A "panel of notables", named by the secretary-general of the UN, Kofi Anan, has just finished proposing a series of changes in the way the United Nations functions. They are "the most exhaustive since its creation in 1945" ( El País , 2 Jan). When the UN was created, the leadership was then in the hands of the five "permanent" members of its Security Council, with the power of veto (the United States, the USSR, England, France, China). Another ten "non-permanent" members rotate every year as members of the Council.
The reform in course proposes the appointment of another six "permanent" members, although without the power of veto, to the Security Council (Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, Egypt and Nigeria -- or South Africa). Another alternative would be to create a new category of "semi-permanent" members which would take part in the Council during a period of five years. The argument is that they are trying to take into account, in any case, the new world reality.
The other aspect of the "reform" has to do with guaranteeing the "legality" of a "preventive military force" capable of intervening anywhere on the planet with the argument of the struggle "against terrorism", which implies leaving aside the norms in effect on "national sovereignties". After violating all the norms of "international law" itself in the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, imperialism now wishes to adapt the law and rights. With the "preventive military force" the aim is a license to kill.
The question of UN highlights the fact that the imperialist organization of the planet has entered into contradiction with the framework of international law set up in the decade of the fifties. The validity of the rule of law, between coup d'etat and the massacre of entire populations, and of the market economy, under the rule of the strongest, emphasized the defence of the right of property, of the State and free circulation of people and "goods". On this basis was signed every treaty leading towards capitalist restoration in the former USSR: the Helsinki treaties (1975), Cooperation and Security, and the World Trade Organization.
This political and legal architecture has achieved its purpose and has become an anachronism. The collapse of the former worker States has made the dismantling of its regimes of economic state-run regimes and bureaucratic planning the order of the day, which has opened up a period of political and social convulsions, state disintegrations and people's rebellions. The Yankees have taken the lead in the denunciation of the limitations of "international law" (for its own interests). The US bourgeoisie systematically questions the whole scheme of "pacts" that are part of the UN legal system (the Environment, International Criminal Court), in defence of its own State of exception, the Patriot Act.
Along the same lines, the Yankee government has been systematically attacking Kofi Anan and the UN. Their aim here is a new framework of negotiations with rival powers. Those in favor of the "democratization" of the UN, on their side, keeps ceding ground, limiting themselves now to the enlargement of the Security Council. But even this is on the skid, as demonstrated by the confrontations between Germany and Italy, and Brazil and Argentina, who demand a place for themselves on the Council.
While this is being discussed, the international crisis and the wars continue their course. The US is taking advantage of the tsunami catastrophe in order to set up military residence in Indonesia. In another scenario the progressive governments a la Kirchner, Lula and Tabaré Vazquez are in Haiti, sustaining a government imposed by Bush. They repress under the umbrella of the international body and also in the name... of world peace.
In short, the purpose of UN reform is to enforce imperialism's instruments of intervention, although its ideologists strive to present the question as a kind of "democratization" of power in an international scenario. The reformist project, in any case, faces a worldwide picture dominated by tendencies leading to economic and social catastrophe, rivalry between the big powers, the war of oppressed peoples, the internal decomposition of political regimes... They are the factors that condition the "reform" itself and put into evidence the insurmountable limitations of the decadency of the world capitalist order.