Nicolas Sarkozy said at the end of the Copenhagen United Nations system was "breathless" the UMP has followed the lead Saturday in the process of enacting UN decisions "run its course." Maybe, but before signing the death certificate, what would replace the system of global governance in place at the end of the Second World War and is still the only instance of overall legitimacy?
The object of criticism
The presidential annoyance is based on the fact that the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, he was a consensus to reach decisions. No majority vote in such instances, it must negotiate until disappear drafts the famous "hook" that mark all the points of disagreement.
If there is no consensus, the negotiators should lower the level of consensus or simply remove the disputed clause. This explains, on arrival, when there is a disagreement as was the case Copenague a full soft, without constraint.
The majority, apparently with the "talking points" dictated by the Elysée, has decided to attack at this point to justify the failure of the Conference - and thus to minimize the risk of criticism vis-à-vis Nicolas Sarkozy. For the UMP:
"This summit has shown, however, the problems of decision making UN has shown its limits and all that seems to run its course. "
As for Christian Estrosi, Minister of Industry, he said on Saturday:
"As President (Nicolas Sarkozy) has shown itself to 120 nations, a system based on consensus will never lead to significant advances. "
In passing qu'Estrosi, which seems to have a perspective on everything, happily zaps some 70 countries since the number of member states of the UN, and therefore participants in the Copenhagen Conference is 192.
These criticisms are true?
The United Nations was born in 1945 on the ruins of the League of Nations (SDN) pre-war who had not had the means to prevent the descent into the underworld of Europe and the world. It was both "muscles" this global organization and give it the means to prevent war (with the famous "Chapter 7" of the Charter, which allows an armed intervention in cases of serious threat Peace), while "democratizing" the international society.
This dual requirement carries with it a contradiction that is reflected in the UN institutions. The UN is both a General Assembly in which each state, large or small, theoretically weighs the same weight, and a Security Council decision-making fifteen members, five permanent (China, USA, France, UK and Russia) with the right of veto and ten other states elected for two years on a regional basis.
This operation was designed to provide power from the winning side of the war on a dominant role for global stability. An illusion since shortly after the creation of the UN, the Cold War jammed the machine and the game of vetoes and influences has "sealed" the Security Council for forty years until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Since 1990, the UN believed that its "golden age" would return with the end of the East-West rivalry and thus the end of vetoes stun the benefit of client states. It was a new illusion, or rather disillusionment, which failed in the inability of the world organization in the 90s to prevent the Balkan wars, to intervene during the Rwandan genocide, or simply to enforce its own resolutions, the Middle East for example.
The unilateralism of the Bush administration in the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003 has ruined any hope left to see the Security Council as a new hub of global governance, an impotence which still continues despite the change of administration Washington.
Copenhagen And in all this?
The summit on climate has little to do with these problems. These conferences, initiated by the UN in the 90s on social issues such as water, health, human rights, disarmament, women's rights, children or poverty, have gradually took the form of mégasommets together in one place thousands of delegates from member states of the United Nations, thousands of representatives of NGOs and an international civil society becoming more vocal, and thousands of police officers ...
These conferences have always operated by consensus, with iron hand, crises and compromises in the middle of the night. It is exhausting, but it's the only way to advance the world in unison to build a body of values and common decisions.
But this is not the need to make a consensus of 192 who have had problems in Copenhagen, is the inability of the most powerful and agree to "sell" then their compromise as many. If those who weigh more, the largest industrial polluter in the world (USA, EU) and major emerging countries (Brazil, China, India) were able to find significant common ground, the summit would not completed on such a feeling of collapse.
Realpolitik was invited to the negotiating table, and how could it be otherwise? How to imagine that China, a new superpower of the moment, the economy started again with a double-digit growth and a strong national affirmation also, do not come to Copenhagen to impose its views, and in particular reject any perceived control as a " interference in its affairs?
And it applies to the United States, Obama got a "naked" in the words of our blogger Helen Crié without consensus behind him in his own country for more advanced high?
The problem is that Nicolas Sarkozy is willing to force the savior of the world, he rarely plays collectively. He believed that the support of Brazil's Lula, the relationship of France with Africa, and a last-minute duet with Britain's Gordon Brown would be enough to win. All observers have pointed at Copenhagen erasure of the European Union, despite its weight, its efforts "virtuous" Environment and Chair of the Summit.
This collective diplomatic impotence has nothing to do with the need for consensus, but everything to do with new international power relations, and personal boundaries of statesmen, they call Obama or Sarkozy.
Replace the UN?
Is it reasonable or demagogic now designate the system of UN as a scapegoat for the failure? It is obvious that the UN functioning poorly, suffer from weak leadership in the person of too discreet South Korean Ban Ki-moon, and inability to reform itself to reflect new global equilibrium in the composition of its Security Council.
Should we therefore focus more confined bodies such as the G20, which arose in favor of the financial crisis, which seems set to continue, gathering around the large table yesterday and tomorrow, plus a sprinkling of international organizations (IMF, World Bank) and regional representatives?
The G20 may be most effective in times of crisis to coordinate policies, but now he has legitimacy nor universal, or means of action. And, most importantly, it will not prevent the interests of more powerful win at the expense of the general interest. This is what happened in Copenhagen. This is not drawing on the UN that exceed this impasse.