Claude_introduccion[1]

8/2/2019 Claude_introduccion[1]

1/10

. C ' ' - \ ; ' \ , jX: ~ : : ''-'1" {')L\ i \

Books by Lnis L. Claude, Jr.SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES

The Problems and Progress oflnternational Organization

POWER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSNATIONAL MINORITIES

An Internationnl ProblemTHE CHANGING UNITED NATIONS

C5131'..-----.\ ~ J f Y

v - . . . . ~ ,.. ,SWORDS

INTOPLOWSHARESThe Problems and ProgressofInternational Organization

,

INIS L. CLAUDE, JR.Edward R . Stettinius, Ir ., Professorof Government and Foreign Affairs

Uni versity of VirginiaFOURTH EDITION

' " " ~ ,,/ n .. 1' ' "' - . II: \/ " ". . ..... ...." - '" .. " . . -, . , . ' '(f.J. ';;;;;:0/tB r .IIRANDOM HOUSE I N EW YORK


2/10

xii @JThe 8uestion of Practical Attainability 414Th e uestion of Th eoretical Validity 420Suggested Readings 432

19 International Organization and World Ord er 434435he Progress of In ternational OrganizationTh e Prospects of International Organization 445Suggested Readings 449

r;:::yAppendixes

Appendix I The Covenant of the League of Nations 453App endix II The Charter of the United NationsApp endix III Th e North Atlantic Treaty 463490Appendix IV The Members of the United Nations 494Appendix V Costs of the United Nations System 499r;:::y

Index

""-.

Introduction


3/10

~

1Introduction

,....

\ ~ ) 1 c ; . I - . . . ~


4/10

5,4 QntroductionIntroduction

The present state of international organization, representing an attempt to adapt the institutions, procedures, and rules of internationalrelations to the conditions of international interdependence, is far fromsatisfactory. But though much is lacking in international organizations,there is no lack of such agencies. Public international organizations,having states as their members, exist by the scores, and private international associations, not officially sponsored by or connected with governments, exist by the hundreds. The population explosion of our timeextends not only to human beings and to states but also to internationalagencies, as a cursory review of successive editions of the Yearbook ofInternational Organizations, published by the Union of InternationalAssociations.in Brussels, will indicate. International agencies vary greatlyin size and scope, in structure, in the nature of the subject matter withwhich they deal, and in the ambitiousness of the activities that theyundertake to perform. They are global and regional, specialized andmultipurpose; their concerns range from the great issues of war andpeace to the technical problems of highway construction. In a given weekthe activities of international bodies may run from disarmament negotiations to discussions of the microbiology of wine. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the organization of international affairs is notjust a gleam in the eyes of idealists, to be judged in terms of its acceptability or feasibility as an ideal, but it is a process under way, to bestudied with a view to understanding its causes and effects, its progressand limitations, its problems and prospects.International organization is a process; international organizationsare representative aspects of the phase of that process which has beenreached at a given time. This is a book about international organization,based primarily upon an analysis of the organizational efforts in which

r governments participate as the official agencies of states . Thus, the realmoccupied by nongovernmental organizations is largely excluded from itsscope. It is a selective study, not a comprehensive digest, but its timerange includes past, present, and possible future developments. It is written in the conviction that international organizations, as institutions, havea double significance: they are important, though not decisively important,factors in contemporary world affairs; and they are significant expressions of, and contributors to, the process of international organization,which may ultimately prove to be the most significant dynamic elementin the developing reality of international relations.

APPROACHES TO TH E STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONThe study of international organization involves certain difficulties thatare traceable to the relative newness of the field, both as an aspect ofreality and as a focus of scholarly attention. We are confronted with a

complex and constantly changing subject matter, an ever-increasingmass of documentation that frequently fails to yield "the whole truth andnothing but the truth," and the proliferating output of a scholarship that,for all its valuable contributions, is still in the stage of fumbling uncertainly with the problem of finding the real meaning and significance ofevents and developments in the field of international organization. Thesemay be regarded as normal difficulties, but there are abnormal ones aswell-special problems inherent in the subject that complicate the taskof developing objective understanding and appraisal of internationalorganization .The heart of the matter is the widespread tendency for internationalorganization-particularly, in our time, the United Nations-to be treatedas an ideological issue. It arouses hopes and fears of a fundamental sort,and its students may find themselves lost among its champions andcritics. For many the United Nations presents an issue of faith and ,morals: do you believe in the United Nations? On the one hand, theestablishment and development of this organization are regarded ascentral elements of a noble crusade for peace, justice, and humanbrotherhood, so that being "for the United Nations" is the crucial testof a decent person. On the other, the creation of such agencies appears

as a plot to undermine the values of nationalism and sovereignty, anexternal threat to the integrity of one's own state that the true patriotmust denounce and resist.This ideological dichotomy does not provide the most favorablecontext for careful, dispassionate study of the United Nations or otherinternational bodies. The very posing of the "for or against" questionbetrays a basic immaturity in our approach to international institutions.We shall have achieved the maturity of outlook essential for the properstudy of international organization when we find it as inappropriate toask "Do you believe in the United Nations?" as to ask whether onebelieves in and supports the United States Congress or his state highwaydepartment or local school board. The point is that international organizations are neither sacred nor diabolical id eological inventions, bu t a partof the political and administrative apparatus of human society madenecessary by the complexity and interdependence of that society. Theappropriate questions relate not to their status as objects of reverence orthe reverse, but to their utility and to one's approval or disapproval ofthe policies that they serve. What the United Nations needs most is notto attract a larger array of avid supporters, but to begin to be takenfor granted-to be regarded not as an idealistic scheme on trial, but as apolitical institution within which everyone expects to suffer defeats aswell as to win victories and which no one can conceive as a dispensablepart of the machinery for the management of international affairs.Th e development of this perspective is dependent upon an under


5/10

6

I \

Introductionstanding of the history of international organizati on. Wh at is needed isnot simply a knowledge of the facts concerning its origins and evolution, bu t a sense of history, a feel for the significance of th e emergenceof int ernational organization in the historical context. To understandthat int ernational agencies are products not of th e aspirations of idealistsst anding outside of and above international politics, but of th e necessities !felt by statesmen operating within the arena of int ern ational politics, isto sense the fact that international organization is a functional responseto th e complexities of the modern state system, an organic developmentrooted in the realities of the system rather than an optional experimentfastened upon it. For one who grasps this fa ct, th e issue of wh ether weshould have international organization is no mor e meaningful than th eissue of whether urbanization should result in th e provision of mor e extensive public services and the imposition of more elaborate governmentalregulations. One recognizes international organization as a distinctivemod ern aspect of world politics, a relatively rec ent growth , bu t an established trend. Particular organizations may com e and go , bu t int ernational org anization as a generic phenomenon is h ere to stay. Th e collapseof th e League of Nations led almost automatically to consideration ofth e nature of its replacement, an d similar failure by the United Nationsmigh t be expec ted to produce the same reaction. A sense of history pro vides th e basis for th e understanding that int ernational organization hasbecome a necessary par t of the syst em for dealing with internationalpr oblems, a nd that "to organize or not to organize" is no longer an openqu estion for statesmen or a useful one for students of internationalrelations.

Mor eover, an und erstanding of the historical development of politicalinstitutions in gen eral and of int ernational organizations in particularshould estab lish th e point that ideological pr econceptions provide amost uns atisfactory basis for attitudes toward su ch age ncies as the UnitedNations. Founding fathers are amon g the most frustrated and doublecrossed heroes of history; the y can stat e the purposes of the institutionsthat th ey create, but they cannot determine thos e purposes or controlth e course of d evelopment of those institutions . To change the figur e,th ey can only launch the institutional ships , which are then tossed on theseas of history, driven by the winds of political for ces, and steered by asu ccession of men who have their own ideas about where th ey want togo. Politi cal institutions evolve, not along lines rigidl y set by their creator s an d definitively stated in constitutional docum ents, but in responseto a dyn amic process that combines the propulsive and dir ective impuls esof tr ends running through the political context and of purposes injectedby participants in their opl:'rations. Th e potentialities of institutions arelimited in some measure by the characteristics or iginally impr essed uponth em, but th" prohahilitil:'s of their development derive from contin

.-,-5"Introduction 7

gencies beyond the pow er of th eir founders to anticipate. Even th e operators of a political ag ency at any given tim e are restricted in th eircapacity to control its evolution; th e course of the developm ent of aninternational organization may be determined less by the consciouslyadopted plans of the governments th at participate in its decisions or ofthe officials who serve it than by th e cumulative influence of day-to-daypressures and case-by-case decisions. Th e unpredictabl e history of th efuture, no less than the ineradicable history of the past, ,is- a factor inthe shaping of political institutions.To adopt this perspective is to acknowledge th at it makes as littlesense to base one's attitude toward the United Nations upon one'sappraisal of the purposes proclaimed in its Ch arter as to bas e one'sattitude toward the Nixon Administrat ion upon a reading of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. On e ought not to taketoo literally the formally stated purposes of any political inst itution. TheUnited Nations Charter gives expression to a set of lofty purposes-including the maintenance of peace and security, the developm ent offriendly international relations, and th e promotion of cooperative solutions to basic problems of hum an welfare and hum an right s. Thi s is notto say that the governments responsible for formulating the Ch arterwere, in fact , unanimousl y devoted to the realization of th ese purposesor determined to use the new organization exclusively for th eir realization . We can sa y with assurance only that th ey we re all willin g to maketh is formal asserti on of the ends appropriate to the United Nations. Inpractice, statesmen use, or compete for th e ca pacity to use, the UnitedNations for a variety of purposes, some of which are not mentioned inthe Charter and may even be among thos e customarily regard ed asunm entionable by th e dr afters of the constitu tions of internationalorganizations. In a very real sense th e Unit ed Nations has no fixedpurposes , either as to wh at it shall do or as to wh at it shall become; itsfunctional objectives and developmental d irections are set and sh iftedby the operation of its polit ical pr ocess, in which th e clash and consensusof th e aims of member states determine the choices mad e among thepossibilities provided by th e general state of th e int ernational systemat a given point in time.

Equipped with this und erstanding , one is confronted not with thequestion of believing in th e United Nations as a sacred cause, but withthe necessity of recognizing that the United Nations is an age ncy subjectto utilization by states for such purposes as they may jointly decid e topursue or competitively suc ceed in imposing up on it. Th e issue ofwhether the organization is destined to confirm one's hopes or one'sfears by becoming a world gov ernment is supplant ed by considerationof how and by whom and t(w1.rd what result it is being shaped andmay be shaped in the future; evaluation of seminal pot entialities gives way


6/10

9: : : ; Irurodu cttonto analysis of political pr ocess and appraisal of political possibil ities.Th e "for or against" question is discarded favor of "what, how, andwho" qu estions pertinent to the task of political analysis rather than tothe determination of ideological commitment. Thi s is the point at whi chserious study of int ernational organization can b egin.

T HE PROBLEM OF ED UCATED EXPECTATIONSTh e student of th e United Nations and of the other international bodiesclustered about it requires some standard for th e evaluation of performance and development , some patt ern with which international ag enciescan be compared, some criterion of effectiveness against which actualachi evement can b e measur ed. Unfortunately, th ere is no ready-mad e andeasily avail able instrument for th ese purposes. We see the consequenceof this lack in th e qu alitat ive deficiency of much of the casual (an d someof th e not-so-casual ) commentary a bout th e Unit ed Nations to which weare exposed. People express disapp ointment at what the organization hasnot proved able to do, hope as to what it may be able to do, or fearconcerning wh at it might do, all too oft en without relating the actionsin qu estion to any well-founded conception of wha t ca pacity th e UnitedNati ons might reasonabl y be considered to have. Just as no san e farmerwould express d isapp ointment because his cow did not lay eggs orhop e that his cow might be induced to lay eggs, an int elligent observershould be expected to refrain from critica l or hortatory discus sion of thefunctional ca pacity of th e United Nations that is uninformed by an

In trodu ctionNations or of any other international agency, it behooves us to examinethe full range of available images, educa ting ourselves as to whichaspects of reality can be seen from each of seve ra l vantage po ints andthus establishing our levels of expectation a nd refining our standardsof evaluation.

Ima ges of th e Th eater. For some reason, the vocabulary of th etheater has caught on in political science, as the ubi quity ' of the term"actor" atte sts. Thi s is no less tru e in th e field of int ernational relationsthan in other sectors of the discipline, and with some justification, forthere is high dr ama-unfortunately, more often tr agic than comic, butsometimes at the level of burlesque-i n this realm. Hence, it is not surprising that theatrical notions ha ve acqu ired a place in th e imagery ofint ernational organization.Perhaps the most standard , and surely one of the most acc urate,images of international organization is that of the stage, emphasizingth e provis ion of a place or setting for the act ion and interaction of perform ers. If the image of th e stag e also suggests that the cas t of characters may include stars, prima donnas , and bit players, and th at aconsiderable element of stylization and even of artificiality tends to markth eir performance, no valid objection can be made. Th e variant noti onof the arena tends to suggest, not improperly, that the performers a refrequently engaged in wholly earnest competition with eac h oth er ra therthan in make-believe. Th e blending of the notions o f ar ena and stage ma ycontribute to accur ate und erstanding , for both ser ious contention andformal posturing enter into th e typical proceedi ngs of int ernationalaccurate und erstanding of the realistic possibilities. We ha ve no wa rrantfor being hop eful , disillusioned, cynicai, or fearful of the United Nations,

unl ess the expecta tions that enter into Our jud gment bear some sensiblerelationship to the nature of the organization and the limitations set bythe political context within which it opera tes.Th e problem is to achieve and th en to use a set of educated expec

tations concerning th e int ernational organizations of Our time. This is nosimple matt er, for the capacities and incapacities of international bodiesare not as clearly estab lished, as fixed, or as uniform as thos e of cows( which may, presum ably, be expected to maintain for all time theirextremely minimal propensity for laying egg s ). and one may find th estated ambitions of founding fathers and th e promises and pr etensions

bodies. Both notions have the additional and important impli cation th atan audience is ce ntrally involved-that the proceedings are a public performance, that a significant interrelation develops between ac tors andaudience as well as among the actors, and that playing to the audience,seeking its applause, is a major feature of th e performance. Devoteesof show business will not find the United Nations entirely alien to theirint erests.Th e image of the stage assigns to int ernational organizations onlya passive fun ction , th at of maintaining a locale for the playing of rolesby th e ac tors who constitute the int ernational cas t. Th e qu estion immedi ately arises as to whether such organizat ions may not be ac tors ratherthan mere stages. Seeking to identify int ernational organizations, should

I

I

I!liIiIIf cha rters and constitutions misleading rather than helpful. Moreover, we ask "who" rather than "what"? Are they part icipants in internationalsuch an organizational complex as the Unit ed Nati ons system (a term relations with a pot entially important role to play- not merely facilitiesthat I use to include the Specialized Agencies along with th e Unit ed for the interplay of states?Nations proper ) is a multifaceted thing, incap able of being captured by An affi rmative assumption is suggested by th e normal mode of di sa singl e definition or of being fully portrayed by one image. Rather than cussion of internati onal organizations. W e say that the United Nationsto adopt a sing le conception of th e nature and pot entiality of th e Unit ed supports national self-deter mination; we hope that it may solve the


7/10

11( --'10 ,

Introduction

Middle Eastern CTIS IS; We regret that it did not , or could not, saveCzechoslovakia fro m Soviet intervention; we not e th at it opposes SouthAfri can ap artheid ; and we argue as to wheth er it improperly intrudesupon the dom estic jur isdiction of some of its members. In all of this thereis an implication that we regard the United Nations as an actor, playinga role in int ernational relations along with and in relation to such oth erac tors as the Unitcd State s, Brazil, or India. In this view internationalorgan iza tions appear not as suppliers of stages up on whi ch states play,but as mem bers of th e c ast of characters- unique in status and distinctivein role, bu t nonetheless members-performing upon the world sta ge .H ow valid is this conception?

W e wou ld do well to pond er th e nature of the identity that weascribe to international organizations. Wh o is this United Nations towhich we impute action or inaction, capacity or incapacity, wisdom orfolly, courage or timidity? In some cases th e reference is obvi ously tothe member states, considered collectively; a unanimously supporte dp roclamation or a resolution approved by the requisite majority passes asan expression of the will or jud gment or int ention of th e United Nations.F or states included in th e consensus or the majority, the Unit ed Nationsis simply a massive "we and th ey," and its name is used as a shorthanddevice for some such gro uping as "most of th e states of the world" ratherthan as th e designation of an ind epend ent actor, added to th e interna tional cast by th e c[('a tive act of th e San Fr anci sco Conference of 1945.Thus, to say that th e United Nations is concerned to promote worldpeace may not be meant to impl y anything mor e than that th e statesof th e world have organized thcmselves to wor k toward that end.

In oth er instances, states, though they may be members, treat int ernational organizations as entities external to themsel ves, as for eign bodies.Wh en South Africa accuses the United Nati ons of illegal int erference inits domestic affairs or the United States urges th e United Nations toapprove its policy in the Cu ban missile crisis, the organization is clearlybeing conceive d not as "we and th ey" but as "they," Even so, the attribu tion of int ernational person ality to the United Nations is unlikely tobe se riously intended or to be warr ant ed . Th e reference is aga in to acollection of sta tes: "those other states," or a majority of them , are to becongratulated for the support that they gave "us," or are to be castigatedfor the bias that the y displayed aga inst "us ." Again, the Unit ed Nationsturns out to be not a new kind of ac tor, but a collective name for th etradit ional rnernbers of th e international cast, the states.

Admitt edly, the concept of collectiVty may be treated mor e seriouslyan d regarded more substant ively than these observa tions impl y. It maybe argued that the numerous sta tes into which the world is diVided,despite their sep arateness, constitute a whole that has acqui red a Corporate reality; while' sove reignty symbolizes their indiVidual ity, interna

' iI

,r ] >.;..;.....~ , ' Introductiontional organization expresses their community. Is the forest a lessmeaningful unit than the Single tree wi thin its bounds? From this pointof view the Unit ed Nations is virtually a synonym for th e int ernationalsyst em. Its essence is that of a corporate enti ty rather th an a collectionof component parts, and its ac ts, though they be determined by transientcombinations of member states, are to be interpreted as expressions of th e

will and policy of the collectivity.This is a view of int ernational organization that tends to arousevarying reactions, linked to different and shifti ng appraisals of organization al activity. Dominant majorities and defensive minorities are inclinedto indulge in concep tua l inflation and deflation, respectively, of theorganizations in which they hold such status: when "we win : ' theorganization th at granted us victory looms as th e community of mankind; but whe n "we lose," it takes on the more pro saic app earance of agathering of states whose behavior is not notably impr oved by theirassembling und er an org anizational roof. It would hav e been surprisingif th e United States had not regarded the United Nat ions of 1950 as theembodiment of the int ernational community, or if South Africa had notregarded the Unit ed Nat ions of 1969 as a nefarious combination of selfish,hypocritical, and meddlesome states.Th e subjectivity of the issue makes it extremely difficult to reach aconclusive jud gme nt concerning the validity of the actor concept of theUnited Nations or any other international agency. Perhaps the criticalsubjectivity is not that of winners and losers , bu t that of the great majority of th e participants in the political processes of international organizations. D o they regard themselves, in ideal and in fact, as spokesmen fornational interests or as custodians of the int erests of the larger entitywhos e scope is de termined by the membership roster of the organizationin which the y serve? We cannot easily determine with assured accur acythe answer to thi s qu estion, though we are pr obabl y on safe ground inassuming that the form er self-image is the norm al starting point in internati onal organizations, th at the shift toward the latter is more likely tooccur in some typ es of organization than in others, and that , in any case,thi s shift is destined to take pla ce slowly and unevenly, At th e pr esentstage of development of most int ernati onal orga nizations, it is doubtfulthat th e attribution of decisions, resolutions, or actions to collective entities under their organizational lab els can be properly regard ed as muchmor e th an a rh etorical cover for the reality of actions taken by sta tes,with varying degrees of consensus and contention, within the fram eworks-o r on the sta ges-provid ed by int ernational organizations.When the Unit ed Nat ions or any other internat ional organization isconceived as an actor, neither th e "we and they" nor the "they" image isas likely to be held in mind as the "it" image, This is to say th at theidentity of th e o rganization is fre quentl y considered to lie in a component


8/10

12 : : Introduction

other than its complement of member states; states are regarded as having created the organization, as supporting it in more or less generousfashion, as being influenced, served, or otherwise affected by it, as beinginvolved in it, as having attitudes toward it-but not as being it. It is not,as in the "they" conception, all its member states save the one which ata given moment sees itself as being judged or assisted or frustrated by"them," bu t it is none of them, something extraneous to all of them. The"it" in this conception is the professional staff, and particularly thesecretary.general or other chief official together with his major associatesin the bureaucracy. When one reads that the United Nations is negotiating with the World Health Organization or has agreed to collaboratewith UNEScb, this should not be taken to mean that the compositeformed by the member states of the United Nations is dealing with thecorresponding composites of the two other organizations-indeed, thesethree agglomerations of states are largely, though not completely, identical-but that members of the international secretariats of the three organizations are engaged in activities on behalf of and in the name of thoseorganizations. More often than not the statement that "The UnitedNations hopes . . ." or "The International Monetary Fund intends .. ."or "The International Labor Organization plans .. ." is best translated asa reference to positions espoused by leading staff officers. When thesecretary-general of th e United Nations deplores the tendency of mostor all members to neglect the organization and urges them to bolster itsfinances, it is clear that the organization to which he refers is not thestates themselves in combination, not the organization to which they"belong," but the organization to which he "belongs" and which he heads,which they have created and undertaken to maintain.

There is nothing strange about this phenomenon. For many aprofessor the American Association of University Professors is an "it," aheadquarters group of salaried officials whose activities he helps tofinance, whose publications he reads, an d whose services he enjoys; hismembership makes him not so much a segment of the organization as acustomer, a client, or one who subsidizes the organization because hevalues what "it" does. Similar relationships may be found between members and organizations of every variety from political parties to churches.This is not to say that such organizations are wholly autonomous or thattheir members may not be, or become, significantly involved in them;members may, in varying degrees, exercise direction and control overthem. It is worthy of note, however, that in supporting, advising, criticizing, opposing, or otherwise seeking to influence an organization, theactive member tends to treat it as something external to himself; he actsvis-a-vis the organization, rather than for it or as it. Typically, he entersinto the more intimate relationship of sharing in the identity of theorganization along with its staff only when he serves as an officer.

: 'Introduction '\ 13International organizations tend, to a greater or lesser extent, to be

such entities as I have described-agencies called into being by states,sustained by states, and actually or potentially directed by states, onthe supposition that their existence and operation may be useful to themselves. This is rather clearly the status of such a service agency as theUniversal Postal Union; it is composed of its staff and supported by itsmembers, who benefit from its activities . As we move up the scale ofpolitical relevance to the United Nations, we should expect- to find ,1progressive reversal of this relationship between staff and member states ,toward the point at which an organization may be described as beingcomposed of states and served by its staff . This reversal , however, isnever absolute. In some of its aspects even the United Nations has thecharacter that I have ascribed to the Universal Postal Union; thoughthe Security Council may be described as a group of states served bythe Secretariat, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) or theUnited Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is moreproperly regarded as a bureaucratic mechanism maintained by states. Insome respects the secretary-general is chief of an organization that existsbecause states have seen fit to sponsor its creation and that is dependentIupon, bu t essentially separate from, them. In other respects he is theservant of an organization that consists of states and that employs a supporting staff.An international organization is most clearly an actor when it ismost distinctly an "it," an entity distinguishable from its member states.,I Its real importance in international affairs , however, is not necessarilylinked to its achievement of this status. As an actor it may be very useful,bu t it can hardly be expected to rank as a major participant in interna

Itional affairs or even as an autonomous one, for its very survival is dependent upon the will of states, and its functional capacity and utilization areI ultimately subject to their determination . At best, the organization-asactor is likely to be valued as an instrument of states, not to be accordeda status and role equivalent to that of a state . Th e organization-as-stage

I may have greater significance; in providing facilities for the interplay ofstates and for the formulation and execution of such programs of jointactivity as they may agree to undertake, it may make its most substantialcontribution to international order. In short, the supplying of a stage forthe stars is conceivably more important than the sneaking of an additional bit player into the cast.

Images of Political Science . Abandoning the imagery of the theater,let us turn to the more prosaic conceptions of political science. As students of political science and simply as human beings whose experiencemakes states and governments appear to be natural and inescapablefeatures of the sociopolitical realm, comparable to moon and stars as


9/10

14 15ntroductionfeatures of the celestial realm, we can hardly avoid the application tointernational organizations of the analogy of the governmental apparatusof the state. Though we may and should be intellectually aware of theneed for caution in this matter, we inexorably find ourselves asking questions about international agencies that betray the expectation of theirbeing in some measure and manner comparable to the governments thatpreside over states. This assumption of comparability, this belief in therelevance of the standard of "stateliness," is evident even when we assertnegative expectations; if we say that the United Nations has no prospectof becoming a world government, we express the view that it is appropriate to analyze the nature of the United Nations and to assess its prospective evolution in terms of the standard provided by our image ofgovernment. Th e issue of the degree to which international organizationsare or may become government-like pervades our thinking. Even thoughwe may not be able to escape from this style of approach to internationalorganization, we can and should develop a critical understanding of thelimits of its validity and an awareness of the pitfalls into which it maylead us as students of international institutional development.

A familiar manifestation of this way of thinking is the conceptionof international organizations as inherently antago nists Or rivals of states,or as potential replacements for them. According to this view it is to beexpected ( or hoped or feared) that the norma! course of development ofinternational organizations will make them elements of the governingapparatus of a society conceived as the state writ large. Th e role of thenational government will be diminished as powers and functional responsibilities are increasingly assigned to, or assumed by, agencies having alarger jurisdictional scope than that of a Single state. International organizations can be deemed successful in the degree to which their tasksare expanded, their authority is str engthened, and their appeal to theloyalties of men is increased-all of this at the expense of the state, whichwithers away in proportion to the flourishing of international bodies, Inthis conception the growth of international organization is not only amatter of the development of broader substitutes for jurisdictionallylimited states, but also a matter of the emergence of superior entities,gaining authority and effective capacity to regulate, direct, and restrainthe behavior of governments. Thus, for example, strengthening theUnited Nations is taken to mean the expansion of its theoretical competence and actual ability to impose its will upon the governments of itsmember states, to function in effect as a government over governments.In these terms international organization is conceived as a process ofcreating collective agencies whose Vitality is exhibited in the supplantingand subordinating of the gov/:'rmnents of their members. A zero-sumgame is thought to be in progress between states and internationalorganizations .

. .,Introduction

Is this an accurate characterization of the essential relationshipbetween states and int ernational organizations? Is it compatible with theideal of educated expectations to evaluate their progress by employing thecriterion of the downgrading of the national state in favor of entities withwider span and higher status?

These questions do not lend themselves to simple and easy answers.If we attempt to answer them in terms of the intentions and hopes of theofficial creators of and participants in international organizations, theresults are mixed and variable according to the organizations being considered . Thus, the objective of the supersession and subordination ofmember states figures more prominently among the motivations involvedin the establishment and development of the European Economic Community than among the motivations behind the United Nations, thoughit would be as great a mistake to assume that this objective has exclusivestatus in the case of the former as to assume that it is nonexistent in thecase of the latter. It may make sense to adopt integration as the measuring rod for the success of the EE C , but surely not for the United Nations-i f we mean success in the realization of purposes dominant amongparticipants in the two organizations. Allowing for the facts that anoccasional statesman may embrace the ideal of elevating internationalorganizations to the superstate level and that an exceptional organization may be dominated by that ideal, we may yet conclude that thehistory of international organization fails to confirm the view that itrepresents a deliberate effort to accomplish such a revolutionary transformation of the international system. Th e international organizationmovement has not been an antistate crusade in which statesmen havesomehow been induced, knowingly or unknowingly, to collaborate. Byand large international organizations have been the products of statesmen whose purposes, however mixed and variable, have been confinedwithin the limits of compatibility with the conventional multistate system.

International organizations are , of course, no less subject than otherhuman institutions to the potentiality of moving in directions unwilledand unanticipated by their founders or by any particular generation oftheir operators. Th e estimation of prospects should not be definitivelysettled by the analysis of purposes; no one can say with assurance thatour present-day i nternational organizations, Or some of them, will notevolve in such a way as to displace and dominate states, It is conceivablethat historical forces running beneath the level of the conscious motivation of human beings are indeed pitting international organizationsagainst states in a zero-sum game,Such speculation, however fascinating and attractive it may be, particularly for a generation acutely sensitive to evidence of the inadequacyand evils of the multistate system, provid es an unsatisfactory basis for theachievement of educated expectations concerning the performance and


10/10

176 / : Introduction Introduction Cdevelopment of international organizations . Moving beyond the proclaimed promises of charters and constitutions and the articulated purposes of official participants in the work of international organizations,we find the best evidence as to what can reasonably and realistically beexpected of international organizations not in the mystical realm of historical undercurrents, but in the more prosaic record of how international agencies have been and are being used. What they are "supposed"to be or to do should be determined not by our wishes as to what theymight be or do, bu t by our understanding of the possibilities that appearin the situation in which they are embedded and of the probabilitiesthat are revealed by the patterns of utilization established by states, theirultimate owners and operators .This test. provides overwhelming evidence that , with rare and uncertain exceptions, international organizations are treated as agenciesfor the improvement of the multistate system, suppliers of modernizedequipment for the use of states in the management of their relationshipsand the pursuit of their objectives within that system. They have beenfashioned by states as instruments for their own use , an d the measure oftheir flourishing is in the degree to which states find them usable anduseful for their purposes. The dualism of conflictual and cooperativerelationships in the international system is reflected in the efforts ofstates to use collective devices both against each other and with eachother. Th e typical state-serving, state-supplementing, and state-assistinguses of international organizations have been brought to a focus in theera of decolonization; with respect to the new members of the international system, the state-building function has emerged as the major preoccupation of the United Nations and of many other components of theworld's organizational network. Given this emphasis, the evaluation of

Icontemporary international organizations in terms of their contributions ito the shrinkage of the significance of states would be as inappropriate asthe evaluation of schools in terms of their success in promoting illiteracy. "There is, of course, a state-restraining objective which persistentlyoccupies a prominent place among the concerns of international organizations, an essential corollary of the state-protecting function. Th e state'sbasic urge for security has been transmuted into an acknowledgment of Ithe necessity for world order; consequently, the central agenda of international organization has included the development of controls and theimposition of requirements upon states, designed to foster peace andstability in international relations. In a sense, then , international organizations such as the United Nations are validly conceived as state-

I regulatory enterprises. The essence of the matter, however, is that suchenterprises represent the efforts of states to enhance their interests bycollaborating in acceptance of restraint and responsibility and in thedevelopment of mechanisms that may assist them in making the multi-

state system compatible with and conducive to the minimal order thattheir survival requires. In th ese terms the United Nations and oth er international organizations operating in the security sphere are more properlyregarded as instruments of states, considered collectively as well asindividually, than as competitors of states. If they succeed in producinga reliable world order, this success will be attributable not to the dominance of agencies that stand above states, but to the capacity of states ,coordinating their efforts , to discipline themselves and each other; andits consequence will be not the destruction, but the salvation, of themultistate system.

The progressive development of international organization involvesthe increasing domestication of international relations-the introductionof features more characteristic of intrastate than of traditional interstaterelationships . This is a process of reform and modernization of thesystem, not a revolutionary reaction against the system. For better orfor worse, this is the sort of enterprise in which the states of the worldare heavily engaged. Given the nature of the enterprise, the appropriatequestion to ask concerning international organizations is not whetherthey are succeeding in putting states out of business and taking thatbusiness for themselves, but whether they are contributing to the

\ capacit y of states to stay in business.

Documents

Claude_introduccion[1]