AYABONGA CAWE: UN is best shield against multilateral anarchy despite failures

When then British prime minister Clement Attlee presented the UN Charter to the House of Commons in August 1945 he reminded legislators of the island’s recent “familiarity” with the horrors of war. He mentioned this to foreground why the charter would be an effective safeguard against “world anarchy”.  

Without it, Attlee suggested, “we and our children would know life only under an abiding menace of sudden and devastating attack”. 

Eight decades later, many in Gaza, Juba and Odesa live under the menacing threat of attack even while their territories claim the charter as a guiding article of faith. Despite its past failures in Rwanda and other conflicts over the past few decades, for many of its member states the UN remains a safeguard against multilateral anarchy. Or the best we have. 

Yet questions remain about its relevance, least of all to the self-congratulatory impulse of President Donald Trump’s speech at the General Assembly last week: “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the UN,” the US president whined.  

All he got, he suggested, “was an escalator that stopped right in the middle”. Were it not for his and the First Lady’s fitness, Trump said, they would have been unable to join the annual meeting. A blinding metaphor of a “civilisational mission” embodied in the UN, faced with an incomplete historical task. A mission confronting a moment of stasis on an escalator to higher civilisational values of co-operation, prosperity and peace.  

This crisis of multilateralism has coincided, as globalisation moved apace, with the weaponisation of mutual (but asymmetric) dependence. Economic sanctions are now complemented with other forms of economic coercion through tariff threats and control over the trade in sensitive goods. It has resulted in the weaponisation of trade and the choking of supply chains for ostensibly geopolitical reasons, as President Cyril Ramaphosa observed last week. 

It has also been characterised by the use of “tariff” as a noun and a verb. As Trump lamented the inadequacy of his chemistry with Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva, in the complicated impasse between their nations, he gave an example of this: “Brazil unfairly tariffed our nation. But now because of our tariffs we are hitting them back and we’re hitting them back very hard.” 

The UN Charter has selectively opposed discrimination and enabled national behaviours at odds with its aims, as observed by a committee chaired by ZK Matthews in 1943, which issued its own “consideration and interpretation of the UN Charter”, the African Claims. One of the key points the committee considered was the open-door policy in trade and raw materials.

Its report suggested that “judging by past experiences and present economic evils, [this] raised in [their] minds considerable misgivings” about the likely continuation of the exploitation of African resources, “to the detriment of her indigenous inhabitants”.

Put simply, even under the most optimistic and progressive impulses multilateralism could create an undercarriage for colonialism and imperialism. The high-sounding rhetoric of an “international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all people” could cloak the naked impulse for economic self-interest, thus undermining its own objectives.

The use of import taxation for not just punitive or industrial purposes but the building of spheres of influence and control is an example of this. For instance, Trump’s prepared remarks suggested that for his tariffs to be effective, “European nations — all of you are gathered here right now — would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures”. 

For the emerging brand of multilateralism and co-operation to exist it seems the world has to be divided into aggressor and Robin Hood states. Citizens and illegal aliens. Friends and enemies.

The adversarial economic and military impulses in a superconnected world need to overcome more than just the mercurially talented self-belief of any individual, especially where the tools of war have become so diffuse and disruptive. 

• Cawe is chief commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission. He writes in his personal capacity.