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dirty play in the U.N. asks several questions, and brings up memories.
At the 28th General Assembly session of
the U.N. (1973),
I served as public delegate (appointed by President Nixon) and as
U.S. representative to the Third Committee (the committee concerned
with human rights).
The Cold War
was very hot on several fronts, most notably, Vietnam. Mr. Kissinger
was designing the sinuous diplomatic path that came to be known
as Détente and involved bit by bit the withdrawal from Vietnam,
accelerated relations with China, and a hard line on Russia, but
with cultural exchange and diplomatic patience. Within the United
Nations, the line to the U.S. staff was: Be cautious of any direct
attacks on human rights within the Soviet Union, but feel free (with
some moderation) to attack human rights in Soviet satellite countries,
in particular, Cuba.
On the human-rights
agenda of caring nations in the U.N. that year was the appointment
of a high commissioner, who by the high rank of his station might
bring special worldwide attention to the deprivation of human rights.
Ah, but where? My task was to focus on those nations that engaged
in delaying tactics. In my book (United Nations Journal,
1974) is recorded the little speech I gave on the floor targeting
East Germany: "Among those who spoke yesterday in opposition
to a High Commissioner for Human Rights were states who would have
you believe that such is the congestion of human rights within their
frontiers that it is necessary to surround themselves with great
walls and oceans to prevent these human rights from emigrating."
To no avail. The U.N. is a showcase for the sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones
rule.
Now in successive
years, we (my wife and I) had as weekend guests in Gstaad U.S. human-rights
warriors in the U.N. ongoing commission from which we have just
now been excluded. Allard Lowenstein, the most idealistic political
creature in modern times, was there in Geneva, and gave breathless
accounts of efforts to impale the Soviet Union on its continuing
persecution of such Russians who sought freedom as Solzhenitsyn.
But in Washington, the Carter administration counseled ... verbal
caution. Leonard Garment, former counsel to President Nixon, was
our ambassador one year, and the august political scientist Walter
Berns, another. All three, in the course of the 6-8 week session
of the Human Rights Commission were aflame with the prospect of
advancing human rights but, always, were knocked pretty well senseless
by the bureaucratic walls of realpolitik.
That is what
happened to us last week. To exclude the United States from membership
in the U.N. Human Rights Commission can only be compared with the
Council on Foreign Relations' discovery on counting the ballots
one morning ten years ago that Henry Kissinger hadn't been renominated
as a trustee. Such votes are one part inadvertence (sometimes people,
and nations, have to be reminded to do the obviously right thing),
but also one part malevolence. A lot of countries are sore at the
U.S. for all kinds of reasons, including the headstrong lure of
sticking it to the Man. Some don't like it that we have rejected
Kyoto, that we declined to submit our citizens to international
criminal courts, that we are considering an advance over the 1972
ABM Treaty, and that we have dragged our feet paying U.N. dues.
So there was the lure of humiliating the United States, and this
has been done. The principal victim of the U.N. high will of course
be those human rights that the United States is best equipped to
champion. As also whatever it is you call a human-rights commission
that has just elected as members, Algeria and Sudan.
Human rights
in the United Nations, whether in the General Assembly or Geneva,
is an aspect of routine political interests. It should be more than
that because human rights are the great evolving insight of world
history. It is a revolutionary development that China should care
to be thought concerned about human rights. When in 1973 the Soviet
Union ratified the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which was then 25 years old, the big news wasn't that human rights
in Russia would get better — they didn't — but that the leadership
thought it correct to approve human rights. Some time later,
perestroika and glasnost were born; and not too long after, the
Berlin Wall fell.
We are at liberty
to wonder at parliamentary fumbling by our state department, and
we can let off a little steam by some worldly toasts at diplomatic
conferences concerned, or intended to be concerned with, human rights.
But no action by the government is merited that takes us beyond
our periodic and melancholy reminders that, in our world, different
priorities assert themselves; and sometimes, King Spite prevails
over human rights.
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