Neu

Final Days | Showdown at the U.N. | A slow, frustrating -- and valuable -- U.N.: [1,2,3 Edition]

Joyce Neu. The San Diego Union-Tribune. San Diego, Calif.: Mar 16, 2003. pg. G.1

Abstract (Article Summary)

With the U.S. decision to get a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, we have seen several weeks of frenetic activity as the United States seeks to garner the nine votes it needs to launch a war in Iraq. This weekend, President [Bush] is traveling to the Azores to meet with President Jose Aznar of Spain and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom in a final effort to find a compromise resolution acceptable to other Security Council members.

Those people who are frustrated by what they see as the slow pace of working within the U.N. system may want the United States to bypass that forum and get the war in Iraq started. This is a shortsighted and narrow view of the United Nations. For one thing, while the U.S. military may be able to handle a unilateral war on Iraq, we are not ready to unilaterally foot the bill for rebuilding Iraq.

All nations have a right to speak and be heard at the United Nations. Just as the U.S. Constitution specifies that all states will be represented in the Senate, even the Rhode Islands of the world have a voice at the United Nations. Cameroon, Angola and Guinea, three non-permanent members of the Security Council with important votes that are now being courted by the United States in its push to war, have been denigrated by the American media as inconsequential countries. Angola is almost twice the size of Texas, Cameroon is larger than California, and Guinea is slightly smaller than Oregon. No country is inconsequential and the United Nations recognizes this.

Full Text (1510 words)

Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Mar 16, 2003

As the crisis between the United States and Iraq deepens, with the Bush administration alternately thumbing its nose at the United Nations and trying to work through it, we need to remember that the international body was created after World War II to prevent another world war. More than 50 years later, we have not had a world war despite decades of Cold War. Mutual deterrence and a place to talk, or yell, have proven effective.

With the U.S. decision to get a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, we have seen several weeks of frenetic activity as the United States seeks to garner the nine votes it needs to launch a war in Iraq. This weekend, President Bush is traveling to the Azores to meet with President Jose Aznar of Spain and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom in a final effort to find a compromise resolution acceptable to other Security Council members.

U.N. agencies such as the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, UNICEF and the U.N. Development Program have been actively engaged in rebuilding Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided only $900 million in assistance to that country since Sept. 11, 2001. While we contemplate spending tens of billions of dollars to wage war on Iraq, $900 million represents less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. defense budget.

In each country that has experienced war, rebuilding requires decades of work to ensure that a democratic and fair infrastructure is in place that will sustain the peace. Democracy is not born quickly -- years of nurturing are needed, and decades may be required for democracy to take root. America still has forces in Bosnia and Kosovo rebuilding those societies. But those Americans are working hand-in-hand with Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, the French, the Dutch and the Russians. Are we prepared to do the work of peace- building alone?

The United Nations moves slowly and can be further reformed, but to be responsive, it must have the participation of all states, particularly a state that is as important as the United States. Yet, on more than this current occasion of trying to push a resolution through the Security Council, the Bush administration has worked to undermine the United Nations and international law. Starting with the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration took the unprecedented step of "unsigning" the statute establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (a court which could be used to indict Saddam Hussein).

Further, the Bush administration has persuaded 24 countries to sign bilateral agreements that they will not extradite Americans indicted for war crimes or crimes against humanity, In some cases, these impunity agreements are reciprocal. Other countries see these acts as U.S. defiance of international norms and laws.

With the United States the sole superpower, the use of mutual deterrence is, at least for the moment, on hold. But as armed conflicts continue to number in the mid to high 20s each year since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a forum for dialogue and diplomacy is needed as much as ever.

The United Nations remains the only forum open to all nation- states to talk to each other. This is not trivial. The fact that countries come together regularly to discuss issues of peace and security even when those countries' ideologies are sometimes inimical, is a feat in itself.

When left to our own devices, we as people prefer to talk to those who think like us and share our values. We punish those we don't like by not talking to them, even at the risk of heightened tensions and possible aggression. Thus, over the past decade, the U.S. government has chosen at times not to talk to Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Sudan.

The United Nations offers each member a voice in matters of peace, development, democracy and security. This exemplifies the values that underlie our own country.

Although organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International regularly report human rights abuses by governments who are members of the United Nations, although there have been hundreds of low-intensity conflicts between member states since the U.N.'s creation, and despite violations of the U.N.'s own resolutions, as we are witnessing now in Iraq, the international body has been successful in numerous, not always visible, ways.

The United Nations sends peacekeeping missions to countries at risk or recovering from war. Currently, there are 14 peacekeeping missions deployed in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe at a cost of roughly $3 billion.

There also have been glaring failures of the United Nations to prevent such tragedies as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1995 Bosnian Serb killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srbrenica. Lack of members' consensus on mandates for peacekeeping missions has sometimes left talented, courageous peacekeepers in dangerous situations with no help forthcoming.

Like the United States which is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, so the United Nations is an organization of the nations, by the nations, and for the nations. As such, it is unwieldy, slow, and hamstrung by members who don't pay their dues (the United States was more than $1 billion in arrears for years).

For the U.S. administration to dismiss the United Nations as irrelevant when other members do not agree with our approach to the conflict with Iraq is to admit our own diplomatic failure. Our blustering behavior now will have consequences; the leadership role we have played for decades will be diminished by our arrogance in saying we can go it alone. We have the military muscle to go it alone, but we have lost the trust of others to do so.

Rather than dismiss the United Nations as irrelevant, we should stop issuing ultimatums and start engaging in serious discussions on how to avoid war in Iraq yet gain its compliance in disarming. We might send a multinational delegation headed by Colin Powell to Iraq. Another alternative, recommended by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, would for U.S. forces stationed in the Gulf to participate in coercive inspections, ensuring Iraqi cooperation.

In the short run, when we dismiss the United Nations, we are dismissing its capacity to resolve disputes between nations. But the United Nations does much more than this for hundreds of millions of the world's people. Last year alone, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees had staff in 120 countries to deal with almost 20 million refugees, m victims of civil wars and famine.

In 2001, UNICEF was instrumental in helping secure the release of 8,000 children abducted into child soldiering in Sudan and Sierra Leone. UNICEF protected children from malaria and tetanus, and immunized almost 600 million children against polio.

The U.N. Development Program, now in Afghanistan to help rebuild that war-torn country, is working in 165 other countries to help people develop the skills to create structures that foster democratic good governance and reduce poverty.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all countries but the United States and Somalia, commits countries to respecting and protecting the human rights of children. More than two-thirds of U.N. members have ratified a convention to eliminate discrimination toward women.

Globally, governments spend more than $750 billion on military activities. Since the inception of U.N. peacekeeping in 1948, total expenditures are estimated at $21 billion.

If we, as the world's strongest power, decide to short-circuit the United Nations and launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, we risk sacrificing core values that many of us hold dear. Are we prepared to say that peace is not worth every possible effort, that being a responsible and responsive global citizen is no longer essential, and that ignoring most of the world's populations is in our own national interest?

Credit: Neu is executive director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego.