04/11/07 U.. Is Getting Another Chance With New Leaders

U.N. Is Getting Another Chance With New Leaders

The Capital Times
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Vincent Kavaloski

Is the United Nations beginning a process of renewal and revitalization?

With a new activist secretary-general, a new moderate American ambassador and a host of innovative initiatives - including several on global warming - modest hope is once again arising for the 52-year-old organization.

Will it be able to shake off the cloud of corruption, bureaucratic ineffectiveness and political bickering that has bedeviled it especially for the past few years?

The recently (unanimously!) confirmed U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, replaces the bombastic and belligerent John Bolton, who in only two years had managed to alienate - if not enrage - most of the other 191 member states.

Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, is considered intelligent, capable and politically moderate. He advocates paying our U.N. dues and supporting the ongoing process of administrative reform begun by Kofi Annan, especially increasing financial transparency and accountability through the new U.N. Office of Internal Oversight and also, for the first time, an outside auditor.

In his recent Senate confirmation hearings Khalilzad acknowledged the U.N. as "the most successful collective security body in history" and pledged to re-build bridges with other member states.

However, Khalilzad also, rather inconsistently, affirmed the extremist Bush doctrine of "the legitimacy of U.S. decisions to act unilaterally" - the very doctrine of preemptive warfare that has led to the present Iraq disaster. Such a policy is in clear violation of the U.N. Charter, as Annan last year stated.

The new U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has just returned from a six-nation Middle East tour where he vigorously (but diplomatically) exerted his immense moral authority - the only real power he possesses - in trying to resolve complex crises in Darfur, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran.

According to the U.N. Charter, the secretary-general is not the CEO but rather the "Chief Administrative Officer" and hence unable to either make or enforce policy. He serves at the pleasure of the member states, or as Annan often said: "I have 192 bosses." (He also said that the abbreviation for secretary-general - "SG" - could stand for "scapegoat" since he was often blamed for all of the problems of the U.N., most of which were beyond his control.)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that his number one priority is administrative and fiscal reform, thus continuing Annan's "quiet revolution."

The more dramatic structural reform proposals, such as the expansion of the Security Council, have finally died amid various regional rivalries: China won't allow Japan to join the Security Council; Pakistan blocked its rival, India; Russia blocked Germany; Argentina campaigned against Brazil.

It is obvious that the present makeup of the Security Council is anachronistic and unfairly biased toward the West. But the numerous attempts to reform it over the past 60 years have all floundered on the Catch-22 that any proposal to alter the veto power of the Big Five can be vetoed by any one of them.

So perhaps the new secretary-general and the U.S. representative are wise to focus on incremental and achievable administrative/fiscal reforms.

The new secretary-general and U.S. representative should also continue Annan's important work on the new Peacebuilding Commission, which helps countries like the Congo, Bosnia and Sierra Leone re-build after devastating civil wars on solid foundations of democracy and reconciliation.

Unfortunately Annan's other big reform innovation, the Human Rights Committee, sadly seems to have inherited the crippling problem of its predecessor: paralysis by the membership of some of the world's worst human rights abusers, e.g. Libya, Sudan, Russia, China, Algeria, etc. It seems a classic case of electing foxes to guard the henhouse.

The U.N. can be a frustrating experience for anyone who wants to see global problems of peace and justice actually getting solved. And it has generally failed in the primary mission of its founders: "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Why then is the U.N. still worth having?

After 20 years of teaching about the U.N. and taking my Edgewood College students there each spring, I have three partial answers.

First, it provides the only fully inclusive global forum where all nations can debate issues, argue, and even denounce one another - but all without weapons or violence. And occasionally they even forge a consensus on common concerns such as global warming, international terrorism and world poverty.

Second, the U.N. family also includes the less publicized, but life-saving work of the World Health Organization, the U.N. Environmental Program, UNICEF, the U.N. Development Program and programs for refugee relief, etc. If you travel through distressed areas of Africa, Asia or Latin America, you will almost always see this crucial U.N. humanitarian work: children being inoculated, refugees housed and fed, human rights abuses documented, elections monitored, conflict areas patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers.

Lastly, for all of its faults and frustrations, the U.N. Charter still represents humankind's most noble and ancient dream: "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors." The United Nations is ultimately about our shared vision of human dignity and of one human family striving - however imperfectly - to survive together on one fragile and finite planet.

The day we give up on that dream is the day our world begins to die.

Dr. Vincent Kavaloski is a professor of philosophy at Edgewood College. He recently represented the Dane County United Nations Association at the National UNA conference in New York City.