Who Needs a Table?
As Suzanne points out, "universality" has multiple meanings here. She mentions that any international coalition purporting to legitimize universal values needs to be diverse in terms of geography, development, power, religion...
The question of who sits at the legitimizing table raises the issue of what tables are available and why you even need a table. The biggest table of all is the United Nations, one of whose supposed virtues is its universal membership. The UN is often derided as a club of sovereign governments. The debate sparked by Rachel really asks whether sovereignty (membership in the club) has any connection with legitimacy.
My answer is similar to Suzanne's -- political and practical realities make it impossible to use moral criterion of the will of the people as the organizing principle of legitimacy. Partly this is an efficiency argument. One of the essential functions of a multilateral organization is to organize collective political decisions in an orderly fashion. We don't want to focus on process and lose sight of objectives or compelling needs (an intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide would have been legitimate whatever process had authorized it). But having defined and established process -- i.e. a multilateral table -- offers clarity, predictibility, and an element of legitimacy.
Is there such a thing as a community of sovereign nations with a legitimate social contract that doesn't require electoral democracy for membership? I think so. I gladly accept China's help in reinforcing the nonproliferation norm by pressuring North Korea and give China a measure of credit as a stakeholder in the rules-based order. Does Libya's renunciation of nuclear weapons earn it some brownie points? Sure. Do they belong on the Human Rights Council? Of course not.
Which brings me back to Suzanne's point about the realities of political support. The dysfunctions in the UN that result in the election of inappropriate governments frankly are an indication that democracies are not working together very effectively. After all, by now they represent a majority of the UN General Assembly.
This all comes down to the use of force in world affairs and the "table" provides an instant justification for it. It means we no longer have to go to the UN and argue about a member nation's sovreignty. Instead we have this table that allows us to claim that the targets of our aggression aren't real nations and thus don't have any sovreignty that can be violated.
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June 21, 2007 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh do we have to take this nonsense oh so seriously.
The United Nations is not sufficiently obedient to US will and interests.
Instead, Suzanne proposes a 'table' of democracties, who will presumably think as we do, do what we tell them, and be obedient.
When that fails, what will be the next justification?
June 21, 2007 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Suzanne did not propose a table of democracies--she gave reasons why she believes the idea does not make practical or political sense.
June 21, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
To the proponents of the democracy table idea I pose the question: which specific problem of international scope do you see being addressed more effectively if such an institution were brought into existence, and how do you see the democracy table helping in this regard?
Is it intended to try to create a global process to expand the scope of perceived positive effects on EU and NATO aspirant nations as a result of policy changes they are required to make as part of those accession processes? Is that the idea?
In the cases of EU and NATO expansion, there are perceptions of tangible benefits (economic aid, enhanced security from external attacks, as examples) of gaining accession.
Even assuming one could come up with clear enough criteria and a smooth enough process to include whichever countries are thought to be the "right" ones to have dealt in, what would be the incentive for non-member nations to make what would be for many of them wrenching, not to mention in some cases positively offensive, policy changes in order to try to gain admission into this particular club, instead of forming alliances to protect themselves from it?
Proponents of this idea either have an idea in their head as to how this would play out vis a vis China in particular, or they don't have such an idea in their head. For those who do I'd like to know what their idea is on how this would play out with respect to China in particular. If they don't, are they proposing the idea simply because it sounds good to them, irrespective of its likely consequences?
June 21, 2007 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, as David Shorr outlines the idea, it seems to have some merit. What he's saying is that democracies don't appear to be working well within the UN. The problems I could envision a democracy working group in the UN addressing would be, foremost, the problem of an inability to act on issues like Darfur. This is a genuine problem for liberal democracies because their voters are angered when nothing is done to stop genocide. Inaction on Darfur, as on Rwanda and Bosnia, frustrates human rights constituencies, and this is every bit as "real" a political problem as are the concerns of Chinese citizens about their national issues.
A democratic working group inside the UN could be a perfectly legitimate forum to express these kinds of issues. No one objects to other forms of groupings among nations which share common interests or heritages -- there would be no protests over an Islamic working group, a socialist working group, or whatever. There's no reason why there shouldn't be a multiparty liberal democracy working group. Some of the membership issues sort themselves out: China and Vietnam are quite explicit that they do not permit alternative political parties. There would be trouble at the edges -- Russia (I would say they'd have to be in). But it might be a useful forum for working on issues which are specific to multiparty liberal democracies, if it were phrased that way.
Accumulating Peripherals
June 21, 2007 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
And nevermind all the democracies that our "democracy" subverted and toppled ... Chile, Iran...the list goes on.
June 21, 2007 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe. Surely one of the features of democracies - and democratic organizations - is that they allow for dissent. So perhaps the dysfunctionality should not be quite so surprising and may even be inevitable.
And it may indeed be the case that the dysfunctionality arises from flawed voting mechanisms within the UN (some structural, some as a consequence of the myriad quid pro quo arrangements), so I am not sure I agree with the dysfunctional co-operation theory, and I am not sure I want to believe it either.
But let's not duck the issue which has thrown the "dysfunctionality" into sharp focus. Iraq.
For me, perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of International Law is the concept of proportionality. The idea that the use of force is justified provided it is an appropriate response to whatever it is we are looking to defend.
It might not be a universal value, but I'd suggest it is very widely acknowledged as a legitimizing factor when force is used. The actions we took in Afghanistan and in the Balkans, for example, were not UN sanctioned, but they were widely supported, because, I'd argue, the responses were generally considered to be proportionate.
There were many reasons for opposing the invasion, but I'd suggest that a unifying thread amongst people who opposed the Iraq War was that the use of force as applied was not proportionate to the alleged threat posed. (And I'd argue honest pro-war people would be inclined to agree - after all, the Bushies put forward the notion of preventative war, which implicitly revokes the principle of proportionality, to underpin their justification for removing Saddam.) And unless we vote in political leadership that will explicitly acknowledge this, our global standing will remain damaged and our self-awareness chronically impaired.
So to answer your question - Who needs a Table? - I'd suggest this: There is a Table, there will always be a Table. Then there's the question of who sits at it... Clearly, we sat at its head for over 50 years. Then we tried to set up a new Table in 2002/3. And now we don't know whether we can go back to the old Table, whether we can find anyone to join us at the current Table, or whether we need a new Table.
My preference - let's go back to the old Table. Yes, it was messy; there were some people who liked the same food as us; there were also some louts we got on with; there were definitely some other louts at whom we threw food and cutlery (and threatened worse). Sometimes we flicked them the bird, sometimes we turned the other cheek, and sometimes we showed off our ammo-store and what we could do with it. But we dealt with all-comers, and we had the confidence to do so.
Now it seems we're mad that we couldn't control access to the Table. Because some stateless mofo gatecrashed the party. And in fit of pique, after some people disagreed with some of our ideas on how to deal with the gatecrasher situation, we and our kool frendz decided to leave and set up a new Table. And now, five years later, we realize that the new Table sucks. We think it looks cleaner, but the sterility and lack of company is killing us. Yet we seem scared to go back to the old Table.
We shouldn't be. Everyone else hates gatecrashers. And more to the point, whether we like it or not, the old Table really is the only party in town.
June 22, 2007 5:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great comments everyone. I appreciate Mattsteinglass picking up on my proposal that democracies need to caucus more effectively within the UN - it makes no sense to me to talk about alternatives to the United Nations until democracies show their ability to coalesce at the table we already have.
I think my use of the word "table" may have confused things. My point was that you can't even call the ad hoc use of a democratic grouping a table because it's so loose. The reason we need a well defined forum is give order to deliberation and decision making. I see no reason to reinvent the UN wheel and doubt we could do better. I hope that point came through despite the confusion.
June 22, 2007 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
When things are screwed up, form a committee, buy a table, whatever...is that called denial or avoidance.
And once you have the 'table/committee' design a camel about which someone said that when seeing one run it becomes obvious that the poor creature was designed by a committee.
Speaking of tables, it took six months for the group meeting in Paris to 'settle' the Korean War - six months not of substantive talks or negotiations but six months to agree on the shape of the table.
June 24, 2007 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink