The pace and productivity of our modern world can be summed up by one very brief question: "what have you done for me lately?". It seems that almost everything needs to be quantified, numbered and evaluated with respect to the person asking that very question in order for it to be deemed necessary or not. To most extents, it's a fair question to ask. If you run a business then that question is your second best friend right after the guy who does payroll. However, what if you weren't asking that question while running a business? What if you asked that question when you weren't really evaluating something that has a real bottom line at all? Or quarterly figures? Or any numerical metric with which to judge performance?





That sort of question and the lack of a metric with which to answer it is the bane of the existence of many international institutions, specifically IGO's, including the "big ones" like the U.N., the W.H.O., the I.C.C., etc. In theory, these organizations are tremendously powerful and beneficial to the whole human race, but in practice that is most certainly not the case. So why is that; why is it, or better yet, can an international institution have any real power?





The best way to answer this question is to start looking at the foundations that make up the call to have international institutions to begin with. Without doing that, there will be no way of understanding criticisms against them.





Historically speaking, multi-party treaties (alliances or alliance blocs of more than two states) technically serve as the world's first crack at establishing some sort of cohesion between differing state interests. However, they do not in any way form some sort of IGO where the states involved rallied around a cause other than maintaining the peace. The first sort of theory that goes so far as to explain a cause other than security itself is most likely Kant's Perpetual Peace. The main focus of Kant's work is of course in maintaining security for the state and its people, making his Perpetual Peace a world-wide alliance bloc and not an IGO. There are some interpretations of it though that attribute a partial secular personal independence that comes out of having this peace.





Kant's call for Republican states to be part of this perpetual peace does not necessarily imply a willingness to enfranchise all citizens, but it is definitely a much more open form of government for Democratic ideals than a dictatorship or monarchy. Additionally, a structural note that Kant makes with regards to abolishing standing armies over time may sound like a security pipe-dream, but is instead a reflexive explanation rather than a direct explanation of his "utopia"; if there was no war, then there'd be no need for a standing army. Consider the fact that a standing army, even in Kant's time, was more than a nuisance to the population which was invaded by the aforementioned army, meaning that even in that regard the personal liberties of citizens was being looked after in that specific recommendation.





Unfortunately Kant's Perpetual Peace can really only be considered to be a prelude at best of the sort of IGO's we are familiar with today. The groups mentioned earlier on act as strongly on the rights of the individual as they do on the security of the state, some more so than others. Is there an explanation for why these IGO's of our time focus much more on individual rights than Kant did 150 years earlier? The 150 should give a good guess as to the time-frame we are looking for; World War II brought about the greatest push for the rights of the individual after the effects of war and the Nazi cultural cleansing machine became evident.





If anything, the foundation of the U.N. was based solely on the hope of genocide never happening again. Even the U.N.'s predecessor, the ill-fated League of Nations, only focused on ensuring that a great war would never happen again, but only to spare the lives of millions from being taken by heads of state. Although it was a nice gesture, it cannot be considered to be a direct call to action to defend human rights like the U.N. had. The I.C.C. the W.H.O. and arguably to some extent the W.T.O. all look to better individual lives either equal to or more than ensuring security or prosperity for member states.





So the defense of individual human rights is a major concern to to those looking to establish an IGO. Is there any other reason as to why an IGO could claim right to exist? Perhaps it comes through as an extension of individual human rights by having IGO's focus on some group rights.





Keep in mind, IGOs are not by definition universal, though they aim to be given their belief in the democratic peace theory. Point is, there is a definite sense of exclusivity among the big IGO's; having your country be part of the U.N. or the I.C.C. at least among countries that embody their mission statements is a signal to the rest of the world that your country has "made it" on the international stage. With that comes the prestige, the member benefits if there are any, as well as the recognition of other countries of a higher respect needed to be paid than to a non-member country. In most cases, countries or groups of people look for the recognition or membership of IGO's in order to give the group itself foundations it otherwise wouldn't have, i.e. Palestine and its search for membership and nation recognition in the U.N. In that specific case, we can see that the effect of membership is notable given the United States' and Israel's opposition to allow Palestine any leeway in the U.N. (if it wasn't a big deal, the U.S. and Israel would obviously not have made such a big fuss).





Having narrowed down the three main mission statements for modern IGO's being security, individual rights and group rights, we can begin to understand exactly why an IGO as is conceived of today cannot ever be given enough autonomy to qualitatively garner "real power". It is because only one of an IGO's mission statements is of any interest to a state, that being security. Even countries that are built from the ground up to embody the remaining two mission statements of the big IGO's having to do with human rights and would therefore be assumed to want to be in concert with said IGO's simply aren't. The United States is a prime example of this phenomenon.





Although the United States is objectively designed to be all inclusive of all sorts of peoples and lifestyles and their connected rights (over a long period of formulation of course), ratifying UN treaties or declarations that do not have to do specifically with security interests never go down easy, if they go down at all. Just ask Rick Santorum what he thought of a UN declaration having to do with people with disabilities , and you will hear all sorts of fears having to do with U.N. sovereignty overtaking that of United States citizens, something that is quite literally impossible given the way the U.N. is set up.





Not understanding international protocol aside, the main reason states are so reluctant to give credence to an organization like the U.N. is this deep rooted fear of being regarded as useless once the security issue is taken care of. If Kant's prescription of the elimination of a standing army were to be carried out, what would separate the United States from Canada in terms of relative power in the U.N. General Assembly? Not much is the answer, and "not much" is just enough to scare people like Mr. Santorum. If this situation sounds like a schoolyard bully asking the nerd he is currently hitting with the nerd's own hand "why are you hitting yourself?", then you're on the right track. Essentially states that complain about the U.N. having too much sovereignty are the ones that did not allow it to gain much sovereignty in the first place, and so the circle goes on and on.





Is there a solution for this? Yes there is; take security off the table as a mission statement for IGO's. This might sound weird and counter-intuitive, but it has the best chance of success when compared to its opposite choice which would be for the IGO's of the world to somehow muster up their own sovereignty. Without international security being made an important aspect of whatever IGO is being setup, states that contribute to said IGO would no longer be forced to play a double game between security measures and protecting human rights on an international scale. That means that security dilemas would be left to regional treaties or organizations, effectively creating a "division of security" à la "division of labor".





Meanwhile, human rights conflicts would be handled not by military brass of member countries, but instead by a mixture of both public representations of member states as well as private entities from many member states. This would not only inject much needed private accountability of human rights efforts, but it would also create a more democratic influence of member states coming from the individual level, something that would poetically complete the IGO's wanting to increase or at least protect individual rights.





If you think about it, this has already been shown to work. The W.T.O. and the World Bank, although just as easily manipulated by the "big fish" countries in the international pond as the U.N. are generally regarded as the more efficient organizations simply because they deal with a specialized mission of economic growth and stability. The interests of the member states therefore are focused on one specific topic, instead of having to deal with security measures and therefore security based interests of member countries which as we have seen sometimes conflict with the mission statements regarding human rights.





Security issues then seem to not be best applied to a world-wide basis, even though the potential upside of having perpetual peace would most likely be man's single greatest achievement on this planet. Again it seems counter-intuitive that we should give up on that dream, but there is nothing wrong with simply re-appropriating IGO focuses and creating a different system of world-wide security organization so long as the mission statements of human rights are given the full backing they deserve.





So send in NATO to deal with issues like Libya and perhaps Syria if they see it fit, but send in the U.N. when you have to deal with the rights of Palestinians and Israelis who are shelled, regardless of where the shells come from. Send in the CSTO if nuclear warheads need to be tracked in Central Asia, but send in ASEAN when you want to improve the lives of millions in South-East Asia through medical care and economic growth. Without having to deal with security issues and the strings that come attached to them, IGO's focused on improving specific sectors of people's lives gain legitimacy not through the states but rather through the people they serve, hopefully one day obtaining sovereignty by achieving world-wide private backing.



