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COMMENTARY
A world without
the UN? Nah
By Sreeram Chaulia
Three years ago, I heard a brilliant lecture by
senior United Nations official Shashi Tharoor on
the intricacies of US-UN relations. Tharoor was
speaking in the historic Old Library of All
Souls College, Oxford, bringing alive the
somnolence of glass-painted classical
architecture with a dazzling mixture of history
and vision, foreboding and hope. The two
intertwined hot topics of the time were
outstanding dues owed by the US government to
the UN (arrears then topping US$1 billion) and
the blistering attack against the UN by
right-wingers in the US Congress, led by
Republican hawk Jesse Helms.
On the former, I recall Tharoor reciting a joke
about a genie appearing before Kofi Annan and
asking him to make a wish. The UN secretary
general thought and asked for world peace and
poverty eradication, which the genie felt to be
too ambitious. Annan then thought deeply and
said, "Genie, get the US government pay all
its dues," at which point the kind spirit
replied, "Er ... I'll try to grant you the
first wish, Kofi." (US Secretary of State
Colin Powell said this week that "the
United States has paid its arrears to the United
Nations".)
On the second topic, Republican anti-UN
sentiments are even worse than when Tharoor
delved into the psychology of isolationism and
conservatism that gave rise to Helms' infamous
ranting that the US should withdraw from the UN
since the latter was not serving US interests.
In the Bill Clinton administration, Helms and
his ilk were considered minority extremists.
Rarely did the entire legislature or executive
display instinctive anti-UN attitudes. Come 2003
and the war on Iraq, the vocabulary of
UN-bashing has attained respectability and
credibility among US politicians and
administration officials of all hues. Verbal
barbs such as "backboneless",
"irrelevant", "talking
shop", "farce",
"francophone" and "appeaser"
have overtaken the old "bureaucratic",
"top-heavy" and "white
elephant" adjectives. The archetypical
liberal internationalist Democrat who favors UN
resolutions before embarking on foreign military
campaigns has virtually disappeared from the US
political horizon.
This brings me back to a chat I had with Tharoor
the day after the lecture in Oxford. I asked him
what would happen when the entire US body
politic, not just people like Jesse Helms and
John Warner, perceive the United Nations as an
obstacle or an unwanted irritant. During the
Kosovo war in 1999, after all, Democrats such as
Madeleine Albright led the charge for unilateral
military action without UN sanction and
succeeded to disguise the illegality of that
action in human-rights mufti. Tharoor gently
rapped my sleeve and nodded, "Yes, that is
an ever-present danger."
Those with foresight at the UN had been thinking
of such a doomsday from the 1960s, when the Cold
War was at its dirtiest and US national
interests collided head-on with international
law and principle. U Thant, the third secretary
general, noted with characteristic Buddhist
ambiguity, "The vitality of the American
people is reflected in the extraordinary pace of
their everyday life, the vehemence of their
reactions and feeling, and the fantastic growth
of their economic enterprises. This vitality,
this vigor and this exuberance have been in the
past both an asset and a liability." The
United States is capable of producing both a
Ralph Bunche (a UN diplomat whose negotiation
coups earned the sobriquet "Mr UN")
and a John Bolton (now US under secretary of
state for arms control, notorious as a
UN-hater). The US has been ruled both by
Franklin Roosevelt (founding father of the UN)
and George W Bush.
It is useful to examine the current US polity's
UN line in greater detail. Richard Perle, the
scandal-tainted former chairman of the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, had been at the
forefront of whipping up anti-UN frenzy in
policy circles for the past few years. According
to him, new threats to US security require
"dispensing with the UN altogether and
finding some new set of security
arrangements". His slogans of "regime
change of the UN Charter" and a "world
without the UN" have reverberated not just
in the Pentagon but among all strata of state
structures. At the root of Perle's tirade is a
question mark about the legitimacy of the UN
Security Council in deciding matters of
international peace and security. "What is
to say that a war that might be legitimate, may
not be legitimate if it can't get the approval
of the United Nations?"
A corollary US view is to equate the UN Security
Council with France or consider it a hostage to
France. So exasperated were US political
analysts at the prewar threats of France to use
the veto that Thomas Friedman of the New York
Times proposed removing France from the
Permanent Five position and replacing it with
India. Some senators went to the extent of
alleging that the UN is "exercising veto
power over our president". Debates on the
role the UN should play in post-Saddam Iraq have
been similarly centered on why a hard-won US
victory should be diluted by "allowing the
French and Germans a back-door entry into Iraq
through the UN". The UN, in US minds, seems
coterminous with "old Europe". Kofi
Annan's proposed European tour to raise funds
for the $2.2 billion UN emergency appeal for
Iraq is further proof to conservative Americans
that the UN is a French and EU tool to bog down
the United States.
The Tony Blair-George W Bush summit in Northern
Ireland has confirmed this belief by declining
any political role for the UN in postwar Iraq.
The "vital role" that the UN will be
allowed in Iraq is limited to some humanitarian
assistance and "suggestions" about the
make-up of the interim governing mechanism. In
other words, Iraq will not be a Cambodia or East
Timor where experienced UN civilian staff were
sheriffs and de facto rulers heading a
transitional authority. Nation-building will be
reserved for the Pentagon and its Office for
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA)
this time. Iraq will be reshaped "the
American way".
This decision broaches crucial long-reaching
implications. Kofi Annan has argued "above
all the UN involvement [in Iraq] brings
legitimacy which is necessary, necessary for the
country, for the region and for the peoples
around the world". The UN has expertise in
successful interim administration, establishing
rule of law, reconstruction, inter-ethnic
reconciliation etc, but "above all",
the UN is the voice of what we know as the
international community, the will of all
nations, the expression of humanity and not just
of France. It is the collective and the whole of
which France, Iraq and America are individual
and equal parts. It is the epicenter of the
post-World War II international regime and the
overseer of international peace and security.
What the Bush administration is basically doing
is question each of these fundamental
assertions.
When the strongest nation on Earth is thus
determined to undermine the organization that
the people of the world chartered to
"prevent future generations from the
scourge of war", it is a danger signal for
the entire world. A world without the UN is
inconceivable for the multiple millions of
refugees, children, hunger-stricken, poor,
conflict-devastated and marginalized humans
whose needs are being met daily through its many
organizations and specialized arms. But the UN
is not merely a material aid and service
delivery store, as the US government is reducing
it into. Its original and most important purpose
is to preserve world peace.
Every morning, I walk to an office on 42nd
Street in New York and glimpse the northwestern
slice of the UN Secretariat, ironically nesting
on land gifted by US corporate giants, the
Rockefellers. Manhattan skyscrapers block the
remaining visage. When this imperfect view
becomes too disconcerting, I stroll down a few
blocks to see the full UN edifice resting
majestically in Turtle Bay. The United States
needs likewise to take the effort and walk a few
paces to see the full UN, if for no other reason
than to conserve the international system that
it dominates and which the UN symbolizes.
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