Tuesday September 13, 2005

Sixty years for the United Nations. Happy Anniversary.

Does the sentiment come with hesitation? It does not. It does, however, come with reservation. Am I amongst the many interested in eliminating that tall, imposing, glass building along the East River skyline? I am not. I do, however, think that, sixty years later, it is time to take a realistic look at what the UN can accomplish and what it cannot. Unless we understand who and what the United Nations represents, until we recognize the real limitations of the United Nations, we as Americans, as Western countries, will never be satisfied with the way this body conducts its business and will never be successful in our attempts to reform the United Nations. Until we take stock of the internal limitations of the United Nations all our efforts at reforming this venerable international body are irrelevant and even self-destructive. The United Nations does not speak for you and me. It is not there to meet our needs as Westerners, certainly not as Americans. We are there to maintain a balance. The UN General Assembly exists to give voice to the small, globally and diplomatically irrelevant nations who feel put upon by the West. And there, it is a "pile up." The United Nations is the only valid place in the world where the enemies of the West have the power to challenge the United States and to attack Israel. And they will never miss an opportunity to do so. Given the present structure of the UN, the mighty United States and wily Israel are powerless against those attacks.

The United Nations General Assembly is not about justice or truth or about democracy. The GA is about all the nations of the world. And even though anywhere between 40%-50% of member nations are democracies, most of those democracies are fragile with despotic groups waiting in the wings, breathing down their necks, cooling their heals, eager and searching for a chance to regain power and overthrow democracy. The United Nations has, for decades, been hamstringed by the anti-semitism, anti-Israel and anti-US decisions of the members in the General Assembly. That is what the UN is about and that will not easily change. They member states are hateful, they hate the West, they hate the US, and they hate Israel. And the United Nations gives them the power and capability to act out that hatred. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the United States, now under the momentum of newly appointed US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, have been proposing to reform the United Nations. The US wants to make the UN more useful and less corrupt, more democratic and more in line with Western governments. Annan wants that too, he also wants the UN to be streamlined, he is proposing accountability, he is hoping for a UN that will pave the road for improved human rights around the world.  The problem with Annan as everyone suspected and as anyone familiar with the damning critique of cronyism and corruption, the Volcker report, is now convinced is that he himself has been blind to major elements of corruption under his tenure. The bigger problem is that the tone at the United Nations is set not by friends of the West but by enemies of the US and enemies of the West. Not recognizing this as a sine qua non will doom all efforts at reforming the United Nations. The effort to transform the UN into a more democratically oriented body is destined to fail if the nations themselves do not reform. The effort to create an agency with transparency is admirable but it cannot succeed. The United Nations will never meet the goals of the reformers until the country members are reformed, until democracy is truly, not temporarily, embraced. Until then the United Nations will remain an agency that empowers democracies in name only, democracies that are truly run by dictatorships, despots and demons that have been allowed to hijack an international body created and dedicated to preserving human rights and giving those countries carte blanche to mask their own abuses. It's worth the effort. It will take time. We can make it happen. We must. Do not expect other member nations to join the effort for reform, most nations like things just the way they are. But that's a wish worth making on this anniversary.