Ever since John (Mad Dog) Bolton became US ambassador to the UN, I have waited with bated breath for the outbreak of overt hostilities between him and UN officials. For some time, they seem to have enjoyed something of a honeymoon, or at least, whatever spats there were were discreet and behind closed doors. I was lulled into thinking that the tempestuous confirmation hearings, where Bolton was roundly excoriated for his abrasive and dictatorial style, had cowed him to a more diplomatic stance. Hmmm....seems not. The marriage of US and UN, strained at best of times, seems to be unraveling as fast as the US reputation in New York and Geneva. The gloves are off, crockery is being thrown, the neighbors are talking, and concerned friends may soon have to be gathered to intervene to save this rocky relationship, which even the Deputy Secretary-General has come to describe as a "troubled marriage".
The public row results from
statements made by
Mark Malloch Brown Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, and second-in-command to Kofi Annan, when he addressed the Century Foundation and Center for American Progress Security and Peace Initiative in a lecture entitled
"Power and Super-Power: Global Leadership in the Twenty-First Century" in New York, yesterday 6 June:
He cited the foundation of the UN by the victorious allies at the end of World War 2 as an attempt to create a body with powers not only of international legislation, but of enforcement. He states
The all-moral-idealism-no-power institution was the League of Nations. The UN was explicitly designed through US leadership and the ultimate coalition of the willing, its World War II allies, as a very different creature, an antidote to the League's failure. At the UN's core was to be an enforceable concept of collective security protected by the victors of that war, combined with much more practical efforts to promote global values such as human rights and democracy. The all-moral-idealism-no-power institution was the League of Nations. The UN was explicitly designed through US leadership and the ultimate coalition of the willing, its World War II allies, as a very different creature, an antidote to the League's failure. At the UN's core was to be an enforceable concept of collective security protected by the victors of that war, combined with much more practical efforts to promote global values such as human rights and democracy.
Underpinning this new approach was a judgement that no President since Truman has felt able to repeat: that for the world's one super-Power -- arguably more super in 1946 than 2006 -- managing global security and development issues through the network of a United Nations was worth the effort. Yes it meant the give and take of multilateral bargaining, but any dilution of American positions was more than made up for by the added clout of action that enjoyed global support.
He goes on to excoriate the current American attitude to the UN: the administration, he says, seeks to use the UN to enforce policies that it deems advantageous to US interests, yet fails to acknowledge them or support the broader agendas of the UN (human rights, global climate change etc) and entirely fails to rally support for the UN in the nation itself, setting up the UN as a bogeyman which the heartland has been taught to distrust.
"Kofi Annan has proposed a restructuring of the UN to respond to these new challenges with three legs: development, security and human rights supported, like any good chair, by a fourth leg, reformed management. That is the UN we want to place our bet on. But for it to work, we need the US to support this agenda -- and support it not just in a whisper but in a coast to coast shout that pushes back the critics domestically and wins over the sceptics internationally. America's leaders must again say the UN matters"..
Yet
""much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors, such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The UN's role is in effect a secret in middle America"
While voicing such uncharacteristically undiplomatic criticism of the major UN partner, he also stresses the need for the US to have an active voice in the UN for its own sake. He cites Darfur as an example:
A few weeks ago, my kids were on the Mall in Washington, demanding President Bush to do more to end the genocide in Darfur and President Bush wants to do more. .....And yet what can the US do alone in the heart of Africa, in a region the size of France? A place where the Government in Khartoum is convinced the US wants to extend the hegemony it is thought to have asserted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In essence, the US is stymied before it even passes "Go". It needs the UN as a multilateral means to address Sudan's concerns. It needs the UN to secure a wide multicultural array of troop and humanitarian partners. It needs the UN to provide the international legitimacy that Iraq has again proved is an indispensable component to success on the ground. Yet, the UN needs its first parent, the US, every bit as much if it is to deploy credibly in one of the world's nastiest neighbourhoods.
At the same time, the US undermines its position by unilateral decisions and arrogant hegemonic behavior, withdrawing from established treaties, disparaging well-respected international norms (The Geneva Conventions spring to mind most forcibly) and threeatening withholdig of funds from the UN itself.
... promoting human rights and a responsibility to protect people from abuse by their own Governments; creating a new status for civil society and business at the UN -- are either not recognized or have come under steady attacks from anti-UN groups.
Malloch acknowledges the need for widespread bureaucratic reform at the UN: after all, the organization is 60 years old and was contructed for a different set of international conditions: but such reform, he says, cannot proceed without US involvement, yet cannot be undertaken where the US is so widely internationally distrusted and any US involvement is regarded as having a hidden, neocon agenda.
Motives, in that, very unfortunately, there is currently a perception among many otherwise quite moderate countries that anything the US supports must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multilateral processes to Washington's ends or weakening the institutions, and therefore, put crudely, should be opposed without any real discussion of whether they make sense or not.
All well and good, I think: Malloch presents a coherent and seemingly well justified argument.
What well reasoned response can we expect from the US?
A froth at the mouth spew of vitriol from Mad Dog Bolton, calling on Annan to repudiate his deputy (this despite the fact that he knows full well that they probably wrote the speech together.)
This speaks to me of a UN at the end of its tether dealing with the current administration. Malloch speaks highly of previous ambassadors and secrtaries of State, leaving unsaid his opinion of the current office holders (a silence which speaks volumes). One wonders if Condi Rice will enter the fray, or leave her pit bull unleashed to further enrage and alienate the international community.
Bolton is set to respond officially tomorrow (Friday). Stay tuned!