Miles Kahler Quoted on the Waning Significance of the UN
Empty Seats at UN Signal Decline of World Body Hamstrung by Veto
09/25/2012
Flavia Krause-Jackson,
Bloomberg
While the familiar clashes among countries echo through the 193-member United Nations General Assembly hall this week, empty seats will bear mute testimony to the world body’s waning significance.
Some of the most important leaders -- China’s Hu Jintao, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- are skipping this year’s annual meeting. U.S. President Barack Obama made only a brief appearance and didn’t formally meet one-on-one with foreign officials.
The 67-year-old UN’s influence has always been limited by the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Now, however, global technological, financial, environmental, social, religious and demographic forces are further curbing its ability to act and eroding its foundation in the 17th century concept of sovereign nation-states.
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Miles Kahler is Rohr Professor of Pacific International Relations at IR/PS and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego. His principal areas of research are international relations and international political economy, particularly international institutions and global governance, Asian regional institutions, the evolution of the nation-state, and the political economy of international finance.
