Showing papers by "Thomas G. Weiss published in 2015"

The United Nations: before, during and after 1945

Abstract: The 70th anniversary of the signing and entry into force of the United Nations Charter provides a good moment to revisit the conditions under which Allied governments decided to establish the second generation of intergovernmental organization. The wartime commitments to defeating fascism and multilateralism made the establishment of the world organization a logical outgrowth of the wartime origins and the best guarantee of peace and prosperity. Ironically, the ideals of Immanuel Kant were found to be essential to the Hobbesian objective of state survival; multilateralism was a powerful strategy and not merely liberal window-dressing. That historical backdrop is complemented by two largely invisible variables from that time—the role of ideas and of non-state actors—which have since been driving change in the world organization. A future research agenda suggests ways to lift the UN from its current doldrums. Many of the debates and operational activities in the United Nations beginning in the 1970s reflected two topics—interdependence and the proliferation of actors—which profoundly affected what, since the 1990s, we have come to call ‘global governance’. On the positive side, these preoccupations helped us move towards a better understanding of a very complex world. On the downside, they also tend to celebrate unduly the ability of non-state actors and ignore the crucial role of intergovernmental organizations

Change and Continuity in Global Governance

Abstract: Why, despite well-established and well-publicized intergovernmental processes that date back to the early 1970s, have we been unable to put in place effective mechanisms to combat climate change? Why, despite the existence of extensive global human rights machinery, do we live in a world where mass kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder continue to blight the lives of so many? Why, despite a great deal of effort on the part of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nonstate actors, have we been unable to make much of a difference to the lives of the ultra-poor and attenuate the very worst aspects of growing global inequalities? Most fundamentally, why have the current international system and the outcomes that it has produced remained so inadequate in the postwar period?

Wartime origins and the future United Nations

Abstract: Foreword by Margaret Joan Anstee Introduction: Past as Prelude, Multilateralism as a Tactic and Strategy, Dan Plesch & Thomas G. Weiss PART ONE: PLANNING AND PROPAGANDA 1. Prewar and Wartime Postwar Planning: Antecedents to the UN Moment in San Francisco, J. Simon Rofe 2. UN Public Diplomacy: Communicating the Post-National Message, Giles Scott-Smith 3. Educators across Borders: The Council of Allied Ministers of Education, 1942-45, Miriam Intrator PART TWO: HUMAN SECURITY, 4. A New Paradigm of International Criminal Justice? Reconsidering the 1943-1948 United Nations War Crimes Commission, Dan Plesch 5. UNRRA's Operational Genius and Institutional Design, Eli Karetny & Thomas G. Weiss 6. Towards Universal Relief and Rehabilitation: India, UNRRA, and the New Internationalism, Manu Bhagavan PART THREE: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 7. The United Nations and Development: From the Origins to Current Challenges, John Burley & Stephen Browne 8. Financing Gaps, Competitiveness, and Capabilities: Why Bretton Woods Needs a Radical Rethink, Pallavi Roy 9. Stable Agricultural Markets and World Order: The FAO, and ITO, 1943-1949, Ruth Jacherz 10. Conclusion: Past as Prelude, Whither the United Nations?, Dan Plesch & Thomas G. Weiss,

1945's Lesson: “Good Enough” Global Governance Ain't Good Enough

Abstract: The seventieth anniversary of the signing and entry into force of the UN Charter should call attention to the 1942-1945 United Nations Alliance that gave rise to the world body and the underpinnings of contemporary global governance. However, no longer are wars the only threats to international order. The growing list of intractable problems ranges from climate change and migration to pandemics and terrorism. What remains unchanged after seven decades is that the policy authority and resources necessary for tackling such problems remain vested in individual states rather than collectively in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). The fundamental disconnect between a growing number of global challenges and the current inadequate structures for international problem solving and decisionmaking helps to explain occasional, tactical, and shortterm local views and responses instead of sustained, strategic, and longerrun global perspectives and actions. The rediscovery of the wartime United Nations contradicts the conventional wisdom that liberalism was abandoned to confront the Nazis and imperial Japan; it asserts that the ideals of Immanuel Kant were found to be essential to the Hobbesian objective of state survival. The attendant historio-graphical question is why the wartime UN has disappeared from academic and policy consciousness. For those who examine primary sources, this UN is in the pages of the US government's Foreign Relations of the United States of that time as well as mainstream international relations journals, newspapers, and minutes of town-hall meetings. When governments decide to use intergovernmental organizations, they work. The wartime actions of the UN's founders suggest that contemporary global governance often is a second-best surrogate for their more robust multilateralism and IGOs. If global problems require global solutions, they also require strengthened intergovernmental organizations, especially those of the UN system. This proposition flies in the face of an infatuation with problem solving by anything other than IGOs. A decade ago, Anne-Marie Slaughter viewed networks of various types rather than actual organizations as the key variable in problem solving. (1) More recently, Dan Drezner and Stewart Patrick have proposed living with the sum of alternative arrangements and dismissed the universal membership United Nations largely as hopeless and hapless. Apparently, we can aspire to only a variegated institutional sprawl--or "good-enough global governance." (2) Alas, that is not and will not be adequate without a revitalized United Nations as an integral component of international society. Skepticism about UN capacity is certainly justified, but we are kidding ourselves about the potential of plurilateralisms and minilateralisms--what the Human Development Report 2013 hopes somehow will constitute a lattice of "coherent pluralism." (3) Political leaders and civil society actors struggling in the midst of World War II thought otherwise. The Declaration by United Nations of January 1942 and the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 committed the Allies to multilateralism not only to fight fascism in the short term, but also over the longer term to maintain international peace and security and to foster postwar economic and social stability. Revisiting 1945's Forgotten Insights The rediscovery of the lost or the suppressed is a recurring theme in literature, mythology, and history from the Renaissance to Western popular fiction since World War II--Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Star Wars. The UN at war provides another startling illustration from its founding on 1 January 1942, some three and a half years before the 26 June 1945 signing of the Charter in San Francisco. "We mean business in this war in a political and humanitarian sense just as surely as we mean business in a military sense." (4) Such was US president Franklin D. …

1945’s Forgotten Insight: Multilateralism as Realist Necessity

Abstract: The 70th anniversary of the signing and entry into force of the UN Charter provided an occasion to explore the historical underpinnings of contemporary global governance. This article redresses the neglect of the United Nations as a multilateral structure before the conference that drafted the Charter in 1945. It rehabilitates an underappreciated aspect of the period that began on January 1, 1942, with the “Declaration by United Nations,” namely, the combination of multilateral strategies for military and human security to achieve victory in war and peace. The wide substantive and geographic resonance suggests the extent to which the pressures of the second war to end all wars helped states to overcome their disinclination to collaborate. Today’s fashionable calls for “good enough” global governance abandon the strategy of constructing robust intergovernmental organizations; they are not good enough, especially, because our forebears did much better. Many insights and operational approaches from 1942 to 1945 remain valid for addressing twenty-first-century global challenges.

Military twists and turns in world politics: downsides or dividends for UN peace operations?

Abstract: Russia’s challenge to the post-cold war order, and the rise of Islamic State have resulted in a call for increased military spending among NATO members. Despite the increased demand for UN peace operations, any expansion is unlikely to benefit the world organisation. Instead we see an increasing reliance upon regional organisations like the African Union, European Union and NATO, in particular, for robust peace operations. An analysis of Western states (France, Germany and the USA) suggests that future investments in weaponry, technology and staff will primarily benefit NATO and the EU, but not the United Nations.

Continuity and change in global governance : A normative quest

Abstract: This chapter aims to embark on a more explicitly normative quest by exploring what people have ignored to date in many analyses of global governance, namely explanations for what people judge to be continuity versus change in global governance-or perhaps better said, possible explanations for changes in and changes of global governance-with a view to encouraging change or even transformation that is progressive and not regressive. Global governance can be seen as the latest entry in a distinguished normative genealogy and one that for many is concerned with our collective efforts to identify, understand, and address worldwide problems and processes that reach beyond the capacities. Without a concerted effort to press forward our understandings of the complexities of global governance, the way that authority and power are exercised, and the ideational and material aspects of the way that the world is governed, people risk not only misunderstanding the current world order but also underestimating our capacity to make meaningful adjustments.