The United Nations--It's Time For A Change

From time to time the United Nations has been a useful fig leaf covering American policy genitalia. That was the case back in 1950 when North Korea invaded the South and fortuitously the veto-wielding Soviet Union was absent in a snit over the who-will-represent-China problem. Forty years later the UN served the same modesty-protecting role when the US resolved that war and war alone would both restore Kuwait to the ranks of independent states and take Saddam Hussein down a few pegs.

Sporadically the UN has been a fine propaganda forum for the US. Certainly this was the case during the Kennedy Administration when the US scored many, many points against the Soviet Union. We replayed that game during the Reagan years with a greatly diminished audience. Times had changes so there were not that many hearts and minds in need of winning. And, the "virtuous" Americans had been shown often wearing, if not black at least very grey hats.

Other than those occasional benefits the UN General Assembly and Security Council have been venues for Yankee bashing contests. As the decades rolled along, as more and more "nation-states" were admitted to the organization the Great Game of Kicking Uncle Sam became more popular and much more of a full-contact sport.

The Geek was not given to embracing the Kick-The-Ungrateful-Bunch-Out notions of such statesmen as the late Senator Jesse Helms. A slender case could be made for contending that the UN did somewhat less harm than good. The fact that the US paid a disproportionate share of both the organization's operating expenses (currently 22%) and peacekeeping budget (currently 25%) as a form of noblesse oblige.

In short the Geek saw the UN, or at least the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat rather as one might see the dotty uncle at the family reunion--annoying, even highly irritating, but ultimately far more foolish than harmful.

Not any more. Not for some years. To make a confession: The Geek has rather admired the cavalier fashion in which George W. Bush and his jolly crew of neocon ninnies have ignored the UN, rejected a slew of zany UN proposals (most of which were greatly beloved by the High Minded here and abroad) and generally speaking flipped the bird at the Hudson River Folly.

The UN has earned the Geek's disapprobation not because so many of its members engage in the Kick Uncle Sam game. Nor has the Geek's attitude shifted from one of wary bemusement to one of frank hostility because of the financial burden imposed on the United States. None of the usual, superficial reasons for viewing the UN negatively apply.

The reason is actually quite simple. The UN is no longer worthy of the thoughtful respect and consideration which it once may have merited.

The UN has become a vast, bloated assemblage of over 190 countries, many of them without an authentic reason for existence, but rather accidents of geography, demography and colonial pretensions of past centuries. Many of the member states today do not share any basic structure of values with the United States, or the countries called the "West." Many are authoritarian. Some are infected with the zeal of dogma, either secular or religious. There are more than a few which are both.

Quite a few of the UN's enormous membership are anti-democratic. They are opposed to the basic freedoms and rights which characterise a decent regard for humanity. More than a handful of these UN members are despotic, corrupt, repressive, and ambitious to a fault. They are, in short, an unedifying pastiche of the worst features of the social/political/economic landscape.

Overall the collection of bad actors represented in the Hudson River Folly is such that it would be legitimate to ask of countries ranging worldwide from Norway to New Zealand, "What's a nice nation like you doing in a dive like this?"

There is another reason for thinking ill of the UN. It does not work. It is ultimately doomed to being chronically ineffectual. As a mechanism for bloviaton it is unsurpassed. As an instrument for promoting the collective interests of the human race it is a failure.

(The Geek feels the High Minded ginning themselves up for a fast burn through the tropopause.)
There is a justification for this harsh assessment. The UN was founded upon a set of ideals--not ideas, but ideals--which were marginally tenable sixty plus years ago when the organisation established itself in San Francisco. (A venue justly famed as the home of the vigilantes, the beatniks and the Summer of Love among its long line of zany and colorful human creations.)

The ideals underlying the creation of the UN have slipped over the edge to total irrelevance with the proliferation of pretenders to statehood now littering its membership roster.

The ideals foundered on a reef of reality. Here it is. Get a grip on it. Any state, which is to say any government, hopeful of prolonging its existence works on narrow, self-defined self-interest. Self-interest should--must--be understood to include not only the material considerations of territorial integrity and economic sufficiency but also the values on which the government rests whether these arose organically from the soil of historical experience or exploded from some ideology.

Authoritarian, ideologically driven governments are (or, to err on the side of accuracy, historically have been) inherently insecure. Insecure governments are the least likely to accept, let alone operate by the ideals of mutuality and cooperation which resided at the center of the creation of the UN from the framework of the wartime United Nations.

To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, such states are driven to approach any form of multilateral entity with a totally what's-in-it-for-me mentality. No genuine form of collaboration for a common good is possible with actors possessed of such a worldview. Indeed, it is impossible even to gain consensual agreement on what a "common good" might be.

The concept of the commonweal can only exist among individuals (be they humans or states) sharing a common set of values and a common understanding of fundamental precepts and basic principles. There is little, if any, set of commonalities present today in the UN General Assembly or even the comparatively speaking miniature Security Council.

Nor, the experience of recent years demonstrates convincingly, is it possible to fabricate an artifact of commonality from the raw materials of such supposedly "global" problems as pollution, anthropogenic climate change, agricultural shortfalls, and economic collapse. Most assuredly we humans are not, as bumper sticker understandings of international politics hold, "passengers on spaceship Earth."

Pace the High Minded among us, but the best course of action for the United States, the course of action which will do both us and the world the most good is to closely, critically and realistically examine what best suits our self-understood, self-defined national and strategic interests both today and into the future. Realism as to what the US needs to see in the world in order to not only survive but to flourish will lead to the best outcome for Americans, and, arguably the world as a whole.

As an illustration, consider this wording from Senate Bill 2433, the Global Poverty Act which has already been passed by the House with the guidance of vice-president-elect Joe Biden and having as its chief Senate sponsor president-elect Obama.

poverty reduction will take place along with the other internationally recognized Millennium Development Goals, including eradicating extreme hunger and reducing hunger and malnutrition, achieving universal education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating the spread of preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, increasing access to potable water and basic sanitation, ensuring environmental sustainability, and achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100,000,000 slum dwellers.

These are a series of laudable ambitions. Worthy and lofty goals.

Here is the critical question. It is a question which must be answered fully and honestly before e United States commits itself to joining with others through the UN in seeking the achievement of these ends.

Are these goals, each of which is worthy, in and of themselves an American national or strategic interest? Yes, gaining these ends, or any of them, would be nice. But is the achievement of all or any addressing an authentic American national interest? Strategic interest?

Achieving the UN articulated Millennium Development Goals--or any of them--would be nice. Would make us feel good.

Ask yourself this: Does a nation continue to exist, to thrive on a politics of feeling good or acting realistically? Ask yourself: Do feeling good and the realistic pursuit of national interest overlap much, or at all?

On the answers much depends. Our collective present and future depend on them.

Feeling Delusional? Think Foreign Aid!

For sixty some years now Administrations and Congresses of both parties have been very generous with the money of American taxpayers. Under a plethora of rubrics and for reasons of utility ranging from the dubious to the nonexistent, gigabucks have been doled out to recipients worthy and otherwise with results running from the counterproductive up to excellent.

It is against this background that Senator Obama has entered his only significant piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2433 aka The Global Poverty Act of 2007. He was joined in this effort by fifteen other senators, all but two being Democrats. Having already passed the House in a whoop and a holler, the GPA was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Joe Biden with a favorable recommendation.

The Committee did not hear witnesses or take written testimony. It spent a minimum amount of time considering the Bill and made only slight changes in i ts wording. Considering the potential impact of this towering monument to hazy words and ambiguous but goodhearted intention, the Committee exercised little care and expended less thought than seems justifiable.

The Bill is worthy of close and careful scrutiny. Its sentences need, no, demand the most scrupulous parsing. The Geek strongly recommends you do so, if you have not already made intimate acquaintance with a piece of legislation which may have dramatic impact in the years to come. It is definitely policy for the future potentially without regard for its affect on each passing today.

Take a look at S2433 on either of the following. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-2433 or http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2433/text.

The Global Poverty Act builds on the long tradition of American (mis)adventures in foreign aid. Don't get the Geek wrong. He is not one who is convinced that all foreign aid is necessarily and intrinsically bad. He is not prepared to argue from the basis of history that all foreign aid has failed to serve American national interests including national security.

He is, however, ready to argue that much, even most, foreign aid has been provided regardless of its potential to enhance American interests. He is prepared to argue that much, if not most, foreign aid has been awarded for reasons other than legitimate American interests.

To put the matter short and not particularly sweetly: Most American foreign aid has been chucked down assorted ratholes for reasons of domestic politics or international bribery.

Sixty plus years ago the program commonly known as the Marshall Plan set the standard for the correct balance of national self-interest and altruism in foreign aid. This standard has rarely been matched in all the decades and billions of dollars since.

The Marshall Plan worked because of the unique circumstances which obtained in the months and years immediately following the end of World War II in Europe. It worked because the US kept its distance as the European countries decided how to allocate and spend the money. It worked because European economic recovery was critical to European political and social stability. It worked because the Soviet Union (as must have been suspected by the Foggy Bottom authors of the European Recovery Act) said nyet to participation by itself or those countries sitting under the treads of Red Army tanks.

The upside of the Marshall Plan's success was the recovery and stability of Europe as well as its affect on the growing political movement in Europe for economic and political unification. The downside of the Plan's success was its impact upon American political decision makers.

We were victimised by our own success. We were erroneously convinced that economic assistance was a sovereign remedy for latent political instability and would thus serve to increase American security automatically.

Through the Fifties and Sixties economic aid became a strategic weapon of choice for gaining influence on the governing elites of recently independent states throughout Africa and Asia. At the same time it was joined with the growing torrent of military assistance programs to assist stabilizing regimes in longer established countries.

As various US Administrations increasingly confused the appearance of short term order with a reality of long term stability in authoritarian regimes throughout the world, our aid programs degenerated into a vast array of poorly thought through, very expensive "rent-a-friend" efforts.

Since foreign aid money had to be spent somewhere (usually in the United States) Congress wallahs became increasingly enamored of it as another source of pork for the companies back home. Whether tanks and helicopters under the military assistance programs or corn and soybeans under the rubric of Food For Peace, the foreign aid budget became a very attractive barrel of pork fat.

In the years following the Camp David Accords, foreign aid transmogrified into a bribery program. Israel was heavily bribed not to go to war (too often.) Egypt was bribed according to a set percentage of the Israeli bribe to pretend that it was a peaceloving secular state that simply loved to cooperate with the "Zionist Entity."

While any number of glosses can be put upon the foreign aid debacles to date--and have, the end result is that a great deal of money has bought very little American national interest and even less American national security.

The Geek is not in favor of poverty. He has worked and lived in pits of poverty in several continents. He has been grindingly poor himself. He has seen and experienced the negative affects of poverty upon the human flesh and spirit.

The Geek would like to see an end to poverty wherever it might occur. In the US. Around the world.

He maintains, however, that the post-modernist fogginess of The Global Poverty Act is not the way to do it. Further, he maintains that The Global Poverty Act will not enhance either American national interests or American national security.

If Senators Obama, Biden and the rest be genuinely convinced that eradication of poverty globally is a desirable, even necessary goal, then they can donate their personal fortunes to any one of a number of non-governmental organisations dedicated to that end. The same approach is open to any person whose sensibilities are wounded by the thought of billions of humans trying to survive on a measly one USD per day.

They are even at liberty to donate money to the assorted United Nations components who wage war on poverty and its ills. That is, if they can bring themselves to overlook the spectacular UN corruption during the Oil For Food program in Iraq. A scandal which may have extended all the way to the Secretary General of the UN.

The money of US government, which is to say the money of the American taxpayers, should be husbanded more carefully and expended only in a tightly focused manner. Demanding, as S2433 does, that the next administration develop a plan for eradicating poverty around the world is not a prudent, tightly focused application of American resources to American national interests.

The challenge for the next administration is not one of global wealth redistribution for such is, according to the record of numerous national histories, doomed to fail. No. The challenge for the next administration is quite different.

The next administration would be best advised, in the best interests of the US to immediately zero out the foreign aid budget. To zero it out ignoring the howls and wails of all those whose personal moral sensibilities or corporate financial concerns have been injured.

Zero out the bribes. Zero out the indirect subsidies for American agribusiness and defense contractors alike. Zero out the plush funding of the "administrative overhead" components of recipient non-governmental organisations.

Sure the noise level will be astonishing. The foreign aid gravy train has been rolling along unchecked and unchallenged for decades now. There are mobs with a vested interest in keeping the status quo going in perpetuity.

The reality is simple. Our national interest and our national security demand a rethinking of foreign aid. It is (or can and should be) a vital component of our instruments of national power. Foreign aid must be guided as it was with the Marshall Plan by a somber appreciation of our genuine national and security interests and a clear eyed understanding of how best to match our resources with the genuine requirements.

Will this process happen? The Geek is a historian. That means he is a cynic. No, the next administration will not have the intellectual and moral courage to zero the beast out and go back to the drafting board.

The odds are that we will continue to try to rent friends and pay bribes, and recycle taxpayer dollars to NGOs and corporate suites. The odds are we will be signing on to some sort of UN overseen Global War on Poverty.

Odds are the name of the Marshall Plan will be taken in vain again and again as we lurch along the same old road to failure.