The UN and Regional Organizations in Global Security: Competing Or Complementary Logics?

What is the optimal relationship between global bodies and regional agencies in international security? This question has been intensively discussed at various junctures during the last century, including at the establishment of the United Nations in the 1940s. Indeed, the regional approach was the loser at this juncture, when "the Charter made provision for a dimly conceived and vaguely apprehended regionalism." (1) Today the debate between the UN and regional organizations has resurfaced--among policymakers as well as the research community--as one of the most important issues in the global security architecture, including reform of the UN Security Council. The long-standing prevailing view of the global-regional relationship in security matters has posited that a dominant UN would delegate tasks to subordinate regional institutions. In this conception, the region is simply an intermediate actor that undertakes tasks determined at the multilateral level. The main purpose of regional agencies, according to this perspective, is to contribute to a multilateral system controlled by the UN Security Council. Even if it is important to improve the relationship between UN and regional organizations, the dominant approach neglects the degree to which the UN-led approach and regional security governance tend to follow different logics and as a result are potentially competing structures. The UN model is based on a Westphalian nation-state logic, whereas the regional approach, at least in the longer term, is more consistent with a post-Westphalian world order.