How International Organizations Promote Cooperation, Essay Example

Introduction

The concept of nations and cultures coming together through the channels of organizations is one both relatively new and rooted in history.  In past centuries, commerce motivated international cooperation largely in the form of treaties and contracts, yet these same treaties often contained language going to wider concerns based on political agendas.  More recently, nations have come to understand that organizations in place to foster cooperation act as platforms upon which any number of considerations may be addressed, from the commercial to the cultural.  Conflict of some kind inevitably occurs, as it must; these are enormous agents within the processes, and often of strikingly different character.  National ambitions, as in the case of the Soviet Union, may eclipse international ones, and initial cooperation frequently turns into stalemate, or divisiveness.  Cooperation at this scale, too, is relatively ineffective without a pragmatic addressing of hostile elements.  Nonetheless, if difficulties arise, the fundamental ambitions remain sound, simply because participation in such organizations carries with it the inherent aim to achieve a cooperative relationship. It may then be asserted that, while it is likely that no international organization may be free of significant threats to its purpose, the entities themselves go far in promoting international relations.

Background

Long before there were formally developed international organizations, something of the same impetus forged international alliances.  These were organizational in character, in that they were entered into with a variety of motives in place, and meant to endure beyond the immediate circumstances requiring the alliance.  An example of this is England’s pact with the Netherlands in the 16^th century, when Spain, holding the Netherlands as its own territory, sought to stamp out the growing Protestantism within the Low Countries.  England had long relied on sea trade with the Netherlands so, in order to protect commercial interests and assist the natives in obtaining religious freedom, England entered into a league with the states (Doran  42).  It is interesting to note the organizational aspect, in the England’s chief concern was securing a future of safe trade. Equally relevant was that, in these years of religious turmoil, an organization known as the Catholic League formed to intimidate, if not outright conquer, Protestant nations.  In this early history, then, it may be seen that nations have been driven to cooperate in a structured form, in order to achieve mutually desirable ends.

Centuries later, various other attempts to create an international organization were finally  realized with the League of Nations, which was essentially a global response to the devastation of World War I.  It was, moreover, prompted by the direct efforts of President Wilson, who urged the creation of the League as an expression of Liberalism, or an ideology that held that war could be prevented through cooperative efforts.  The strength of the United States bolstered the process, and 44 nations joined in the creation of the League in 1919 (Duncan, Jancar-Webster., & Switky 36).  It is interesting to note, in retrospect, the incentives and ideas going into this unique organization.  On one level, the League was certainly developed to encourage international relations and promote commerce.  Equally importantly, however, it was acknowledged that its existence would provide a less than “cooperative” presence if any nation threatened hostility against another.  Simply, the combined forces of the peaceful member nations, it was understood, would serve to intimidate any such power.  This was pragmatic cooperation, yet it also exemplifies an urgent reason for any international assembly; these are massive forces, and only this kind of self-governing protection, wherein the might of the majority secured the peaceful interests of all,  could avert war.

The League of Nations is viewed by many historians as ultimately a failure, or at best a precursor to the more successful United Nations.  This overlooks the decades in which it seems reasonable to conclude that the League discouraged acts of aggression likely to erupt without its shadow over the aggressors.  Certainly, and for years, cooperation was in place between the approximately 40 countries belonging to the League, just as the sheer scope of the organization introduced such a concept to begin with, and made it seem realistic.  The League’s eventual collapse is largely attributed to the actions of the Soviet Union, and later those of Germany.  It may also be argued, however, that no degree of international cooperation could have peacefully halted the intentions of the latter, just as the Soviet invasion of Finland would likely have defied anything other than a direct military intervention.  That scenario reveals the force of an individual nation’s agenda in the face of international resistance, and not entirely to the discredit of the League.  On the contrary, Soviet response indicates just how potent the League was.  When the USSR was expelled from it in 1939, Stalin was furious, and humiliated (Yu  21).  More interestingly, Stalin had relied on China’s vote to save the USSR membership, because it was receiving vast aid from Russia.  China abstained, but the point remains that the Soviet Union had been able to build this relationship with China at least partially because of the cooperation promoted by the League.

The ultimate failure of the League of Nations has been linked to a wide variety of causes.  Most commonly, it is seen to have collapsed simply because it was unable to control the rise of German military power in the 1930s, and could not forestall World War II.  This in itself, however, was due to the serious issues unfortunately at the organization’s core.  They were, simply, structural.  While the League did indeed promote international cooperation, and to a degree unprecedented in world history, it relied too strongly on ideological interests rather than concrete criteria.  On one level, the League suffered from an organic problem; membership was far from complete, and a great historical irony, given Wilson’s belief in the power of such an organization, is that the U.S. was never a member.  In basic terms, no international organization could hope to secure global interests without the inclusion of what was then becoming the premier superpower.  Then, as the oncoming war demonstrated, the League was severely hampered by a lack of actual, regulatory procedures to employ military force when deemed appropriate (Cede, Sucharipa-Behrmann  5). It trusted to mutual desires for peace as being sufficient, and lacked the format necessary to counter extreme aggression.  Nonetheless, even those historians who cite the League of Nations as predominantly a failed organization acknowledge that it was a crucial step toward international cooperation.

Modern Organizations

If the League of Nations did not survive as an international organization, it most certainly created the template that would give rise to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a far more strategically conceived entity to establish international cooperation.  Created in 1949, NATO would accomplish two steps seriously impeding the League’s abilities to ensure global harmony: its membership included the U.S., and it was devised with a military focus (Duignan 3).  Rather than an organization founded on ideological principles and assumptions of shared agendas, NATO was formed as a distinctly political and military one.  Ironically, this emphasis on the military would allow it to endure as the primary peace-keeping agency in the world for decades.  This was enabled by a factor beyond its actual structure.  NATO was strictly a defensive pact between nations, and one uninterested in projecting its power elsewhere.  Its essence, in fact, reflected agendas also from the 16^th century, when England and France entered into alliances solely to offer protection to one another in the event of a Spanish invasion.  The participating nations of NATO pledged to come to the aid of any member threatened by external forces, and this foundation of an irrefutably common interest ensured its success.  Not unexpectedly, the urgency behind NATO’s formation derived from the aftermath of World War II.  Europe, and specifically the Western nations, were undergoing various crises in the form of Soviet threats of hegemony.  To that end, the UK, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands forged the Western European Union, to protect one another from USSR dominance.  Simultaneously, communist aggression in Korea and Czechoslovakia spurred on U.S. interests, and the two merged to become NATO (Duignan 2).  Over the next five decades, this would be an international assembly with immense power in forestalling a multitude of potential aggressors, and this presents as definitive an example of international cooperation as may be seen.  If the underlying motivations were defensive and concerned with military eventualities, the results nonetheless created genuine cooperation.  It may be argued, in fact, that precisely those extreme motivations were required to generate the cooperation, as the less structured ideologies of the League of Nations proved ineffective in the face of external hostility.

In viewing the trajectory of the major international organizations, it is possible to see an evolution of sorts occurring, and one in which actual cooperation becomes more refined and distinct.  The League of Nations, so early in the 20^th century, was a well-intentioned but badly structured effort to build a significant global presence on only an ideological foundation.  NATO, following on its heels, was in stark contrast.  Through a deliberate and uniform response to Cold War threats, a variety of countries firmly agreed to protect one another’s safety, and consequently created an effective, international entity.  Lastly, the United Nations (UN) would arise to combine the best elements of both, and generate cooperation through intents and efforts simultaneously military and cultural.  The trajectory would be more “neat,” of course, if the UN had been established years after NATO; it was formed, however, prior to it, even as it continues to exert its global force today.  Arguably, in fact, it was World War II itself that offered the most viable basis for the organization, as the original 50 participants all signed the charter in 1945.  More directly so than NATO, the UN was a response to actual threats of invasion, whereas the League was something of an afterthought, and NATO was created to react to potential hostility.  Put another way, it is doubtful that so enormous and influential an international organization could have arisen under other circumstances.  Historically, nations are inclined to cooperate more fully when their individual interests are at stake, and no war more placed so many nations at risk.  That impetus notwithstanding, the UN has endured in a way fulfilling its early promise, and expanded to address international relations freed from the concerns of war.  Such concerns are not ignored;   critically, the UN offered, and offers, its member collective security in that the great world powers are assured permanent seats in its Security Council.  At the same time, this very security enables cooperation to evolve in myriad directions, as it continues to do so today: “With the founding of the UN, a new chapter began in the history of international relations”  (Cede, Sucharipa-Behrmann  7).  It seems reasonable to assume that, given its duration and its ability to adapt to changing global conditions, the UN is poised to continue indefinitely as the ultimate example of international cooperation in an organizational form.

Conclusion

Historically, nations have rarely ventured into cooperative efforts, and have far more evinced ambitions going to self interest, such as conquest and colonialism.  At the same time, and also well established in history, it often happens that nations sharing identical concerns have found that joining forces benefits all concerned, as when the Netherlands and England entered into an alliance to protect mutual commerce and religious freedom. In more modern eras, the motivations remain the same, if the platform has expanded.  From the League of Nations to NATO and the UN, it has been amply demonstrated that international parties can cooperate when they comprehend it is in the interests of all concerned to do so.  The twin successes of NATO and the UN would seem to indicate that self-preservation is no small national motivation in these processes, but what ultimately matters is that the processes occur and the organizations endure.  Only in lasting, in fact, may further forms of cooperation be enabled, and the ongoing efforts of the UN provide strong evidence that such an evolution may occur in organizations of this scope.

Works Cited

Cede, F., & Sucharipa-Behrmann, L.  The United Nations: Law and Practice. Norwell: Kluwer Law International, 2001.  Print.

Doran, S.  Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy.  New York: Psychology Press, 2000. Print.

Duignan, P.   NATO: Its Past, Present, and Future.  Stanford: Hoover Press, 2000. Print.

Duncan, W. R., Jancar-Webster, B., & Switky, B.  World Politics in the 21^st Century.  Belmont: Cengage Learning, 2008.  Print.

Yu, M.  The Dragon’s War: Allied Operations and the Fate of China, 1937-1947.  Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006.  Print.