U.N. Is Deemed A ‘Lost Cause,’ Annan or Not

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The New York Sun

The United Nations is a lost cause, say some in the diplomatic and foreign policy communities, and despite growing calls for Secretary-General Annan’s resignation, removing him won’t make a difference in an organization that, in their view, is rotten to the core.


A British author and historian, Paul Johnson, said that Mr. Annan is “working for an impossible organization, and things are bound to go wrong.” The principal flaw in the U.N., said Mr. Johnson, is its low threshold for membership. “Any country that declares itself a country – whether it has a proper legal structure, or the rule of law, or not – is allowed to become a member. There are over 100 states [in the U.N.] that are not proper democracies at all.”


This, Mr. Johnson said, contradicts the organization’s purpose. “After all, the U.N. was originally formed from countries which had united together in order to oppose dictatorships and totalitarianism and aggression – they were the nations that were uniting to fight and destroy Hitler and Imperial Japan,” he added.


Mr. Johnson suggested drawing up an alternative organization, “a global organization of democratic states, membership of which can only be secured by countries that can show that they are democratic…and run themselves in a civilized manner.”


Mr. Johnson was pessimistic about improvement within the U.N.’s existing structure. He was dismayed by the world body’s own suggestions for reform, released last week in the report from its High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. “It will do no good at all in my opinion; it will merely persuade people that they’ve got a better organization when they really haven’t,” he said.


What the U.N. could do within its present system, Mr. Johnson said, is move to a Third World location from New York.


Delegates to the U.N. from “tin-pot states” enjoy “a very nice, cushy job,” meant “for important, well-connected people in the ruling hierarchies,” Mr. Johnson said. Since friends of dictators are rewarded with comfortable posts in Manhattan, he said, “all of the most undesirable people go as ambassadors to the U.N.”


Mr. Johnson recommended relocating the Secretariat to Dar es Salaam, which, in addition to being “near all the problems of the Third World,” would help get “more serious people applying for jobs at the U.N. and would turn it into a much more serious organization.”


Jed Babbin, author of the recently released “Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think,” and formerly a deputy undersecretary of defense, agreed with Mr. Johnson on the impotence of the U.N.’s suggested reforms.


Mr. Babbin was especially critical of the idea of expanding the Security Council, promoted by nations such as India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan. “All you’re doing,” said Mr. Babbin, “is taking a committee that can’t make up its mind on anything and making it larger, to add more voices to make it harder to make up its mind. That’s no fix.”


Mr. Babbin was also set against any reform that would make the U.N. singly capable of authorizing pre-emptive war. From an American perspective, Mr. Babbin explained, submitting to any such authority would be “inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States.”


In order to receive U.N. blessing to undertake pre-emptive war, Mr. Babbin said, “We must demonstrate why we believe there’s a threat, and why it’s imminent.” This would require making public all of the evidence gathered by our intelligence agencies, Mr. Babbin added. “We’d have to go before Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria and say that Iran is an imminent threat, and get them to agree with us? I don’t think so.”


A former aide to Secretaries of State Shultz and Kissinger, Charles Hill, said the problem lies with the very philosophy of the U.N. and of modern diplomacy.


“I don’t think [the United Nations] is beyond hope – I don’t really think any [structural] reform is necessary,” Mr. Hill said. What the U.N. really needs to do is act in world crises, he said. He blames the U.N. inertia on the failure of the “collective security” concept, which, after World War I, replaced the “balance of power” philosophy as the guiding principle of foreign policy.


Collective security, Mr. Hill said, has never really worked in international organizations. He cites its failure to stop the Japanese from invading Manchuria in 1931, and to prevent the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936, as complicit in the downfall of the League of Nations.


In the U.N., Mr. Hill said, collective security has worked only on small-scale conflicts. On bigger problems, the concept fails because “people just don’t see it in their interests to deal with faraway places,” Mr. Hill said.


Mr. Hill said that the outlook for the U.N. was “pretty bleak” and explained that the role of maintaining world order has fallen upon America.


“The greatest force for taking action on behalf of international peace and security in the world is that people think President Bush is crazy,” Mr. Hill said. “They will do something because they’re afraid of what he’ll do if they don’t.”


Jeane Kirkpatrick’s deputy as America’s ambassador to the U.N. during the first Reagan administration, Jose Sorzano, agreed that replacing Mr. Annan won’t be enough to help the world body.


“Consider that Russia, China, France, the U.S., and Britain have quite diverging interests. Any individual that gets the approval of all five [to become secretary-general]…is just a wimp. He can’t be a strong personality; he cannot be a strong leader; he cannot be an individual that has a record of achievement.”


Mr. Sorzano said the U.N. is, for America, “an unbelievable waste of time and waste of resources and waste of money.”


“From the point of view of the U.S.,” Mr. Sorzano said, “it’s a rather debilitating experience, because the name of the game is ‘Stick it to Uncle Sam.'”


Mr. Sorzano, like Mr. Johnson, would like to see America participate in, and help create, an alternative world body composed entirely of democratic states.


A senior State Department official said that, although taking place under the U.N. umbrella, work is under way on creating a democracy caucus within the world body.


“It’s moving slowly,” the official said, “but there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the idea. A number of countries apart from the U.S. have been pressing this and carrying out a leadership role,” such as South Korea, Chile, Poland, and Italy.


The official cited said such a group was important in light of the “democracy deficit” on the human rights commission. “When that group, which is elected by the full membership of the U.N., attracts some of the world’s biggest human rights violators…and has difficulty passing statements of policy and resolutions dealing with human rights abuses – then there’s something that’s not working right.”


Two former Clinton administration officials, however, said that much of the responsibility for U.N. reform rested with America.


The former U.N. regional administrator in Kosovo, General William Nash, said, “The first thing to do [in reforming the United Nations] is the member states – and at the top of that list is the United States – must make a commitment to provide good people and pay dues on time…and be a useful, vibrant participant in the U.N.”


America, Mr. Nash said, should be an example to the rest of the U.N., inspiring member states and the organization to improve by paying dues on time and sending its best people to work within the world body.


Mr. Nash also lauded the U.N. high panel’s report.


Joining him was Lee Feinstein, a former Clinton administration Defense and State Department official. Mr. Feinstein was pleased by the report’s defining terrorism so as to condemn any attacks against civilians or noncombatants, even under occupation conditions. This move would denounce suicide bombings and many of the terrorist attacks suffered by American troops in Iraq.


“Hopefully this will help put to rest an issue that has really complicated U.S.-U.N. relationships,” Mr. Feinstein said.


But “until the U.S. is serious about reforming [the United Nations], it won’t,” Mr. Feinstein said.


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