Waning soft power/ Ramesh Shrestha

The current global power relationship has delegitimised the principles and pillars on which the United Nations was founded. How can the soft power of the United Nations be made effective for the benefit of the mankind?

Arrogance of man

Use of authority is a kind of power relationship with a bigger power putting pressure on lesser power. At the individual level for example, parents exert soft powers on children to teach them social values; if soft power fails parents may resort to hard power such as restricting movement, shortening play time, not providing pocket money (depending on the age), etc. Human beings have always exercised their authority using soft and hard power within families, in societies, by countries through their foreign policies and by extension internationally such as by regional organisations and the United Nations.

Internationally, politicians use soft powers with diplomacy, persuasions and incentives to get what they want, and to maintain alliance and loyalty. If soft power fails then countries resort to hard power through coercion such as threats, interfering in domestic affairs, exclusions, financial pressure as in sanctions and even punishments using military forces with mixed results. The failure of soft power may lead to an impasse but the failure of hard power could result in serious long-term strain in relationships. There are serious consequences for using hard power but it never deterred people, countries and organisations from using hard power. It is a practical demonstration of arrogance of man even if it means harming innocent civilians.

United Nations and its’ soft power

The soft power of the UN is not designed to sell its agenda unlike the soft power of countries to promote their foreign policy. The UN’s main agenda is to ensure social and economic wellbeing of its member states and to maintain global peace on which there cannot be two opinions. But there are objections to UN’s soft powers by member states expressed by voting against or by abstaining to vote on UN’s resolutions. At times UN members even use UN’s forum to promote their hard power openly defying UN’s soft power.

Every Head of State and Head of Government of UN member states take pride in promoting issues of social and economic justice and maintaining peace, yet, when it comes to supporting the same agenda of the UN, many member states have miserably failed, especially the powerful members of the UN Security Council. The credibility of the UN’s soft power has been put in an ambiguous position or even doubted on many occasions by the actions of powerful member states. This allows other UN member states, who have backing of the UN Security Council members to openly defy the UN.

According to Uppsala University which manages the global ‘Conflict Data Programme’ there has been 285 armed conflicts since the creation of the United Nations. These include long standing internal ethnic armed conflict such as in Myanmar, inter-country conflicts such as between India and Pakistan, and major wars involving coalitions of countries such as Vietnam War and proxy wars as in Libya and Syria. There are long standing stalemates such as the Korean conflict (1950-53); there has not been open hostilities for decades yet there is no peace treaty either, despite both Koreas wanting a peace treaty signed. It raises a question as to why was the UN unable to use its soft power to resolve such long standing issues, prevent numerous internal conflicts and outright wars?

Away from ideological debates, we are faced with extinctive threat of global climate crisis and extremes in economic disparity. But leaders are busy playing blame game – us vs them. It puts the future, especially of many least developed and developing countries into uncertainty. In fact, the inability of the UN to resolve Climate crisis puts the survival of the entire humanity into jeopardy. How can the soft power of the UN be deployed effectively for the safety of all its member states?

Marketing of power

The UN’s soft power is not like its member state’s soft power such as the United States of America. The US soft power is able to sell its image of ‘American Dream’ through Hollywood movies portraying the US as the land of opportunities and freedom, scholarships to international students and promotion of ‘US values’ through USAID. Some of these are questionable but this is not the right forum to debate this. The UN has nothing of that sort of gifts or media circus to promote its peace agenda.

A serious contradiction in the UN’s soft power is that all resolutions and recommendations of the UN are generated with the consent of the UN member states yet, many such resolutions are bluntly sidelined often by just a small number of member states including by some UN Security Council members. Such acts may encourage other UN member states to ignore the UN resolutions putting in doubt the soft power of the UN all together. It looks as though the UN’s soft power has been regularly challenged since the end of the so called ‘Cold war’. What has changed since then?

The current global system is dominated by logic of economic power and political domination by any means even if it means use of military force. It is in divergence with the UN’s mission of social and economic justice and global peace. It almost delegitimise the principles and pillars on which the UN was founded. The dominant power brokers within the UN system have transferred the idea of social justice, economic integrity and global peace into a marketplace of economy and competition based on political alliances. How can the soft power of the United Nations be made effective or reinstated for the benefit of mankind?

 

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