COMMENT US and the UN: 'Bring out the wackos'
By Ian Williams
It is approaching a year since the administration of US President George W Bush
sent John Bolton to the United Nations. In some ways, it is a foreign-policy
achievement of a high order to appoint someone who has so successfully poked
his thumb up the nostrils of almost 190 other countries simultaneously.
However, it is a dubious achievement.
As Bolton mouthed indignation at Mark Malloch Brown's recent, almost
grovelingly polite exhortations to Washington to show
proper leadership at the UN, he was of course compounding the immense damage he
has already done to US diplomacy, which is, of course, exactly what the deputy
secretary general was pointing out.
In fact, for a long time, as Malloch Brown noted, albeit more politely,
successive US administrations have used the United Nations and tossed it aside
like a used condom after achieving their satisfaction. The difference is that
Bill Clinton would be sweet-talking as he did it, while the current
administration is much more into rough wooing, berating and belittling the
organization before and after its perfunctory consummations.
Taking the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an example, Clinton approved
it in principle, but pandered to the Pentagon by having his emissaries water it
down in negotiations, and then did not sign it until he was leaving office. It
was a classic diplomatic application of Clinton's "smoking but not inhaling",
or "fellatio but no sex", approach.
Equally typically, Bolton promptly unsigned the attenuated treaty setting up
the court. But, emblematic of the difficulties that brute prejudice has when it
clashes with reality, Bolton is now trying to force Sudan to cooperate with the
same ICC in its investigation of what the US claims is genocide.
The genocide issue itself shows a perverse continuity in US foreign policy. The
Clinton administration fought shy of calling mass murders in the Balkans and
Rwanda "genocide" because it believed that would entail a responsibility to act
- and Clinton was notoriously reluctant to risk US casualties.
In contrast, the Bush administration calls events in Darfur genocide - because
that is what the evangelical Christians call it - but it argues that the
Genocide Convention does not actually require signatories to intervene. Indeed,
Bolton is on the record as saying that he does not regard any international law
as binding - at least on the US. The net effect is the same - the victims die
while politicians score political points in Washington.
Underlying all this is a strange sub-current in US politics. While polls show
consistently high US public support for international law and bodies such as
the UN, like most polls in the US, they should carry a rider - "So what're you
gonna do about it?" The good guys would mostly answer, not a lot, while the
sundry isolationists, xenophobes, unilateralists, survivalists and neo-cons
have shown that the mere existence of the UN renders them speechful with rage.
They will send donations, bombard legislators and fill the Web with their
virtual version of reality. Despite the widely different sources for their
obsession with the UN, they unite in their hatred and fear of the world body.
That makes them somewhat vulnerable to manipulation by the unscrupulous, of
whom there are, shall we say, a statistically significant sample in the US
political classes. Senator Joe McCarthy was one of a type, not a standalone
figure.
The recent trials and congressional inquiries into lobbying activities by the
former aide to Republican Senator Tom DeLay, Michael Scanlon, provided the
perfect description of how anti-UN campaigners can tap into this subculture. He
was using native American tribes' money to stop off-reservation gambling, but
the strategy is spot-on.
"Our mission is to get specifically selected groups of individuals to the polls
to speak out against something. To that end, your money is best spent finding
them and communicating with them on using the modes that they are most likely
to respond to. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against
something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past
them. The wackos get their information from the Christian Right, Christian
radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees."
And how do they get away with it? Because there are few politicians prepared to
put themselves on the line for a multilateral policy in a system where "all
politics is local". The exception that proves the rule is Congressman Jim
Leach, one of the few Republicans whom Abraham Lincoln would recognize as a
colleague.
At the same conference at which Malloch Brown barked back at attack dog Bolton,
the congressman said sadly, "Our policy response is an entirely parochial one,
rooted in the so-called doctrine of American exceptionalism, which neo-cons do
not define as refining a shining city on a hill but as the right of a
superpower to place itself above the legal and institutional restraints applied
to others. In the neo-con world, values are synonymous with power. The implicit
assumption is that American security can be bought and managed alone, without
allies, without consideration of contrasting international views or the effect
of our policies on others."
So is there light at the end of the tunnel? Well, the beginning of next year's
congressional session sees the end of Bolton's "emergency" appointment by Bush,
because he could not secure endorsement by the Senate. Ironically, he has been
calling for a clean sweep of senior UN officials to clear the deck for the new
secretary general, presumably in hopes that he can secure the appointment of
someone abjectly servile to US policy.
The UN secretary-generalship is an important position, far too important to
leave to the prejudices and whims of a dyspeptic walrus. One can only hope that
sane voices like Congressman Leach and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice get
involved and remind Bolton that his time is up, and that the rest of the world
expects more of a new UN secretary general than dancing to the tune of assorted
wackos. It is time to rally the too-silent majority of Americans to redeem
their nation's plummeting international credibility.
And it is perhaps time for Asia's acquiescent governments to stand up to the US
if they really want an Asian secretary general. Bolton is quite prepared to
veto until he gets what he wants - a like-minded Eastern European.
Ian Williams is author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military
Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.
