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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.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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