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SPEAKING
FREELY
How Bolton
would reform the
UN
By
Maggie Mitchell Salem
Speaking Freely
is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
While Democrats in
the United States Senate are scouring Washington
for other victims of John Bolton's ideological
zeal (and dubious management style), the White
House is turning the screws on waffling
Republicans. When Moses parted the Red Sea the
opposing walls of water could not compare with the
partisan divide on Bolton's nomination to
America's top post at the United Nations.
But I'll forgo divining the outcome of the
Bolton confirmation hearings.
All right,
since you've twisted my arm, I'll tell you: he's
going to make it, though just barely and with
stern admonishments to make nice with our foreign
friends. Besides, do you really think the next
nominee would be a French wine-swilling
connoisseur of diplomatic niceties?
What
troubles Democrats, and a number of Republicans,
is Bolton's policy ardor, not his madcap antics.
But the president is usually given wide latitude
in his executive and diplomatic appointments. If
the nominee's views sit well with the White House
that has, with very few exceptions, been enough
for the Senate. The challenge to those who oppose
him is considerable, another reason they are
dwelling on his personality-challenged behavior
and actively dredging for even more egregious
examples.
So instead of focusing on the
Congressional brouhaha, I'll be focusing
on which floors - and the UN agencies that
occupy them - Bolton (and Vice President Dick
Cheney, his chief White House patron) will be
seeking to ax.
Of course you remember
Bolton's infamous quote from almost a decade ago,
the one replayed almost daily since President
George W Bush announced his nomination: "There are
38 floors to the UN building in New York. If you
lost 10 of them, it wouldn't make a bit of
difference."
Zimbabwe's newly won
membership in the controversial UN Human Rights
Commission is one appetizing target. But tackling
this won't go down well in sub-Saharan Africa or
with the Black Caucus in the US Congress. Besides,
challenging Zimbabwe opens Pandora's Box. China
also has a seat and a similarly troublesome record
of abuses. The Bush administration can ill afford
to provoke one of America's biggest lenders,
particularly as the budget deficit balloons and
Washington moves to quiet simmering tensions in
the Taiwan Strait.
Given Bolton's
background, that's a smart call. Shortly before
joining the Bush administration, Bolton lobbied
for the Taiwanese government. One Asian paper
described him as "an ardent friend of Taiwan", and
he criticized the administration of former
president Bill Clinton for leaving the island in
"strategic ambivalence", uncertain of US military
support should China invade the island.
Ironically, the White House
might actually welcome the hype surrounding his
angry outbursts. There just hasn't been much time
for a review of the columns Bolton wrote for the
Taipei Times.
Meanwhile, Bolton's ideological portfolio
is under close scrutiny in capitals worldwide.
Last Thursday, Beijing reminded Washington
that the organization has 191 members of (more or
less) equal standing. Chinese Ambassador Wang
Guangya balked at Secretary General Kofi Annan's
proposal to reform the Human Rights Commission's
electoral mechanism. If there was any doubt about
Bolton's first victim at the UN, the Chinese made
clear that the commission would not make an easy
target.
So what's a reform-minded
president and his UN ambassador to do?
The
House International Relations Committee's
Subcommittee on the Middle East has some ideas. In
a rare glimpse of bipartisan unity, subcommittee
chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from
Florida, would wholeheartedly agree with New York
Democrat Gary Ackerman's assessment of "three
unique, specialized anti-Israel political organs"
at the UN that warrant immediate reform or even
termination. Ackerman made his remarks on April 20
during a hearing on "Israel's Treatment by the
United Nations".
Ros-Lehtinen has called a
number of UN reform-related hearings, and, as in
the past, these have focused early and often on
the subject of Palestinian-related (and, the
reasoning goes, Israel-allergic) organizations.
But if you were to actually investigate
Ackerman's allegations, you would find that the
"organs" in question are rather innocuous. In
fact, their titles: Division for Palestinian
Rights, Committee on the Exercise of the
Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and
other Arabs in the Occupied Territory, and the UN
Information Office on the Question of Palestine -
certainly indicate no outright animosity towards
Israel.
Unless, of course, the mere
mention of "Palestine" is the actual offense.
Ackerman also challenges the UN to explain
why the issue of Israel has dominated UN emergency
special sessions since 1950; why the Palestinians
receive the same organizational attention as Asia
in the UN secretariat; and why the only
country-specific UN body investigating human
rights abuses targets Israel. Good questions. What
he neglects to include is that the moral
imperative for establishing the UN - the
atrocities of World War II and, in particular, the
near-extermination of European Jews - coincided
with the failure to equitably resolve the
"Question of Palestine". The General Assembly
approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
just months after hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians had effectively lost the "human
dignity" that document should have afforded them.
Whatever the circumstances that led
Palestinians to reject the partition and leave
their homes in May 1948, that tragedy has
shattered several generations on both sides of the
conflict. When Palestinians suffer, so too do
Israelis. Those, like Ackerman - and Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon - who play a "zero sum game"
(Palestinian gains are Israeli losses, and vice
versa) are gravely mistaken. The land just isn't
expansive enough to quarantine the aspirations and
frustrations of either the Palestinians or
Israelis.
That won't stop a constellation
of political forces - on Capitol Hill and the
White House, with affiliated political operatives
on the periphery - from making a run at UN
institutions that were once the only voice of a
stateless people.
The White House's
current state of political hubris leads to
"overreaching" on policy goals. Compared with
Bolton's confirmation, shutting down some
Palestinian-related UN functions in the name of
"reform" will meet with little resistance in
Republican or Democratic political circles. After
Bush's stand-off with Sharon on the issue of
settlement expansion, Washington may seek to
assuage right-wing American Jewish fears by
calling for the consolidation (at the very least)
of Palestinian agencies.
UNRWA (the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East), the refugee agency for
Palestinians, is another frequent target of
Congressional wrath. But recent Israeli blunders,
including blatantly false allegations about UNRWA
ambulances transporting militants, and determined
leadership from the organization's leadership
during innumerable crises, have proven difficult
to overcome.
Worse still, it seems
Americans are actually touched by the plight of
Palestinians.
"Friends of UNRWA", a newly
founded association aimed at building support for
the agency in the US, owes part of its creation to
unsolicited donations from Americans to the UN.
After September 9/11, many were searching for
legitimate financial channels to send aid to the
Palestinians and, oddly enough, there are
Americans who trust the UN with their money.
John Bolton isn't among them. But America
never speaks with one voice. If you think
otherwise, you're not listening.
Maggie Mitchell Salem is a
former special assistant to US secretary of state
Madeleine K Albright; a former career foreign
service officer; former director of communications
and outreach at the Middle East Institute in
Washington, DC; she now provides Middle East
analysis to private and public sector clients in
the US and the region, including a number of
dailies in Arabic and English.
(Copyright 2005 Maggie Mitchell Salem.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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