and providing assistance to refugees. But as the prime institution for the management of
international order, the UN was stillborn. The lack of consensus among the P5 translated
into paralysis of the organization on all important matters bearing upon international
security. Some experienced statesmen who should have known better, including the
tough-minded and fairly cynical politician Franklin D. Roosevelt, sincerely believed that
the P5 would function as a working and workable continuation of the Grand Alliance that
was winning World War II. It did not.
The UN as an institution and as a forum or theatre may have contributed little worth
mentioning to world order during the Cold War, but that did not mean that international
peace and security were much impoverished as a result. Since the East–West rivalry
deprived the UN of a practical role in support of international order, the contending states
made an alternative arrangement. The order that kept the peace, at least with respect to
any direct clash of arms between the principals, was organized by a bipolar balance of
power. That balance came to be ever more heavily, and mutually, nuclear in content.
So, international order was simultaneously both menaced by the most awesome threats
of destruction in all of history and protected robustly by those same awesome menaces.
The nuclear stand-off, and the geopolitical lines of demarcation that it froze, made for
an orderly world with regard to the mainstream of strategic history. There was disorder
aplenty in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as the European colonial empires expired, but a
nuclear World War III did not occur, contrary to the confident expectations of many
people in the 1940s and 1950s.
It is necessary to mention the one occasion in those years when the UN was able to
make a positive contribution to international order. The Soviet representative was absent
temporarily from the Security Council in June 1950, in protest over the denial of the
China seat to Mao Tse-tung’s new People’s Republic of China. This meant that the
Western powers were able to arrange and see passed a ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution in
the General Assembly. That resolution declared North Korea to be an aggressor and
licensed member states to come to the military assistance of South Korea. In 1950, as in
1990–1 over Iraq, the blessing of the UN carried useful moral authority. A significant
reason why this was, and remains, so has much to do with the fact that the UN is the
world’s only institution with a security mission that has universal membership. It has
all the faults of its members and of the typical workings of international politics,
but, unfortunately, it is the only UN that is available. There is no alternative universal
institution. Periodic attempts at reform are essayed, but if they are significant, they are
certain to be opposed by strong vested interests. For example, moves to expand the P5
so as to include rising powers, or risen powers, as well as to provide better representation
for Africa, South America and Asia, must negotiate an obstacle course of objections. To
date, that obstacle course has defied all challenges.
When there is a consensus on the Security Council, the UN can play a significant role
at the heart of efforts to protect world order. If that order should be menaced by the
political and strategic consequences of climate change, the UN could function indispen-
sably in providing the necessary forum for decisions of global scope. However, it is
necessary to observe that any threat sufficiently grave as to open the possibility of global
consensus is just as likely to drive the major state players into a ruthlessly selfish mode
of behaviour.
272 War, peace and international relations