UN on trial

BBC News referred to Kofi Annan yesterday as 'the conscience of the United Nations'. This is like calling the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury 'the conscience of the British government'. Annan is a civil servant, not a moral leader. Where he's tried political interventions, as with his disastrous deal with Saddam Hussein in 1998, the outcome has been to weaken western security in the interests of a false peace. But at least he appears to be learning from his experience, judging by his speech to the General Assembly yesterday:

Mr Annan said that the UN stood "at a fork in the road" and described the present time as "a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself".

"It is not enough to denounce unilateralism unless we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable, since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral action," he said.

If the UN is to be a responsible agent in the international order, then it must uphold its own Security Council resolutions. In the case of Iraq, it didn't. In the 1990s the UN inspections regime was progressively enfeebled by the unwillingness of France and Russia, driven by their economic interest in Iraq's oil reserves, to uphold its authority. When Saddam refused to cooperate even with that arrangement, the UN declined to issue him with an ultimatum - hence Annan's undignified shuttle diplomacy. The only reason inspectors returned to Iraq at the end of last year was because the United States threatened to invade. This concentrated minds to the extent of a new UN Security Council Resolution, 1441, which Saddam proceeded to ignore.

Fortunately two world leaders, Bush and Blair, took the UN's responsibilities more seriously than the UN itself did. Annan is wrong to present our side's response as that of states who feel uniquely vulnerable. The Islamist terrorists are opposed not only to the US and Great Britain, still less just to our foreign policies, but to infidels everywhere, without distinction. The Bali bombing was directed not against anyone in military uniform, but against holidaymakers and backpackers. The Anglo-American intervention against a gangster-regime whose remnants even now commit terrorist atrocities alongside Islamist fanatics was made on behalf of the world order and not ourselves alone. It was a noble and humanitarian, as well as strategically necessary, act done in lieu of the UN's own responsibilities.

Typically the BBC charges that President Bush's speech to the General Assembly yesterday was a failure:

The BBC's Rob Watson, in New York, says there was little applause for Mr Bush's words, with the speech falling decidedly flat.

It was no failure: it was a carefully understated speech that subtly challenged the UN to be true to its own calling. If the members of the General Assembly, and still more those of the Security Council, have any sense they'll put a stop to self-indulgent grandstanding and do something useful for the people of Iraq - for a change.

Comments

[warlord]

A contributor to the Times suggested that the UN should stick to doing what it does best - nothing. Perhaps it would be better to re-brand it as the Forum for Criticizing America.

[Jurjen]

Well, you've touched on the salient point at the start there, Oliver, which is that Annan is ultimately a civil servant; he's not called the Secretary-General, typically a civil service term, for nothing. In other words, Annan doesn't make policy, his job is to carry out whatever policy emerges from the Security Council, and to some extent the General Assembly. Unfortunately, as history shows us, getting coherent policy out of the UNSC is a very tricky thing indeed.

Because there is no clear leader of the UNSC, the Sec-Gen is somehow expected to be figurehead for the world. Well, that's quite a challenge; how do you represent every person in the world while trying not to offend anyone? This requirement would reduce anyone to mouthing platitudes, which is what happens all too often with Secretaries-General. Annan also faces the challenge of being Sec-Gen in a post-Cold War world, in which the US is the only superpower. His performance can, in this regard, only be compared to Boutros-Ghali, who proved to be singularly unequipped to deal with that challenge. During the Cold War, Boutros-Ghali's tenure would have been unremarkable; in the early to mid 1990s, it was an unmitigated disaster.

As for "the UN being best at doing nothing" crack, well, let's just say ignorance is bliss and leave it at that.

Regarding the "Forum for Criticizing America" comment, what do you expect? The UN has 191 member states, 190 of which aren't the world's only superpower, and it's the only place where you get all of them in one room. It might help if the Bush administration as a whole wasn't so spectacularly cack-handed at diplomacy.

For further reference, I'll point to two of my own blog entries:
http://www.blarg.net/~minsq/NCArchive/00000079.htm
and
http://www.blarg.net/~minsq/NCArchive/00000133.htm