Cambridge Union: Is the UN a Dead Loss?

Proposition: Tom DeWeese (President of the American Policy Center, a right-wing think tank), Ted Knight (Former leader of Lambeth Council), Simon Tisdall (Guardian newspaper columnist)

Opposition: Lord David Hannay (Former UK Ambassador to the United Nations), Salil Shetty (Director of the UK Millennium Campaign), Simon Hughes (President of the Liberal Democrats)

The Cambridge Union, the world's oldest debating society, was allegedly founded as a result of a drunken brawl between Cambridge University students in 1815. It now hosts some of the most controversial and interesting debates in the UK, and its debates are taken very seriously-both by Union members and by the public. Shortly after 9/11, a debate on Palestine was so controversial that the Union President received death threats, policemen stood guard outside the building, and Special Branch officers were hidden in the audience. It was in this same chamber that the motion "This House believes that the UN is a dead loss" was overwhelmingly defeated on 26 October 2006: 33 voted in favour of the motion and 361 opposed.

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The massive defeat was at least partially due to the wording of the debate, which clearly favoured the opposition. The UN could only be considered a "dead loss" if it were utterly without success or hope. Proponents of the resolution (Tom DeWeese, president of the right-wing American Policy Center; Ted Knight, former head of the council governing London's borough of Lambeth; and Simon Tisdall, columnist for The Guardian), were necessarily committed to the position that the UN could not be salvaged. Opponents (Lord David Hannay, former UK ambassador to the UN; Salil Shetty, Director of the UK Millennium Campaign; and Simon Hughes, President of the Liberal Democratic Party) were free to concede that it was not perfect. Indeed, the resolution seemed to be more extreme than some proposition speakers would have liked: while The Cambridge Globalist was interviewing Lord Hannay after the debate, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall asked Lord Hannay whether it was obvious that Tisdall didn't agree with anything that he had himself been arguing.

DeWeese alone seemed to believe passionately in the full force of the motion; he opened the debate by stating that "the world is in chaos, and quite frankly it is the UN's fault". He argued that the UN is the reason for North Korea now posing a threat, and blamed the UN for unsuccessful peacekeeping missions and for coddling repressive governments in Syria and Zimbabwe. He went on to call the UN a "criminal enterprise".

In this way, DeWeese was the only member of the opposition to actually argue against the principle of the UN existing. The other two proposition speakers did not deny that the World Health Organisation (WHO) projects, for example, had been effective or that UNESCO had improved the lives of children world-wide. Instead, they argued that the problems posed by the UN were serious enough to discount the benefits.

Certainly, the idea of the UN being entirely responsible for the "chaos" of the world seems like a very extreme position-as Lord Hannay commented, it was a "pretty odd thing to say". Lord Hannay went on to remind the chamber that because of the UN's work, millions of people are saved every year.

Can it then be argued that the UN provides enough humanitarian aid to prevent it from being considered a "dead loss"? Presumably, something could not be a "dead loss" provided it had done some amount of good work. And it seems that regardless of the problems associated with the UN, no one could deny that it has helped many people. There have been successful UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, Namibia and Cambodia. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has helped an estimated 50 million people restart their lives since it was established in 1950. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has provided immunisations and education for millions of children worldwide. The proposition did not deny that any of these examples of aid work actually occurred. It thus seems extreme for the proposition to label the UN a "dead loss".

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Perhaps, however, the proposition might still be able to show that the problems caused by the UN outweigh the humanitarian work carried out. Every large organisation has some difficulties. Each member of the opposition was prepared to admit that there were problems with the UN-corruption, inefficiency, Kosovo, Iraq-but they could also make the case that the UN's contributions to the world outweighed those problems. Thus the proposition would have to show how these problems are debilitating for the UN, rather than simply being a reality of any organisation.

Yet the proposition was divided over precisely what problems the UN posed. For example, debaters did not agree on how troubling the relationship between the U.S. and the UN was. Although DeWeese (the only American speaker at the debate) criticised the UN on the grounds that it had not supported the U.S./UK invasion in Iraq, the other speakers believed that the U.S. has too much influence at the UN. They argued that U.S. influence has caused North Korea to pose a threat that she otherwise would not, that Bush (with Blair) had allowed Israel to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon, and that the influence of the U.S. was disproportionately large.

Tisdall opened his speech with the comment that Bush was an example of the fact that "anyone can do anything in life so long as one's parents work hard enough". In this way, the position of Knight and Tisdall was not far from that of the opposition, who conceded that U.S. power in the UN was a problem. Knight and Tisdall would support the UN more if it peddled U.S. interests less; DeWeese, on the other hand, said that the problem with the UN is precisely that it does not achieve enough of the goals that the U.S. sets out for it.

It's not clear, however, that DeWeese would support the UN even if the world body were more vigorous in its support for U.S. foreign policy. DeWeese criticised the very notion of there being a system of global governance such as the UN. He was critical of any UN-initiated global justice on the basis that the UN officials had not been elected and had "no right" to intervene. He ignored the comment from the floor asking how he could support the supposed "justice" from the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and not that from the UN.

None of the proposition speakers mentioned the role of the U.S. in the UN in the debate; neither to deny the accusations of the Knight and Tisdall nor to concede that it posed a problem. However, Lord Hannay told The Cambridge Globalist after the debate that he believed the power of the U.S. over the UN will lessen in the future. He said that it is an "illusion" that one country could do things alone and that he believed that the UN will soon move back to a more multi-lateral supporting system. When asked for his opinion on the relationship between the UN and the U.S., he replied that the UN now has to think of "after Bush" as well as the next two years. Lord Hannay did not explicitly criticise the impact of the UN, but he did express reservations about the UN being controlled by any nation.

Perhaps this debate is an example of the wider differences between UK and U.S. perceptions of the UN. Even though there will always be harsh criticism from the UK media of various UN actions, the people (and the media) still support the UN in principle. Indeed, the British speakers all offered constructive criticism of the UN, while the American DeWeese attacked the very idea of the UN's existence. Further, it seems that while the British public-or at least the Cambridge audience-want less influence to come from western leaders (in particular Bush and Blair), the Americans were represented as being more in favour of their countries' political influence playing a strong role in the UN.