International Organizations & Disparities of Power

It has been argued that political arrangements of all kinds and at both the national and international levels are constrained by the relative power of different participants. The United Nations Security Council acknowledged this by giving a veto to the world's first five nuclear weapons states (the United States, Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and China) (Bennett & Oliver, 2002). This essay will consider the question of how in a general sense, disparities of power have affected international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), and while in light of these disparities and their effects, a variety of international organizations continue to flourish.

Regional as well as international organizations have typically developed out of the recognition that few states have historically been able to go it alone in the world. Economic development has always required stable international relations to protect trading partners and sources of raw materials. States have also found that they must work together to survive threats from hostile countries (Rubenstein, 1989). This was as true when the ancient Spartans created the Peloponnesian League as it was when Woodrow Wilson called upon the world to create the League of Nations after World War I (Cartledge, 2003).

The multi-state organizations that have been created over time have not rivaled, threatened, or superceded the sovereignty of individual states.

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ts -- either permanently as in the case of the Middle East or quickly as in the case of the Balkans (Bennett & Oliver, 2002). Boutros Ghali (1999), former Secretary General of the United Nations, has himself charged that after the demise of the bipolar world with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States often elected to act unilaterally rather than through the mechanisms available to it and other countries in the UN. Conversely, the United States has, through various administrations, found the UN hopelessly mired in debate, unwilling to recognize that sanctions have a limited effect on the behavior of nations and otherwise less competent in resolving international conflicts than is desirable. There are other criticisms articulated by Boutros Ghali (1999) that suggest that international organizations such as the UN are only as effective as their members will allow them to be. Despite the fact that these organizations do not seem to be fully able to meet their own stated goals and objectives, autonomous nation-states continue to pursue membership. Bennett and Oliver (2002) believe that international organizations provide services and channels for intervention that are indispensable to or at least valuable for mainta
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Approximate Word count = 2224
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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