What is needed today is a system of transitional authorities administered by a neutral and ultimately democratic international body to nurture democratic societies and governments in countries overwhelmed by war and anarchy.
THE 20 TH CENTURY – A CENTURY OF ANARCHY
Some 50 years ago, as the 20 th Century's Second World War (the “final war”) ended, the United Nations was created “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Yet during those fifty years over 100 wars, intra- and international, have killed off over 50 million human beings. Moreover, another 50 million persons have been driven out of their homes as refugees (about half, termed “displaced persons,” had to seek succor elsewhere within their own country).
Today in 1996, anarchy (absence of government) prevails over much of the world, e.g.: chaos in Somalia, Liberia, and much of Rwanda and Burundi; military dictatorships that terrorize their subject in Central America, Africa, and Asia; and extremist theocrats threatening peace and the people's well-being in Israel-Palestine and especially in Afghanistan, where long after the Soviet occupiers had departed, the Taliban, inter alia forcing women from the workplace, appear to be sending the country back to the Dark Ages.
A tyrant, Saddam Hussein, remains in power despite crimes against the Iraqis and Kurds, while governments fall over each other to make business deals with him. An illegal regime in Burma/Myanmar continues to jail members of the democratically-elected party of Aung San Suu-Kyi and prevent it from taking office. And in the former Yugoslavia the Dayton Accords paper over the war crimes of the Communist-turned ultranationalist head of Serbia, who launched the ethnic cleansing first in Croatia and then for many years in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slobodan Milosevic is unblushingly dealt with by American and European officials, who resigning War Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone calls “pusillanimous” in their failure to arrest indicted Serb war criminals Karadzic and Mladic. Meanwhile, as prospects for democracy in Haiti remain threatened, China , Hong Kong (!) and Taiwan are at odds with Japan over its occupation of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea .
MANDATES AND TRUST TERRITORIES
After the First World War victorious Allies (principally France, the United Kingdom and Japan ) took over colonies of defeated Germany through a system of mandates under the League of Nations . After the Second World War the victorious U.K. and France administered the old mandates and the U.S. took over the former mandate in the Western Pacific held by Japan (another loser in WW-II) as trust territories under the United Nations. However, as the trust territories have become self-governing, by 1996 the U.N. Trusteeship Council and International Trusteeship System appear redundant.
UNITED NATIONS TRANSNATIONAL AUTHORITY IN CAMBODIA (UNTAC)
The U.N. experimented with a kind of trusteeship for Cambodia , emerging from a succession of cruel dictatorships. Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords signed by the four Khmer factions, Australia, China, France, the U.S.A and 14 other countries, UNTAC was to administer the fractured country until a newly elected government was set up. It repatriated thousands from the Thai border and started demining and disarming the factions, but the Maoist Khmer Rouge and Stalinist Cambodian People's Party installed by Vietnam retained most of their arms. UNTAC supervised nation-wide elections in 1993 then pulled out in unseemly haste. It had failed to carry out its mandate to take over the administration of the key ministries, resulting in the Stalinists (who had lost to the royalist FUNCINPEC in the polls) retaining control and threatening the country's fragile democracy.
ADMINISTRATION BY E.U., U.N., AND/OR D.W.F
Building upon the lessons of UNTAC, transitional authorities administered by an international body would have an enlarged mandate, including arresting and sending those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity to trial and supervising reconciliation of members of the factions and their more peaceful leaders.
No longer is the rule of one country by another acceptable. For countries like Bosnia , Serbia , and Cyprus the democratic European Union could be the transitional authority. Elsewhere, especially in parts of Africa and Asia, the U.N. itself would be the logical administrator. Ultimately, the democratic world federation would have that role, and victimizing peoples by unscrupulous tyrants would become moot.
Toward Democratic World Federation, Autumn 1996
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