Spectators Vs. Actors at the U.N.

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Just like everywhere else around Manhattan, there was a feeling of hushed depression around Turtle Bay last Wednesday when the favorite candidate lost the presidency race – which is why a smiling United Nations official saying his preferred candidate won surprised me.


It was even more surprising because the high-level U.N. man had until recently very ably represented his nation, one of the toughest opponents of the Bush administration prior to the Iraq war. His reason for preferring a second Bush term was very helpful in understating the divisions created in foreign policy circles in the first one.


The side that calls itself the International Community values consensus over all. It looks for agreements, initiates peace processes, and appeases non-nation actors, known everywhere else as terrorists. This is the side that months into the carnage in Sudan is still bogged down in disagreements over its definition of the butchery as genocide.


One man who has his feet planted in both camps, Prime Minister Blair, last week tried to bridge the gap between them by calling on President Bush to redirect his attention to a peace process between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, one of the International Community’s favorite pastimes.


The ceremonies of Madrid, Oslo, Tenet, Mitchell, Camp David, etc., have not impressed the other side, however. Here, Mr. Sharon’s unilateral separation plan that promised real movement toward a solution, as opposed to an endless and fruitless diplomatic process involving two unequal sides, is preferable.


Led by Mr. Bush’s Freedom and Democracy hawks, this other side has concluded that in a world fraught with dangers the worst course is inaction and if that entails breaking away from traditional diplomacy, so be it.


Mr. Bush gave the U.N. an option in October 2002: Either join him in applying this philosophy, or become irrelevant. This turned out to be a comfortable choice for the U.N.


An Arab diplomat once told me that Richard Holbrooke, Senator Kerry’s top foreign-policy adviser, became famous during his stint as ambassador here for threatening diplomats with phone calls to their foreign ministers, which could be hazardous for diplomatic careers.


It is that aggressive American diplomacy that the U.N. official feared in a Kerry administration and that made him prefer Mr. Bush. After promising in his campaign to bring the world around, Mr. Kerry would turn a lot of his attention to Turtle Bay, which many here feel uncomfortable about.


Mr. Bush should be allowed to see the Iraq war through for his doctrine to be fully judged, according to this view. “You don’t stop a hunter in the middle of the hunt. You let him eat his prey,” an African diplomat told me last week, explaining the election results.


This doesn’t mean that the U.N. is ready to cede center stage. Last week Secretary-General Annan weighed in on military action in Fallujah. In a secret letter to American, British, and Iraqi leaders, which was first reported Friday by the Los Angeles Times’ Maggie Farley, he wrote that such attack “could be very disruptive for Iraq’s political transition.”


I guess Mr. Annan feels he is more qualified now to weigh in on the advisability of action in Iraq since it announced Friday that the number of U.N. election observers there would be raised to 25. In an institution that sees itself as an arbiter of legitimacy, the small increase to a small presence – so small it was highlighted as failure by the Kerry campaign – means plenty.


Undersecretary General Kieran Predergast compared the U.N presence in Iraq to yeast. “The dough can’t rise without the yeast but you actually don’t need very much of it and you have to deploy it at the right point in the process,” he said Friday.


Prime Minister Allawi, who had his share of clashes with Mr. Annan recently, was indignant at the latest Turtle Bay kibitzing. Mr. Allawi also offended some European leaders when he called them “spectators” last week.


So far, Mr. Bush gave no indication he would heed the call of those who curiously believe his victory was a plea by Americans to change course. Circumstances, like Yasser Arafat’s imminent death, are bound to shake things up, but Washington will continue to see things differently than the U.N.’s International Community, with only an occasional meeting of minds.


For now it is clear who are spectators and who are actors across this great divide. And some at Turtle Bay like it this way.



Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun.


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