United (Insignificant) Nations: Wars Will Be Increasingly Harder to Stop in the Future

Written by: Dean Džebić

Describing the complexity of the overall reconceptualization of war as a sociological phenomenon, Robert D. Kaplan published an article in the American magazine The Atlantic in 1994, titling it "The Coming Anarchy."

In that text, he problematizes the issues of achieving lasting alliances as well as the increasingly prevalent fluid alliances, precisely in the disintegrating Yugoslavia—fluid alliances where yesterday's enemies become allies. Kaplan also points out that in the future, it will be increasingly difficult to stop conflicts due to the fickleness of commanders on the ground, who are often, out of spite, unwilling to comply with the command structure and chain of command.

Whether due to the fanfared triumph of realism as a school of international relations or the opening of a new epoch of human civilization to be crowned by some new doctrine or school of thought, the world is sliding into a world war of local wars. In fact, as an analogous phenomenon to global warming and rising sea levels, the thawing of frozen conflicts brought as a dowry by the post-Cold War era will produce floods of blood over which the United Nations will become an increasingly ephemeral factor.

The Security Council as a Relic

With its discriminatory and triumphalist foundations, the United Nations Security Council represents the most powerful international council that is outdated and obsolete, given that it was created under conditions of the complete and unconditional capitulation of Nazi Germany and Japan. As an institution created for the 20th century, the Security Council entered the 21st century as a truncheon of a unipolar world that broke not in half but crosswise along its length, separating former ideological opponents. With the emergence of BRICS, the unipolar world did not disappear; rather, the preconditions were created for a long and arduous battle over who would bypass all the tenets of international humanitarian law faster and more easily.

Ultimately, the turning point from which the Security Council began to lose its significance was the implementation of Operation "Allied Force," i.e., the bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, namely Serbia and Montenegro. In the end, the disintegration of Yugoslavia gradually, as if by a textbook, drew out all the flaws and shortcomings of the collective decision-making of the Security Council, in which member states, in a status quo according to the veto power, observed the disintegration of the only remaining multinational, federal state in Europe. Simply put, the Security Council showed a clear division between polished European diplomacy as an aristocratic expression of the old continent and American pragmatism, which sought to iron out a crumpled Europe by bundling it together without any remaining major enemy to justify it.

Ultimately, the UN in those 1990s behaved like a parent who knows how to punish post festum, never preventively and on time, except in the case of expelling Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait.

The bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an impudently belated attempt to iron out all the shortcomings of the most significant international forum, which overnight became a paper dragon.

If, in the end, the UN was not capable of successfully imposing, establishing, and building peace in wars between states, the emergence of non-state actors further undermined the success of these processes. Above all, the diplomatic and insurmountable belief that one does not negotiate with terrorists was violated, all the way to Oslo in 1993 and the attempt to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Even then, the negotiation pattern was the line of least resistance, negotiating over things on which agreement could be relatively easily reached. Not entirely marginal issues, but only partially essential and long-lasting.

In fact, in the rounds of negotiations, the Oslo Accords were supposed to be supplemented by future agreements that would regulate the issue of two states on one territory, but this has not happened to this day.

On the other hand, attempts to create a regional security complex in the Middle East have always remained stuck in the particular or national interests of countries that were more inclined to negotiate bilaterally. Empirically, the UN was unable to understand many conflicts that national borders unsuccessfully contained and which actually spilled over into the region.

Additionally, the operation of UN forces on the ground, given the consensus of the General Assembly and the Security Council, was and remains a point of contention. American troops were never commanded by a European commander, while European troops were often and customarily commanded by American officers. These and such elite-educated officers are very often powerless in negotiations with African warlords and lords of death who, leading their tribal armies, do not recognize any level of the UN's international peacekeeping complex. On the other hand, UN negotiations in the Middle East were often disrupted by under-the-table deals with leaders of terrorist groups.

The Blackmail Position of UN Member States

According to current understandings of the future of modern conflicts, sources of drinking water and fertile land that feed millions are becoming one of the exceptional causes for conflicts. Of course, this challenge will greatly determine the regions of the Sahel, Central Asia, and Africa in general, given that drawing demarcation lines in such conflicts will mean depriving millions of drinking water or forcibly displacing them. Only to again, as displaced persons, remain under the jurisdiction of the UN, which deals with migration within a very difficult framework. Ultimately, the UN budget is made up of states' national contributions and funds, which, in addition to the veto power, leaves a certain blackmail position.

In fact, until 1948, every peace agreement sponsored by the UN represented a palliative solution, far removed from the concept of positive peace, according to which a peace agreement does not contain within itself the seeds of a future conflict that some revanchism will initiate.

As one of Immanuel Kant's ideas and wishes, the United Nations is far from a successful project to which constructivists attribute the preservation of the world from nuclear Armageddon. Divided and increasingly insignificant, the United Nations in the Ukrainian-Russian war has again become a silent observer and an artillery mathematician counting the daily toll of shells and rockets between the warring parties. The United Nations earned this role of artillery mathematician during its engagement in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the tolerance of certain countries whose contingents developed intelligence networks for cooperation with the military and political leadership of the Republika Srpska.

Even in a rhetorical sense, the once powerful resonance of "UN intervention" now seems such that no one even invokes that once powerful narrative anymore. The last and first time, 73 years ago in Korea, the UN acted and looked like an international forum for preserving peace and stability. No one is calling the UN to Ukraine, and there is no talk of Palestine and Israel. Just as blue helmets were tied to lampposts in 1994 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so today the United Nations remains with its hands tied.