The United Nations was "born" sixty-five years ago in an impressive ceremony held in San Francisco. Like other things created in San Francisco, the Vigilantes, Beat poetry, Hippie, the UN seemed like a good idea at the time but far outlived its usefulness--or humor potential.
Sixty-five is a good age for retirement--outside of France, Greece, and other contemporary enclaves of workers who do not like to work. It is certainly a good age for the UN to shuffle off, collect its FICA, put on lime green pants and a clashing shirt so better to develop proficiency at golf. Maybe do a little bit of travelling before finally settling down in Del Webb's Sun City to watch the sunset on the "golden years."
When the UN was born, it was, as is the case with all babies, small. Its small size helped to assure that the majority of the nations proclaiming their united nature shared a wide variety of political, social, and economic norms and values. With the exception of the Soviet Union, the Arab states, and some Latin American countries, the membership of the UN was democratic in its politics, liberal in social values, and essentially free enterprise in economic theory. With the same exceptions, the UN members shared a commitment to the freedom and dignity of the individual, tolerated a wide spectrum of dissent in speech and press, and loathed force as an instrument of internal or international politics.
The UN was created with a view to precluding the sort of stasis which had rendered the overly idealistic League of Nations from either protecting international peace or punishing those states which broke the peace. But, the UN was afflicted by its own idealism. This time around, the idealism was predicated upon a total misreading of the "alliance" which had defeated the Germany of Hitler and the imperialists of Japan.
To the misfortune of generations yet unborn, the celebrants in San Francisco deluded themselves into believing that the wartime "partners" of the US--the UK, China, the Soviet Union, and France--would continue forward in amity and cooperation for the common good. This exercise in willful self-delusion should have been impossible even in 1945, even before the ink was dry on the surrender instruments ending the greatest conflict in human history.
The USSR had already demonstrated an unlimited appetite for land in eastern Europe, the result of having been invaded and the concomitant desire to have a protective glacis when the next invasion came. The paranoia of Stalin had been evident on numerous occasions during the war--and showed no signs of abating.
China was in the midst of an offensive insurgency in which the Communists were exhibiting will and ability far greater than that of the central government. The probability of China staying under the same Nationalist regime was slim to none. Beyond that, the Chinese had played no useful role in defeating the Japanese regardless of what President Roosevelt or the later "China Lobby" might have wished. It was not a Great Power and did not deserve membership in the Security Council, the body created in order to preclude the stasis which had marked the League of Nations.
France was not a Great Power either except in the minds of Frenchmen. It was a defeated colonial power which hoped to restore its lost grandeur by repossessing its old colonies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Beyond that, France had played only a marginal role in ending the Nazis, regardless of myths to the contrary.
The UK was a Great Power. However, it is was a fatally exhausted one. Its days of Empire and glory were as gone as those of the French. Still, the UK had carried great freight in the early days of despair and defeat so as to lay the way for eventual victory.
The US was indisputably the Great Power of the day. Unlike the Soviet Union which had been bled white by the war, the US was intact in all respects. And, the US had the Bomb. While few in the know expected the comfortable monopoly would last long, at the moment, sixty-five years ago, it was an overwhelming reality.
The US, however, had a fatal weakness. Ironically the weakness also reflected a great strength of the country as well. We were a nation of idealists at the time of the sign-and-grin ceremony in San Francisco's opera house. We did believe in the goodness of humankind. We did believe that the combination of our Bomb and the new UN would assure a golden age of peace.
Besides, we wanted to get back to "normalcy." The Great Depression and the war had combined to rob Americans of fifteen years of our great dream of prosperity and the goodies which come with that desired state. Idealistic materialists, we were happy to demobilize and give peace a chance under the baby blue flag of the near fiction called the United Nations.
Those were halcyon days, sixty-five years ago. Unfortunately, the grim, grey, and barren wastes of reality quickly intruded. The UN almost failed its first major test of its self-defined main mission--preserving the international peace and punishing those who broke it by aggression. Had it not been for the absence of the Soviet Union which was boycotting the Security Council over that body's refusal to seat the new Chinese Communists in lieu of the Nationalists who by 1950 ruled only the island of Taiwan, there would have been no UN call to end the North Korean invasion of the South. The US would have been denied the international support so necessary to fight an unpopular war in a very distant land.
Moscow never made the same mistake again. As a result, the Soviet delegate was always in his chair eager to veto any attempt to involve the UN in punishing international aggressors. The UN was conspicuous by its absence in the many, many wars which merrily went on during the long decades of the Cold War.
The only other time the Security Council actually tried to execute its major mission--preservation of international peace and punishing international aggressor--was in the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Chinese abstained. Their reason for not vetoing the resolution was simple, crass self-interest. The Trolls of Beijing calculated that future prosperity under their program of "market reforms" depended upon penetrating the American market. A veto would make sure such would be impossible.
The success of the Chinese economically now assures that they will not make the same calculation again. They now feel secure to veto any Security Council measure which might impinge on their economic and diplomatic interests anywhere in the world.
In short, the UN Security Council will revert to the same stasis which marked it during the Cold War albeit as the consequences of a different dynamic. Potential aggressors--provided they are useful to the Trolls or, in other cases, the Kremlin--can be sure the UN Security Council will be the most toothless of tigers.
As if to make up for the failure in the area of preserving the international peace, the UN has engaged in an orgy of mission creep. The UN has come to the more than simply dubious conclusion that it can involve itself in the internal affairs of a state if those affairs serve to threaten the international peace by way of, for example, generating refugees or, another example, tromping on the "human rights" of its citizens. Of course both of these are highly subjective and thus suitable to manipulation according to the diplomatic considerations of one or more of the Big Five on the Security Council.
Much of the UN mission creep has been powered by the General Assembly. In the "one country, one vote" milieu of the General Assembly, the potency of regional interest groups--or, religious interest groups as is the case with the Arab League dominated Organization of the Islamic Council--can and have controlled the direction and actions of the huge, unwieldy body.
At this point, it is necessary to stop and reflect on a foundation truth regarding the General Assembly. The majority of the members are small, often artificial states, with a dubious economic base and only the most vague of commitments to either democracy or the notion of a rule of law. In this, the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly as well as the subsidiary organizations of the UN, such as the Human Rights Council, do not share the norms, values, or goals of the countries present in San Francisco sixty-five years ago.
It also means the majority of the UN membership does not share the norms, values, or ideals of the vast majority of We the People. Even though We the People pony up twenty-five percent of the UN's annual budget and more than that when the notoriously unsuccessful "peacekeeping" missions or subsidiary organizations are considered, the truth remains--we are subsiding a profoundly un-American bunch.
Sporadic efforts to "reform" the corrupt and inefficient UN bureaucracy have failed miserably. They will continue to fail as the culture has become both too deeply embedded and wide spread to admit of any meaningful reform. Even the (temporary) withholding of American dues proved ineffective in countering even the worse and most evident of UN financial abuses. Of course, it didn't help when a change in administrations brought with it a change in policy.
The same dynamic can be seen in microcosmic form with the US rejoining the Human Rights Council. This well-intended to "bore from within" has failed. The HRC is just as biased, just as anti-Israel, just as anti-US now as it was when we were on the outside.
The time has come to do a reappraisal of our relation with the UN. It is a hopeless captive of states which do not share the ideals, the norms, the values, the goals of sixty-five years ago. The bureaucracy of the Secretariat as well as most (but not all) of the subsidiaries have failed in its obligation to keep the international peace or punish international aggressors while creating ever more expansive missions and seeking ever greater power over the economic, political, and social spheres of member states.
It is hard to admit failure. It is hardest to admit that institutions created by the best of values, the most noble of motives, and highest of ideals have failed--failed continuously and totally. It is particularly hard to admit that an institution that has existed longer than most Americans have lived is a miserable failure.
But, our interests as well as the interests of people living in all the civilized and many not-so-civilized states demand we acknowledge the failure of the UN. So also do the interests of our descendants. The lives of children not yet born will be affected by our failure to deal with the failure of the UN.
Now is the time to take a long look at what is necessary for an effective international institution. History shows that the most important single factor is the sharing of norms, values, and imperatives. At the least, any international institution worthy of support is one where the members are truly democratic, truly committed to the freedom, dignity, and rights of the individual, truly subscribers to free enterprise in one of its many variants. An institution deserving of the support of We the People is one committed to freedom of expression, freedom of religious practice, and separation between the state and the communities of faith.
States which are suitable for such an international body exist all around the world. They do not include Muslim majority states with very few exceptions. Nor do they include authoritarian states with a thin veneer of democratic processes. Nor do they include states where the rule of law consists of the current desires or political/economic needs of the elite.
Sure this means any new "League of the Decent" will be small, perhaps no larger than the hopeful group assembled in San Francisco sixty-five years ago. That is no bar. Sometimes the hackneyed line. "smaller is better" is the greatest of truths.
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