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What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix it, by Thomas G. Weiss
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Six decades after its establishment, the United Nations and its system of related agencies and programs are perpetually in crisis. While the twentieth-century’s world wars gave rise to ground-breaking efforts at international organization in 1919 and 1945, today’s UN is ill-equipped to deal with contemporary challenges to world order. Neither the end of the Cold War nor the aftermath of 9/11 has led to the “next generation” of multilateral institutions.
But what exactly is wrong with the UN, and how can we fix it? Is it possible to retrofit the world body? In his succinct and hard-hitting analysis, Thomas G. Weiss takes a diagnose-and-cure approach to the world organization’s inherent difficulties. In the first half of the book, he considers: the problems of international leadership and decision making in a world of self-interested states; the diplomatic difficulties caused by the artificial divisions between the industrialized North and the global South; the structural problems of managing the UN’s many overlapping jurisdictions, agencies, and bodies; and the challenges of bureaucracy and leadership. The second half shows how to mitigate these maladies and points the way to a world in which the UN’s institutional ills might be “cured.” His remedies are not based on pious hopes of a miracle cure for the UN, but rather on specific and encouraging examples that could be replicated. With considered optimism and in contrast to received wisdom, Weiss contends that substantial change in intergovernmental institutions is plausible and possible.
The new and expanded second edition of this well-regarded and indispensable book will continue to spark debate amongst students, scholars, and policymakers concerned with international politics, as well as anyone genuinely interested in the future of the United Nations and multilateral cooperation.
- Sales Rank: #561422 in Books
- Published on: 2012-05-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x .80" w x 5.85" l, .95 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
Review
"Alas, Thomas Weiss has written a very good book - he makes clear how badly the UN is broken."
Economic and Political Weekly
"By any standard, this is a work of unusual ambition, scope, and insight. Only Tom Weiss, one of the UN’s most prolific and experienced observers, could so adroitly capture the world body’s perils and promise with such a winning combination of clarity, rigor, and wisdom."
Edward C. Luck, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General
"A comprehensive and extremely thoughtful analysis by the leading scholar of the UN in the United States, this should be on the required reading list for the US president, and the leaders of other nations as well."
Craig N. Murphy, Wellesley College and University of Massachusetts Boston
“This is a very timely book, given the broad spectrum of growing difficulties facing the international system and the United Nations. It provides an analytically powerful and empirically rich account of a UN in crisis, followed by a range of sensible suggestions to place the world organization on a more sound footing in its address of deepening challenges. It speaks to issues of profound scholarly and policy relevance in a way that is eminently accessible to a wide range of readers.
S. Neil MacFarlane, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
About the Author
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
the book's title matches its content
By Ben Lamb-Books, PhD
Weiss's latest book is a marvelous read about the United Nations, short yet comprehensive. It is very readable and very well organized: each problem chapter has a corresponding solutions chapter. Going into this book, I thought that the main problems of the UN were its bureaucracy and its loss of legitimacy due to past scandals. Finishing the book, I'm more inclined to agree with Weiss that lack of funding is the problem and that the UN actually needs more centralization to make it more effective. He notes that the entire budget of the UN System is only $13 billion (a budget ridiculously dwarfed by the $680 billion US Defense budget). Weiss is no wide-eyed utopian about the UN. He gets the balance between realism and optimism about the UN's governance potential just right.
Weiss of course goes into much more depth regarding the UN's numerous challenges and shortcomings (in addition to lack of funding). He describes 'bloc' like divisions between the global North and South in the General Assembly; turf battles and redundancy between many different specialized agencies; the failure to recruit young talented idealists into secretariat offices. Weiss elucidates and simplifies the complexity of the UN system in a way that is not too overwhelming (the inevitable usage of acronyms is only slightly frustrating). He discusses interesting UN reports and summits that I was less familiar with, his approach emphasizing the relative institutional autonomy of the "second UN" as opposed to the history of Covenants passed by the General Assembly (as a state forum) or the sovereignty-minded actions of the Security Council. Unfortunately, Weiss does not offer proposals to reform the membership of the Security Council, for him, every proposal out there only creating more conflict and dissensus (and if realized would make the Security Council even less effective than it currently is). Previous scandals are dealt with briefly, in particular the corruption of the Iraqi Oil-For-Food program and the sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers in Congo, Haiti and Liberia. A special concern of Weiss's is improving the quality of the "international civil service" as one way to prevent future scandals (which do untold damage to the world body's moral authority). One complaint: the discussion of national sovereignty and 'Westphalianism' while perhaps obligatory was way too simplistic and has already been overdone (he even calls the British social theorist David Held a 'Westphalian' thinker, which is clearly inaccurate).
The are many other issues covered that I'm not summarizing (AIDS, human rights regarding internally displaced persons, the notion of a 'rapid reaction force'). The second edition, just published summer 2012, includes some reference to events in Libya and Syria as well as the formation of the International Criminal Court. The concluding chapter is a real treat for political and social theorists. It defines and criticizes the concept of "global governance" as it became used academically to allude to the weakness of inter-governmental organizations (IGOs like the UN) and to point to the increasing significance of corporations and NGOs in forms of transnational decision-making and regulation. While being associated with this field of thought, Weiss ends the book on a note critical toward ideas of global civil society. The 'global governance' paradigm rests content with the decentralization and incoherence of current global institutions, which as they stand currently, are unable to respond adequately to 21st century global threats. Weiss wants to strengthen the IGOs.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
The United Nations - A Dysfunctional Family
By Jeri Zerr
What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It, by Thomas G. Weiss, is an in-depth introspection into the history of the United Nations and the challenges it has faced in meeting the challenges of the post Cold War era. Weiss, a Presidential Professor at The City University of New York's Graduate Center, blames self-interested membership and artificial divisions between the industrialized North and the global South as major barriers to the efficacy of the United Nations.
Although the author devotes nearly half of this book to performing diagnostics on the problems within the United Nations, he devotes the last 4 chapters to "suggestions" on how the United Nations could be retooled as an effective and functional international body. Weiss calls upon world leaders to redefine national interests in terms of international responsibility. He also calls upon the UN to move beyond the "North-South Divide" and forge creative partnerships, overcoming long-standing and counterproductive divides. The author further advocates that the United Nations "Deliver as One", through centralizing authority and coordinating responses among UN agencies. Finally, Weiss calls for the re-invigoration of the International Civil Service, through the recruiting of a more mobile and younger staff, to provide better career development for the twenty-first century world organization.
Thomas G. Weiss is a world renowned expert on the United Nations and has authored many publications on the UN and international affairs. This second edition book is a great read for students of international affairs, but may be slightly academic for the casual non-fiction reader.
I also recommend The United Nations and Changing World Politics by Weiss.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
By Alan D. Cranford
After reading and re-reading "What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It" by Thomas G. Weiss my review's title was inspired by the Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha." Weiss proposes governance without government. Since the Great War (1914 to 1919) national governments have recognized that many problems are global in nature and beyond the means of any one nation to remedy. The League of Nations' failure led to the establishment of the United Nations--governance by consent of the governed works only until someone says "make me!" On January 1, 1942 the "Declaration by the United Nations" was adopted in Washington, D.C. by the nations fighting Hitler's Germany--the UN's World War Two roots are why the six official United Nation languages do not include German, Italian or Japanese (those languages are English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic). Though the first General Assembly of the United Nations was 10 January 1946 (in London) the war was too recent for the nations of Germany and Japan to participate and this still affects the present-day world body. Fact: force is what governments are all about. Ignoring the origins of the United Nations will hamper understanding that world body--Weiss writes for people who already have some idea of what the United Nations does.
Having said that, Weiss makes several worthwhile points. He diagnoses four "ills" (and offers four palliatives):
1. National sovereignty (redefine "national interests")
2. Artificial divisions between nations summed up as "North-South Theater" (move beyond the divide)
3. Feudal organizational structure of the United Nations (("truly delivering as one")
4. Bureaucratic overload (reinvigorate the International Civil Service)
Weiss presents his conclusions starting on page 223. He answers the question "What is Global Governance?" on page 224 and on page 230 asks "What happened to world government?" Sovereign jurisdiction as defined by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the independence of national governments "hampers" addressing global issues including but not limited to:
* Terrorism (both domestic and international, by either official governments or by non-government organizations)
* Poverty
* Pollution
* Over-population
* HIV/AIDS and other world-wide plagues
* Nuclear proliferation
* Economic crises (separate from simple crushing poverty)
* Climate change
Page 66 mentions the Club of Rome, but doesn't mention its 1972 report, "The Limits to Growth," which can be oversimplified as Earth cannot sustain a population of three billion people. Today's global population is over seven billion, and growing.
The United Nations was established to MANAGE a crisis, not resolve a crisis. Resolution was up to the national governments involved. No crisis, no United Nations. When the United Nations was founded, the United States of America dominated because of its economic and military power in a war-torn world. The United States of America still dominates--perhaps more so today than in 1946. But the USA isn't the only national entity that paralyzes the United Nations. Besides, now non-government organizations and multi-national corporations have considerable power, too. At least part of the paralysis is due to the United Nation's successful campaign to eradicate colonialism. Independent governments are jealous regarding their independence despite the interdependence of human civilization.
Joe Darion's "The Impossible Dream" describes a glorious quest to make a better world. The old-school solution to failed nation-states was conquest, and that is not acceptable in today's world. The quest for a better world is one that every moral person must undertake--even when doomed to fail by doing too little. Read "What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It" and start your own glorious quest.
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