Time for make-believe is over


	SANAA YEMEN: Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi (L) and Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri (R) at the OIC foreign ministers’ meeting

t the Sanaa meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Conference last month (June 28-30), the OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has demanded a ‘permanent representation for the Islamic world on the UN Security Council’. Mr Ihsanoglu argued that “The Islamic world, which represents one-fifth of total mankind, cannot remain excluded from the activities of the Security Council which assumes a fundamental role in keeping security and peace in the world”.

This is the first time the OIC has made such a formal demand. Why? There seem to be two factors behind this: Since the October 2003 OIC summit, some of the relatively prominent Muslim states – including Pakistan – have been trying to make the Conference more relevant to international politics and the pressures it generates; two, the past two years have seen heightened activity by G-4 – a term used for Brazil, Germany, India and Japan – to get permanent membership of the UNSC. This has come in tandem with increasing voices for UN reform in general and UNSC reform in particular.

A third factor, which in fact is at the core of the efforts towards increasing the salience of OIC, is the crisis the Muslim world is facing since September 11, 2001.

What should one make of the OIC’s demand?

In theory, it makes sense. If the UN is accepted as the central element of an international system (or “society” as some theorists choose to term it), the OIC, representing one-fifth of humanity, can lay claim to a seat on the UNSC to safeguard the interests of its member-states. The demand also dovetails with the idea of UN/UNSC reform. But this is as far as it goes. The reality may be different. Consider.

The UNSC, as it stands, reflects the post-World War II international power structure. Unlike the egalitarian League of Nations, which created a false sense of equality among member-states by eschewing the differences of power among its members, the UNSC, by having five veto-wielding powers, mirrored the machtpolitik in the real world.

Since then, argue advocates of reform and UNSC expansion, much has changed. Germany and Japan, the two defeated nations, have emerged as power centres. India is bursting at the seams; Brazil is now the dominant power in Latin America and so on. (I have, of course, not even attempted to look at other arguments, especially by non-state actors – activists, NGOs etc – for two reasons: states still retain their primacy as deciders of how the UN/UNSC must be reformed or run; two, while everyone agrees that the UN should be reformed, there is no agreement on the parameters of reforms.)

The arguments of those who emphasise the emergence of new power centres are interesting. Underlying them is the assumption that military power is not the primary – definitely, not the sole – benchmark for a veto-wielding permanent seat on the UNSC. Allied with this assumption is the increasing confidence in the element of cooperation through multiple layers of interaction and interdependence. What is intriguing is that these arguments should come at the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the sole superpower that combines in it the three essentials of a great power: military dominance, economic superiority and political stability.

The US factor is important because since the nineties, but especially since September 11, 2001, we have seen America straining at the legal leash because it serves to constrain its independence of action. If and when it comes to the crunch, the US would sooner break the chains of legality than remain trapped into them. We saw this in the run-up to the Iraq war. We have seen this in force-based initiatives like PSI (proliferation security initiative); we are witnessing this in the way the US has arm-twisted states into fighting the war on terror and extracted cooperation from them. We have also seen how the US wants the UN to kowtow to its wishes and policies in order to narrow the gap between the legal and the political.

This should not surprise anyone. The US would want to turn its ‘unipolar moment’ into a unipolar episode. This means that it would like to create a global system where it continues to enjoy its primacy. Let this system be based on a combination of multilateral and bilateral arrangements (legal-normative) but, should the need arise, at no point must it constrain the US from acting unilaterally or through a ‘coalition of the willing’ on case-to-case basis. In other words, the US, while sitting atop a legal-normative system, must remain free to act independently to enhance its security.

If this is accepted, then nothing much has changed. The Realist argument would point to the necessity of ‘balancing’ and argue that the US would fail in turning the unipolar moment into an episode because balancing is in the nature of state interaction. That is true. But for its own part the US is struggling – and would continue to do so – to convince states that ‘bandwagoning’ is a more profitable option than balancing.

Are there any states within the OIC that have not hitched themselves to the bandwagon? If the answer is no then it is difficult to see what the OIC could acquire even if it were to get into the UNSC as a permanent member.

Even more importantly, based on the logic of the three essentials of state power – military prowess, economic strength and political stability – we cannot see any core state within the Islamic bloc that could interact with the outside world and negotiate with it on behalf of the bloc (Samuel Huntington is completely right on this point). In fact, the reason the challenge has come to the West in the form and manner of Al Qaeda is owed to the absence in the Islamic bloc of a powerful state.

The interesting factor is that Al Qaeda is also challenging the Muslim states. However, while Al Qaeda is opposed to the very nature of the current global power structure, the OIC is trying to link itself to the manifestation of that very system by demanding a permanent seat on the UNSC. So while the Al Qaeda challenge seems to have goaded the OIC into action, the Conference is now trying to carve a niche for itself in the same hall where the US sits on the high throne.

The point the OIC needs to understand is that it cannot project power or even safeguard the interests of its member-states by getting into the UNSC that reflects current power structure (in any case any new members if and when they are accepted are unlikely to do so as veto-wielding states). Neither can it change the global power structure like this. That is done outside the UNSC and not by requesting the current powers to allow it to become a member of that body. If the OIC wants to change the current machtpolitik , the Muslim states need to emerge as strong states. In theory they could do so to a point where the Islamic bloc would not even need the currently contoured UN. It could demand a readjustment. And if it is truly powerful enough, the world will pay attention.

It is important to look at the US. Washington too wants UN reform. But its idea of reform is to shape the UN in a way that the latter begins to facilitate rather than thwart its (US) policies. President George Bush put the UN on ultimatum in September 2002 after he had decided to make war on Iraq: shape up or the US would act unilaterally. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ was his way of signalling to the world that the US will find partners outside the UN if need be: unilateralism through temporary multilateralism.

This is how the world is shaped. While there are elements outside the domain of military power that can, and have, influenced the world, the basic equation has not changed and cannot change because it remains linked with military power. Indeed, even the soft power of a great power is a function of its hard power. That is the not-so-hidden assumption in the neo-liberal argument. While neo-liberals have more faith in the power of institutions and predict movement towards the evolution of an “international society”, someone has to guarantee against party poopers. That is where the hard power of a great power comes in. Indeed, what the US is trying to do is to shape the UN in a way that it (US) can legitimise the use of its hard power through that body.

The OIC would do itself much good by focusing on strengthening the bloc in real terms. That requires a different kind of work. The time for make-believe is over.