Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 28. december 2006 / Time Line December 28, 2006
Version 3.527. December 2006, 29. December 2006
12/28/2006
United Nations v. United States
By Phyllis Bennis
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/28/united_nations_v_united_states.php
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.
Her most recent book is Challenging Empire: How People, Governments
and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power.
This is a moment of several overlapping transitions at the United
Nations. A new secretary-general will take over when Kofi
Annan’s 10 years are up at the end of December. New countries
will join the Security Council as temporary members. And U.N.
agencies are choosing new leadership.
The stakes are high, as the U.N. remains the key to governments
challenging U.S. wars and invasions. But the longstanding battle
between U.S. domination and U.N. independence remains, and so far,
it is off to a less than optimistic start. In the big game to this
point, it’s 2 ½ points for U.S. domination versus just
1½ for U.N. independence.
First was the election of U.S.-backed Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean
foreign minister, as new secretary-general of the global
organization. While his government had cautiously contested
Washington’s hard-line policy on North Korea with its own
“sunshine policy” focused on stability and ultimately
reunification between North and South, Pyongyang’s recent
nuclear tests have brought Seoul’s hard-liners to the fore,
undermining adherents of the earlier policy including the foreign
minister. It is very unlikely that Ban, known personally for a
quiet, confrontation-averse diplomatic style will risk burning his
fingers a second time in any high-visibility challenge to the U.S.
on issues such as U.N. sanctions or extending the mandate of
Washington’s “multilateral forces” occupying
Iraq. And with the possibility remaining that President Bush could
still appoint the take-no-quarter John Bolton to the U.N. on
another non-ratified basis, it is doubtful we will see Ban stepping
up to use the secretary-general’s global bully pulpit to
mobilize opposition to Washington’s next unilateral war.
Score one for the U.S.
Then came the composition of the new Security Council, in which
five new “non-permanent” members are selected each year
to join five other similarly second-class members in the Council
alongside the “perm five”—the veto-wielding
powers with permanent tenure: the U.S., France, Russia, China and
Britain. Most of the time, the regional groups at the U.N. operate
collaboratively, sending to the General Assembly for ratification
the same number of candidates as their group’s vacant Council
seats. That worked this time around for the Asian (Indonesia),
African (South Africa) and European (Belgium and Italy) seats. But
Latin America, which has emerged as the central front of the new
challenges to U.S. economic and political policy, was
different.
The region had one open seat (Peru will remain on the Council for
another year). Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had months earlier
staked out a high-profile international candidacy, using his oil
wealth and undoubted—if sometimes private—popularity
for standing up to Washington, to win support for a Council seat.
Only after Chavez’s world-wide campaign (all members of the
General Assembly vote to select the new regional members of the
Council) was well underway did Washington enter the fray. The Bush
administration was careful, to a point. Not wanting to acknowledge
that they were carrying out their usual business of meddling in
Latin American affairs, they didn’t publicly oppose
Venezuela, but instead encouraged Guatemala’s sudden
candidacy. The result was a high-profile battle of the
bribes—though hardly an equal fight, since Washington’s
diplomatic arsenal contains a far wider array of tools, including
threats, punishments and other blandishments.
Quite quickly paralysis set in. After the Asian, African and
European candidates had been ratified, weeks of campaigning and 46
separate votes were held in the General Assembly to choose between
Guatemala (a hapless candidate indeed, discredited for being
Washington’s pawn and facing opposition from more than 100
civil society organizations inside Guatemala, who urged the world
body to deny their own government a role on the Council because of
its continuing human rights violations) and Venezuela.
At the end of the day, both Guatemala and Venezuela agreed to step
down in favor of a third candidate—giving the victory to
Panama. In the broader U.S.-U.N. power struggle, this one would
have to be called a draw: Venezuela wasn’t able to win
majority support, and some diplomats attributed the failure to
Chavez’s speech at the September 2006 General Assembly, when
he famously referred to Bush as “the devil.” The remark
brought not only laughter from the bored-with-diplomatic-oratory
diplomats filling the Assembly Hall, but a huge ovation as
well—leading embarrassed U.N. protocol officers to rush into
the seats urging decorum. But even among some governments eager for
greater challenges to U.S. unilateralism, there were fears that
Chavez’s rhetorical excesses might undermine the potential
for building strategic alliances against Washington’s
power.
On the other hand, despite its huge investment of high-profile
diplomatic capital, the U.S. couldn’t get its way either.
Perhaps it failed because the General Assembly votes were taken by
secret ballots, so U.S. threats had less resonance. Perhaps it
failed because in 2006 Latin America is the center of a rising bloc
of progressive governments ready to challenge U.S. economic and
political strategies, and with the political and economic clout to
do so safely. But whatever the reason, the U.S. defeat was a far
cry from the most famous example of U.S. pressure at the U.N., the
so-called “Yemen precedent,” still spoken of in
whispers throughout U.N. headquarters. In that instance, during the
November 1990 U.S. effort to win unanimous Security Council support
for its resolution endorsing war against Iraq, U.S. bribes and
threats had won a large majority of support in the Council. (Even
China, which had long threatened to veto the resolution, was bribed
into abstaining rather than using a veto.) But two countries voted
no—Cuba, which opposed the war on principle, and Yemen, the
sole Arab country on the Council. No sooner had the Yemeni
ambassador put down his hand after voting against the resolution,
the U.S. ambassador was at his side saying “that will be the
most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast.” The
remark was picked up on an open U.N. radio microphone, and
broadcast throughout the building and ultimately around the world.
So three days later, when the U.S. cut its entire aid budget to
Yemen, the world took notice.
So far the score was 1½, for the U.S. domination, only
½ a point for U.N. independence.
Next came the moment to appoint a new head of the World Food
Program, one of the most vital of the U.N.’s emergency
assistance agencies. The WFP director is, by tradition, an
American. (The same tradition holds true for UNICEF, the
U.N.’s children’s agency.) The appointment would be
made by out-going Secretary-General Kofi Annan, but with
consultation and approval of his successor, Ban Ki-Moon. It was a
moment to express at least a hint of independence. But instead, the
U.S. preference carried the day, and the selection went to Josette
Shiner, the nominee of the Bush administration. Shiner is a former
editor of the right-wing Washington Times, owned by Unification
Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and was a long-time member of the
church itself. Perhaps more relevant, Shiner is currently the U.S.
Undersecretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural
Affairs. What she knows about global hunger and feeding starving
people appears to be nothing; the slick pamphlet produced by the
State Department to push her candidacy focuses on her management
skills. U.S. business interests as well as ideology appear to be
the key bases for the nomination. Shiner’s appointment was
not unlike that of Ann Venemen, the current director of UNICEF, who
came to the position directly from her post as Secretary of
Agriculture in the Bush administration. In both instances,
supporting U.S. agricultural interests (just where will WFP and
UNICEF be most likely to buy sorghum and wheat for high-protein
emergency rations?) trumped the knowledge of how to feed hungry
children.
Score one for Washington.
Perhaps looking to catch up, Secretary-General Annan moved to
reassert U.N. power in his leading role at the international global
warming conference last week in Nairobi. He berated world leaders,
singling out most major industrialized countries for special scorn.
Political leaders who continue to resist the massive changes that
will be required, Annan went on, are “out of step, out of
arguments and out of time.” Score one for the United
Nations.
It is still possible for the U.N. to reclaim its independence, and
with it, the global support of the world’s people, something
now endangered by the perception of the U.N. giving in to
Washington’s pressure. It is still possible for the incoming
Secretary-general Ban Ki Moon to claim the global role of defender
of the U.N. Charter, international law and multilateralism, and to
speak out against U.S. domination. It is still possible for the
General Assembly to answer Washington’s most recent Security
Council veto, once again of a resolution designed to hold Israel
accountable for its illegal actions in the Gaza artillery attack
that left 19 people dead, including 7 children and 6 women, by
passing its own resolution condemning the assault and calling for
international protection for Palestinians in Gaza.
It is still possible. But with the score at 2 ½ to
1½, time is running out for the U.N.—especially the
secretary-general and the General Assembly—to return to the
role of a global challenger to U.S. unilateralism and militarism.
The last time the U.N. played its Charter-mandated role of working
to stop “the scourge of war” was in the run-up to the
2003 U.S. war on Iraq, when the Security Council refused to endorse
the invasion, the General Assembly condemned it, and eventually the
secretary general called it illegal. The U.N. then was part of the
massive mobilization in which “the world said no to
war.”
It wasn’t enough, ultimately, to prevent the invasion, but it
did deny the Bush administration what it so desperately sought:
international legitimacy. It’s not too late for the United
Nations to reclaim that role.
( * Update: after the U.S. veto in the Security Council, the
General Assembly did pass a resolution "expressing regret" over the
Beit Hanoun attack and calling for an investigation. The U.S.,
Israel, Australia and four U.S.-backed small island states opposed
the resolution; Canada, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, plus three
more small island states, abstained. 157 members supported the
resolution. Separately, on November 29 the UN Human Rights Council
selected South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head their
investigation mission on Beit Hanoun.)
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