The United Nations, once the universal focus of hope for world peace and progress, born hobbled, has become weak and disjointed. The baneful shift began in the early 1970s when Eleanor Roosevelt’s human rights and development allures gave way to Washington Consensus coercion as the way to progress. The Soviet collapse in 1991 and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 further emboldened corporatist forces in the US and elsewhere to use raw militarism as well as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to achieve their partisan ends in the guise of ending poverty. For Washington, the UN became merely a convenience or an nuisance, to be used not as a forum of diversity and a center for expertise but as a foreign policy excuse, whip, stumbling block, or scapegoat. The nations of the global South were the losers.

Since the early 1970s and the wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the center of power at the UN has moved from a balance among the General Assembly, the Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC), and the Secretariat, to the Security Council—the body which chooses the Secretary General (who has the power to distribute the UN’s meager purse)* and which sanctions the application of military and economic force.

The United States, which applies its disparate power through the Security Council, was also undergoing its own transformations which played to US domination of the UN. The first was the transformation of the Republican party from conservative/ isolationist to corporatist/ globalist. The second was its takeover of Congress via the Gingrich revolution, reflecting also the Democratic Party’s loss of social liberalism. Now, despite their thin majorities, the Republicans’ grip on congressional rules and their refusal to cooperate in virtually any way with the opposition are stronger than under either party in any period since The New Deal.

What will become of the UN? Or, more positively phrased, how can the UN with its original humanistic goals become stronger and more democratic in the next few years? To answer that, we have to examine possible changes in both external and internal forces.

Externally, the US elections of 2004 could be decisive, since the US dominates the UN. Were a Democrat elected by an appreciable margin, and were control of the congress to shift away from the Republicans in even one house, the new president would have power to reaffirm treaties abrogated by Bush, halt the move to space domination, draw down troop deployment abroad, and begin to use UN bodies like the Economic & Social Council, the UN Conference on Trade & Development, and the UN Environmental Program as forums to counterbalance or edge the North American Treaty Organization and the World Trade Organization as well as G-8 and the World Economic Forum. He or she might shift energy focus to renewable resources, and allow Iraqis to regain control of their petroleum resources while re-energizing US research and industry.

Other external factors could enable the UN to function more effectively. The European Union (EU) or Japan may surge ahead in development of environmentally and socially friendly energy, food, medicine, materials, and water policy. The Euro might then surge upon investment in European enterprises. Such developments might energize enough Americans calling for a shift to similar domestic production to discourage US unilateralism and militarism, and to call for new assertiveness in UN agencies. On the other hand, escalation of wars in Colombia, Venezula, Peru, Central Asia, Korea, or Iran, with condemnation by Brazil as well as the EU, Russia, or China, could embolden the Security Council to deliver antiwar decisions requiring embarassingly many US vetoes, and withdrawal of support by many of the states of the United States, even if Bush were to win in 2004.

Internally, the UN may continue its ignominious slide as with the Global Compact or conditional US funding. Or it may begin a democratic transformation along lines suggested, for example, by Urquhart & Childers, the Millennium Forum, or CSUN. All these emphasize a popular assembly, preceded perhaps by a parliamentary assembly or NGO assembly. Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, and Thailand, for example, might elect a set of delegates to an advisory commission as an inducement for others to do the same. The elected commission could deliberate like the European Parliament, bursting the confines experienced by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, and encouraging ECOSOC to do the same. Present-day technology may allow a set of virtual conferences, small and plenary, at little cost, cosponsored by C-Span and various state TV organizations. Such electronic conferencing would make easy the rebroadcast of proceedings on radio and TV everywhere, where local groups could extend discussion. Policy affecting UN agencies such as military interventions, war prevention, corruption, democracy, minorities, epidemics, patent monopolies, and food security, as well as reformation of the UN itself, might be debated with recommendations.

Critical to democratic change will be two informational projects: TV and radio coverage, and depth opinion surveying. Citizens are often misled and disillusioned by shallow opinion survey results—polls based on simple questions formulated by clients of the dominant system, offered by bureaucratic strangers without context or background to often poorly informed respondents. "Community-based research" (Sclove, LOKA, Amherst MA) and the "deliberative opinion poll" (Fishkin, U of Texas, Austin) are positive steps which might be combined and tried in the coming two years, dealing with UN-related issues. Then Independent Media Centers in various areas could air (radio, TV, web) such discussions as well as post-discussion poll results, promoting the same on the bigger public broadcast media.

Finally, a hopeful trend. The present occupants of the White House are so convinced and so bold about their Christian fundamentalist final solution for the world that they, unlike their diplomatic predecessors, boast and publish their plans for domination—like USAF Space Command’s "Strategic Master Plan", and Cheney et al’s "Project for the New American Century". Foreign citizens are appalled. American citizens, used to science fiction movies and lacking well-funded public broadcasting, are slow to respond. But as acting president Bush unapologetically enacts such plans, Americans—perhaps even soldiers—will catch on. We have heard of a coming upsurge of progressive talk shows (www.chronwatch.com/editorial/) which may encourage them to say no to the yahoos or fear-ridden citizens addicted to right-wing talk radio.

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