An international panchayat

This book will come as a relief to those who have been wondering where the UN is headed. It tells the story of the only thing that matters in the UN""the Security Council, the highest decision-making body as far core political issues are concerned. It also provides much-needed conceptual clarification about how it is used by the permanent members.

Once you get this, you quickly realise that the UN is going nowhere as an institution of international cooperation. It has, instead, become a cat's paw of the US primarily, and also of the other members of the Security Council. The rest of the countries more or less don't matter, which is why India has been so keen to become a permanent member of the Security Council.

The key conceptual issue according to David Malone, who has served as Canada's ambassador to the UN and has discharged other diplomatic assignments is how the members of the Council view the Council. Do they see it as an instrument to attain mainly their national goals or do they also see it as an important instrument of multilateralism? If they see it as both, which comes first? How do they use the IOUs they gather in the wheeling-dealing that goes on between them in influencing the Council's decisions?

The answers to these and other questions""which are actually common to any coalitional group decision-making process""tell us a lot about how the "game is played" and indeed, what the "game" is. The fact that these conclusions are drawn from only one of the Security Council's many engagements, namely, Iraq, does not greatly reduce the generalisability of the propositions. In part this is because Iraq, between 1980 and 2003, tested the UN and the Security Council as no other country has done.

Malone says that the Council has tended to waver between two roles. One is the mediatory one, which he calls the political-military mode and which was the preferred mode until the end of the Cold War and the coming of the "New World Order". The other is the result, which he calls the legal-regulatory one, where the Council merely administers a set of what we in India would recognise as a set of 'international' directive principles""as agreed upon by the P-5, of course.

Clearly the weakening of Russia and the opportunism of the Chinese, not to mention the French, have had a lot to do with this. China has usually gone along with whatever the big boys decided while holding a completely different public position. As a result, it has collected favours along the way to be used for its own purposes. Like them, the French, suggests Malone, too have done one thing while saying another. France has followed a policy of using the Council to further its own short-term national interests while preaching its long-term institutional role.

The British, although aligned wholly with the US because of common financial interests, have sought to be honest brokers. But no one trusts them because of the UK's "special relationship" with the US. They are thus "caught in the middle", says Malone""distrusted by the others and despised by America.

That leaves the US, which has dominated the Council in a way that was never envisaged. Certainly, it leaves no room for the notion that it should be used as an institution to serve the world even if it means sub-optimal outcomes for the US. In short, the Security Council has become like an Indian panchayat, with the US as the sarpanch who has to be obeyed but who also rewards loyalty.

Methodologically, Malone's account is an excellent blend of theory, history and practice. And, having done some journalism as well, he writes well and clearly. In terms of structure each chapter has been divided into a series of small sections that can be read separately, if one so wishes. Each chapter also has a section called "conclusion" and that also helps.

As for Malone's conclusion itself, he ends on a sombre note, namely, that it is probably too much to expect the UN and the Security Council to act as a genuine institution of international cooperation. It can do so only to the extent that the interest of the P-5 are not involved in any meaningful way. And this holds not just for the present, but also how these countries see the future, China being an excellent example of the last, as its behaviour shows in this book.

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The International Struggle Over Iraq
Politics in the UN Security Council 1980-2005

David M Malone
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 595; Pages: 398