the Symbolic life of the UN Security Council”. Hurd argues that it is through a state’s association with legitimate organizations and their behavior within the international system that they gain the respect of other actors and that symbols are in fact a source of power themselves. The United Nations Security Council is not an exception from this need for legitimacy and according to Hurd, “In the absence of legitimacy, the council would have to rely on outright coercion as it’s only instrument of power and would therefore cease to exist” (Hurd 2002). In an anarchic system, states are constantly yearning to gain any form of power but perhaps they are after the wrong thing. Perhaps the most valuable quality for a state to obtain is not raw power but rather legitimacy.

            Keeping this theory in mind, one can make the argument that power in fact does not exist without the appropriate amount of legitimacy associated with it. Hurd claims that power through association is equivalent to raw power, and even states with a minimal amount of influence in organizations are granted with respect and power in the international system. For example, Hurd states, “Even if the real increase in decision or influence due to winning a non-permanent seat is minimal, the jump in status is huge” (Hurd). Thus, in terms of the anarchic international system, legitimacy is power itself. Thinking logically, what does a strong military and large amount of capital mean to a nation that has absolutely no influence or respect among other nations in the world order? Legitimacy simply acts as the medium through which power can be distributed over nations. In a nutshell, legitimacy is the difference between a nation with the capability to become a world power and a nation that already is a world power. Considering that current international system is one of anarchic nature, states are constantly competing with each other for power and influence over one another. However, a state’s only true source of power over others is the respect and perhaps fear from its fellow actors in the system. Take the United States for example, we had the capital and military power necessary to be considered a world power, however we were not viewed as one until after WWII. Our involvement in the United Nations, an organization credited with supporting the allied powers in WWII, along with the military power displayed by dropping the atomic bombs on Japan legitimized the United States as a nation of force capable of world power. The lack of a single global hegemon provides for a system built upon a basis of competition among players, one that can only be won via the legitimacy to back up the raw power that a nation possesses.