How International bodies have become a waste of time and money

Gordon Brown hails the success of the G8 summit and the progress made as regards to the issue of climate change, read headlines in the BBC today and around the British media. The progress mentioned? The G8 countries will ‘consider and adopt’, in an ‘international agreement’, the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. There’s no real concrete plan of how this would be achieved of course, or any meaningful policy- though Gordon Brown tells us they have ‘discussed’ specific measures, which I guess is something. Still. Last year, the G8 countries could only agree to ’seriously consider’ setting a goal for carbon emissions, so a year later, moves have been made forward. Apparently the G8 can now agree that something needs to be made about Global Warming, rather than seriously consider doing it, and have realised there are such things as alternative fuels that can be a fun topic for discussion in a supposedly top international summit. A couple of years down the lint, and they will be able to ‘formalise’ their ‘agreement to the goal’ in some form of document, and who knows, a decade later they might actually come up with actual policy on how to act on that goal.

An onserver might answer back that it is not the job of the G8 to set up policy- rather it is the job of individual nations, and thus, even if no real progress comes from the G8, the individual nations themselves have concrete plans of action (-if only-). But then, what is the point of having a G8 summit at all, if it produces neither real coordination among its member nations, each one going its own way, nor real proposals relevant to the decision making processes of the member nations?

This is not to meant to be a singular attack on the G8 summit itself though, as if that is the only inefficient institution around. Let’s look at the most spectacular example of reduntance and inefficiency, the United Nations. The UN is incapable of acting or enforcing any sort of action or policy in all the areas where doing so actually matters. If the UN was created to solve international problems, conflicts and disputes, it seems to have the remarkable ability of only being effective in the cases where the actors involved are in agreement of what they want from the UN- whereas wherever any actual dispute exists its authority crumbles. The Security Council is incapable of agreeing on anything of importance- and as far as ‘UN resolutions’ are concerned, they might as well never be issued, since nobody really follows them anyway. Not to say that the UN doesn’t carry out a lot of functions, give aid, carry out peacekeeping operations and produce some interesting analyses and reports. But all its actions are either uncontroversial in that everybody can agree with them, or minor in that they have no real effect on how a conflict develops. As an actual tool for shaping and stopping conflicts, and solving problems around the world it fails dramatically.

But much can also be said of the recent ineffectiveness of the IMF, the international court of justice, and to a certain extend the EU – which though capable of forming and enforcing policy, seems too bureaucratic, inflexible and incapable of quickly reaching concensus quickly.

International institutions have been formed to oversee the economic and national actors of the world- that is, the actions of nations and, in our modern world, globalised firms. Yet as we observe, they are incapable of exerting any form of governance on either. And for that, we can blame two factors. Their lack of authority, and their inflexibility.

The issue of authority has already been examined to a degree. Even when a decision or policy is made, how does the international body enforce it? The example I have in mind here is that of the ‘UN resolution’, that elusive decision which is almost never actually followed. The problem is a very real and practical one. The UN simply has little power to enforce its will, no real offensive military might for enforcing decisions. One might argue that that is the role of NATO, but that seems so dominated by the US, that it begs the question of whether it is the will of an ‘international’ body at all that is being enforced. Regardless, one hardly imagines NATO enforcing UN resolutions on Israel, North Korea, or Russia. If especially in the cases of major conflicts involving significant powers, international bodies have no authority, what is their reason for existance at all?

The second issue is that of flexibility, and one might argue this is related to authority as well. Nations usually have the ability to adapt and change over time. Some have in build democratic institutions that ensure changing governments and thus policies and attitudes. Others, even if more autocratic and dictatorial, are nevertheless forced to change in reaction to the world around them, or the social forces inside them. In the case of economic actors, such as globalised firms, change, in operations, strategies, and functions, occurs at an increasingle rapid speed, which is only growing faster as global competition and the need for constant adaptation increases. Yet as far as the UN and the G8 are concerned, the world might as well just have defeated Hitler and have as its main concern the rebuilding of Europe. What is the point of a Security Council or a G8 in a modern world that does not include China for example? The paradox is pointed out all the time, yet none of these institutions show any sign of reform- and with a multitude of member nations in them, it is unlikely that they can easily reach a concensus on what kind of reform they would need anyway. But if international institutions cannot adapt to a rapidly chaning world, how can they have the relevant authority to govern it?

Some will argue that international bodies are not needed in any case and both nations and economic actors should be left free to act on their own. But such views are misguided. WWII did indeed teach us that an institution such as the UN is needed, as should all the rest of 20th century conflicts after WWII which should have been avoided or found avenues of being resolved through the UN, had it actually operated the way it should. As for economic actors, it is fair to say that supporters of a position which demands they have no governance acted on them, are the type of armchair economists who have little knowledge of why their economy (for they really only come from the US economy) has actually been succesful. It is not my goal here to make a critique of ultra-liberal economics -that would be too large a subject- so I will leave it by saying that given that no market is perfect (and that is most certainly true for international, cross-border markets), some form of governance is needed.

So how can international bodies be made to be more effective? Whatever proposals one makes, we would run into the problem of actually implementing them in multi-member bodies, each with its own ideas, and ultimately unlikely to reach concensus between them. If this problem was surpassed,then national elected leaders would need to find a way to reform our international institutions, and in such a way that constant revision and change is build into them- for a one off change now would mean a form unsuitable 20 years down the line. The task would not be easy. I initially wished to express suggestions of my own, but after beginning to write them down I realised how they would, infact, be non-functional, if not disastrous themselves. It after all easier to criticise something than to make real suggestion on how to solve it…