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Published Online Mar. 8, 2006 by USC Center on Public Diplomacy
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Last Friday, the world's finest winter sports athletes gathered in northern Italy for a celebration of physical prowess, sportsmanship and global camaraderie.
The 2006 Winter Olympics opened in Turin with a lavish opening ceremony. The next day, the actual sporting events started, and the television smorgasbord of adrenaline, podiums and over-excited announcers began with no delay.
While watching the ceremonies and competitions, I realized something. The Olympics are the ideal that global democracy should aspire to. For those mortified by the thought of distinguished politicians and diplomats trading in pin-striped suits and briefcases for ski poles and bodysuits, let me explain.
According to the official Web site of the XX Olympiad, there are more than 2,500 athletes from 84 countries participating in this year's games. However, the tiny contingents from the unlikeliest of countries are the ones that illustrate my point.
The world's first glimpse of such a team was that of Jamaica's bobsledders in the 1988 Calgary games. While "feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme" was being immortalized by movie cameras, several small nations began forming Winter Olympics teams.
Any athlete who meets the qualification standards can represent his or her nation. Thus, in this year's games, athletes from such unlikely nations as India, Venezuela and even the Saharan nation of Algeria are competing with the rest of the world's best as equals.
If only our diplomatic institutions were as successful. The United Nations is quite similar to the Olympics in its professed spirit of equality. During its heyday in the Cold War, the U.N. was seen as the bastion of diplomatic equality: a global check against the spread of tyranny by any means.
In this function, it performed well. But the U.N. has never given equal representation to all member nations.
This is most glaring in the Security Council, the highest decision-making body. Only five permanent members (China, Russia, France, the U.K. and the United States) have veto power. The rest of the 10 are elected and replaced every two years.
The "Big Five" have the power to block any proposal from passing. This was perhaps necessary when two giant superpowers needed a check against one another, but not anymore. Today's world is much less polarized, with the developing countries in the middle holding most of the world's population and an increasing percentage of its wealth.
Under the present system, almost 180 countries at any one time are without much of a say over U.N. military actions. Unlike in the games, they cannot send their best, no matter how similar in ability, to the same global stage with the powerful nations.
So, what should be done? There is no simple answer. The U.N. was born at a time when a small group of superpowers had aligned themselves into two very clear alliances. However, the world has changed since then, and a body as large as the U.N. simply can't be expected to change more than 50 years of practice in less than a decade.
To put it in perspective, it took the International Skating Federation almost four years just to put a new scoring system in place after the vote-trading debacle at the Salt Lake City games. Here, we're talking about completely restructuring how 192 countries work and debate about almost every issue there is. That's hard to do.
The easy way out isn't really an option either. The U.N. can't simply dissolve. It is too embroiled in peace-keeping the world over. If the U.N. were to cease its existence, most of the resolved conflicts of the past half-century would flare back up. This is especially dangerous given more countries than ever are now nuclear-capable.
The most desirable option, in the best of diplomatic traditions, is one of methodical compromise. Proposals to extend permanent membership status to more countries have been hinted at, but never officially put on the agenda. It's time to speed that up.
Granted, the issue of skewed representation will remain, but it will be a step in the right direction. Based on the success of that, more equalizing steps should be explored.
The problem will not solve itself; it needs the continued attention of the world's nations.
Surely a body that has produced such successful programs as UNICEF, WHO and the WFP can solve this problem concerning its own makeup. It must do so, no matter how difficult. Otherwise it will lose all credibility as an organ of global diplomacy.
The world is only getting more belligerent, and the U.N. will continue to be needed for many decades to come. The Cold War-era hegemony that is the current system is an anachronism that must be done away with. The U.N. was once beyond reproach as a representative body. Due to massive changes in the global political landscape, that is not the case. However, it is not beyond repair.
Allow me one last Olympics analogy. The U.N. right now is like a veteran athlete from a small nation with a legacy of strong performances. The competition is getting tough, and it is starting to falter.
It cannot retire quietly, as it has created too big a following. The only way for it to remain effective is through focused, grueling work to bring it back into the shape that made it so celebrated.
A day will come when there is a new benchmark for global equality. It may not come in time for the next Olympics, but make no mistake, that day will come. It has to come; the very future of human diplomacy depends on it.
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