Status Quo

Political cooperation at multilateral organisations for the preservation of international peace and security will continue to be biased heavily in favour of the major powers.

- Mani Shankar Aiyar

AFTER THE slaughter of both the first world war and the second—the two wars having cost humanity at least 60 million, and possibly up to 100 million, lives—the peoples of the world understandably threw up their arms to proclaim, “Never again”. To preserve international peace and security, they recognised the indispensability of a cooperative world order, as opposed to the viciously competitive rival nationalisms that had characterised earlier world orders and led inevitably to the horrors of the two world wars. They also decided to reinforce political institutions of international cooperation with institutions for economic, social and cultural cooperation.

While the political organisation, the League of Nations, set up through the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the first world war, proved a disastrous failure, the United Nations, established in 1945 after the second world war, was disunited from the start and has failed to prevent over 150 “small wars” in the past seven decades. The subsidiary organisations have fared far better, if somewhat modestly, when contrasted against the high rhetoric with which they were launched. Pride of place among these goes to the International Labour Organization (ilo), set up in 1919, that survived the ignominious disintegration of the League of Nations and has made significant contributions to ensuring a better balance between growth and justice for the working class. Ironically, it is arguable that it is because ilo has successfully promoted the concept of “decent wages” that the proletarian revolution, widely predicted through the early centuries of the rise of capitalism, never really took place.