These are not new questions, but the atrocious behaviour of the Russian forces has meant that the questions have become obvious. I posed them in 1995 in an article for the 50th jubilee of the UN. Then, I did not attempt to find constructive answers and neither did I pose any extreme conclusions. (see Tygodnik Solidarność no 454/1995). This was during the time of the Balkan and Chechen wars. Pope John Paul II addressed the assembly on this occasion, and his speech went down in international publications and culture. We know now that the UN did not do much to avoid crises, wars or their effects. This is the same nowadays, perhaps even worse.

Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24 and on March 3 Archbishop Gabriel Caccia, the permanent observer of the Holy See at the UN, appealed to the General Assembly for a cease fire and a return to diplomacy. He reminded the audience that the organisation had been founded to safeguard future generations against the plague of war. He stressed that the obligation of all members is the struggle to solve all conflicts by negotiation, mediation or other peaceful means even after the outbreak of hostilities. He cited the pope’s appeal about a cease fire and the rejection of war as a tool of aggression against the freedom of other states and as a means of resolving international disputes (quoted by the Catholic News Agency).

I can just imagine the sarcastic smirks of Sergey Lavrov, who knew that these were only words. These were only to be said elegantly and diplomatically, amounting to nothing, and these do not need to mean anything anyway. How could it be otherwise as it was his country that in 1945 guaranteed itself immunity in the order of powers within the unfortunate and untouchable Security Council. Piotr Zaremba has written vividly about this in his latest book “The Victorious Democracy. America, Roosevelt and Truman in the Second World War. A political history of the USA since 1900” recently serialised by Tygodnik TVP.

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I reiterate that if we are to question the sense of the UN we must read this work by Zaremba and read about the origins of this organisation which was accused of manipulation and impotence even then. Zaremba writes that the US deputy Secretary of State Joseph Grew, a former ambassador to Japan stated clearly enough that the veto will render the organisation defenceless by one hostile country, namely Soviet Russia. “ In practice, the veto ensures that the aim of the organisation will be negated. The possibility of preventing a future war will be but an illusion”. Prophetic words indeed as we have subsequently seen borne out.

This is not prehistory

The Security Council, it must be remembered has five permanent members; Russia (the former USSR), USA, China, France and Great Britain together with ten members chosen for a two year term. The USSR took care to ensure that the ten members would form a favourable ordering of power. Modern Russia certainly continues this policy. The Russians, Soviet officers undoubtedly, boycotted Trygve Lie, secretary-general until 1952, after the 1953 Korean crisis (they fostered opposition against him within his own office). They also prevented a successful resolution of the 1961 African crisis by Dag Hammarskjöld. He perished in an aeroplane accident whilst flying to conduct negotiations to solve the 1961 Congo crisis. A young diplomat could say well this is prehistory. But it is untrue, nothing has changed.

We could seem the same thing happening during the Balkan and Chechen wars. So many others are examples including Afghanistan when invaded by the Soviets, the manipulation by Kremlin specialists of African peoples during massacres there, in Iraq when John Paul II appealed and begged in sending his own envoys only then did the UN support his action. We have seen the Security Council’s and indeed that of the whole structure and their impotence during the during the first six months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Reform of the Council has been considered since 1993 but nothing has come of it.

So what did the visit of UN Secretary General’s visit to Kyiv accomplish? Of course, the first Ukrainian grain-carrying ship left the port of Odesa. But that’s all for now. But how did we view such news? The press officer of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated, “When we speak about the war in Ukraine, the number of people forced to leave their country to seek rescue has been revealed in all its drama”. Each day two children die and four are wounded according to a UNICEF Report published on Children’s Day. The scale of the conflict is comparable to that during the second world war and has been called a catastrophe (Catholic News Agency). The number of dead children according to UNHCR figures has reached 262 and 415 wounded as of May 29. They are chiefly the result of the use of heavy weapons in residential areas. But the reality may be even higher.

Let us take another example. Ludmyla Denisov, the Ukrainian former Ombudsman for Human Rights has called on the UN Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights violations to clarify the following issues during the Russian invasion: the destruction or damage to 16 monuments of national significance, to 72 of local significance and six recently discovered. The Russian occupiers have destroyed or seriously damaged 92 religious buildings, including 35 of historical, architectural or urbanistic significance, 29 places of remembrance from the 19th and 20th centuries, 19 museums and nature reserves, 33 cultural centres, theatres and other historically noteworthy buildings. What was UNESCO’s response? UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, is a specialist organisation within the UN tasked with the protection of cultural goods in time of war? Is it outraged and does it protest?

Expensive demoralisation

I could go on outlining other situations, but these only reveal another side. Many UN organisations are staffed by hundreds of civil servants in offices worldwide, hosting meetings and visits and all this costs, cost, costs. Only in 1999, Butros Ghali (secretary-general 1992-1996) said that if member states do not pay their subscriptions, the UN would simply cease to exist. So what is happening today when states still do not pay whilst UN debt soars? There is global demoralisation because we all can see is that the UN can do nothing. So why pay for its upkeep?

I looked up my article from Plus Minus magazine of April 22 2022, where Irena Lasota in her column queried the continuing existence of the UN. She thought that it would be a cheaper and maybe more effective solution to call for meetings, sessions and negotiations on an ad hoc basis. Wouldn’t it be better to hire civil servants for the occasion rather than maintaining armies of bureaucrats and pen pushers? The example is credible. Another analogy came to mind. I know many young people who stopped paying their dues for private medical health schemes. They had calculated that it would be better in the case of illness or health scares to go to a medical centre and pay for a one-off treatment rather than pay for an expensive health scheme over twelve months. It could be similar for the UN. Why should we pay for an army of civil servants and office property for years on end?

When I first wrote in 1995 about my grave doubts as to the UN, I was reading Paul Johnson’s “A History of the World”, which opened up our perspectives on us, uneducated and living in a mendacious system. Johnson noted that the Americans still controlled the UN at the beginning of the 1950s, and the matter was more serious right from the start. Poland has had a particular reason to think this way too.

I wrote then, that at a time when Poland was absent from the inaugural UN conference at Dumbarton Oaks near San Francisco, it was only Arthur Rubinstein who reminded those present of Poland’s existence by playing the national anthem, the Dąbrowski Mazurka, at the grand concert. But Poland was not present because the Kremlin had artfully organised the withdrawal of Allied recognition of the legal Polish government-in-exile. It engineered that the Lublin communist government which had been installed earlier should not participate in the conference as the Western powers had still not recognised it at the time. A masterpiece!

The Kremlin agents did not operate in a vacuum but only among the representatives of other countries. These secured their interests as best they could: in some areas we would feel duty bound to cooperate; in others, we keep our mouths shut. What is it like nowadays? I am not aware that he members of the Security Council have called for the suspension of Russia from its post. But rewards, and they are many, are richly distributed at all levels.

One hope…less

I was convinced as a youth, as were most of my generation, born after the second world war, that such an international organisation was vital. It was the one guarantee of international cooperation, the only hope even. I learnt foreign languages with a passion and I threw myself into any youthful international initiatives. There was even a student UN association (infiltrated by Moscow’s agents. Did we notice?). I trusted these bodies which was not always wise, but all of this was licensed out to us.

In “Radar”, a popular youth monthly publication of the 1960s, it was possible to find the address of people living in all parts of the world, send them a postcard and if a reply came, which it usually did, you could become a pen pal. I corresponded with a girl who lived near Moscow. This was actually mandatory and my whole class took part. I also wrote to a boy in Ghana and a girl in New Zealand. I was interested in the world in general, and I reluctantly listened to my pre-war vintage father’s advice a that truth is not always what it appears to be.

I was so excited when I was offered by Edmund J. Osmańczyk, a noted journalist and editor, to get a researcher’s post on the huge and hugely prestigious edition of the UN encyclopaedia. The world was within my reach and I got to know it in another way not just through flash cards or repeating phrases. Though I was disturbed by the lack of references to the Katyń massacre in the encyclopaedia, I was even happy that it would surely appear in the English version. I acquiesced in the double life of the UN Encyclopaedia. No one asked for my permission to be sure; I could always have refused to job. The UN itself led a double life, something that I became increasingly aware of. But I thought that it was making the best from a set of troubled and complicated circumstances in the world.

I was unaware at the time that the foundation of the UN creation myth was lies and manipulation from one side, and naïveté and a need for hope from the other. The organisation was needed by the poorest countries, but the reason why was known by the strongest. The years have shown that the UN was not an organisation of united nations, because it was an organisation of countries.

John Paul II said this clearly, lobbying for the rights of nations like for individuals. In 1995, he said at the UN “The foundation of all the rights of any nation is certainly the right to its own existence. No one, no other country, nation or international organisation, has the right to claim that a nation does not deserve to exist”. The speech has a definite meaning, “The UN must rise above the model of a soulless administration and become a centre of morality in which all nations will feel at home, developing the common consciousness that they constitute one family of nations”.

Is there any chance? Maybe it was hopeless from the very start. The hope that the UN would be more effective than the pre-war League of Nations, developed earlier than it first appeared.

– Barbara Sułek-Kowalska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by Jan Darasz