March
25, 2003, 8:25 a.m.
U.N.done
It’s time
to reform international institutions and alliances.
ive things that grownups should no longer believe in: Santa Claus, the
Tooth Fairy, Tinker Bell, the United Nations, and the "international
community."
Let's dispense
with the first three and begin with the U.N. It may not be unfair to say
that belief in the U.N. was the first casualty of the 2003 edition of the
Gulf War.
The U.N. was born just after World War II. Its prewar predecessor, the League
of Nations, died after it failed to stand up to German Nazism, Italian Fascism,
and Japanese Militarism. The U.N. was supposed to do better.
It didn't happen. The U.N. never lived up to the hope and expectations of
its more idealistic founders. According to the U.N. Charter, among its central
purposes was to "maintain international peace and security, and to
that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal
of threats to the peace."
But when Mao's Cultural Revolution killed millions, the U.N. did nothing.
When the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering the population of Cambodia, the U.N.
was silent. When genocide was carried out in Rwanda, the U.N. sat on its
hands. When mass murder was waged against the people of Bosnia and Kosovo,
the U.N. made the situation worse. (And, of course, when President Clinton
finally intervened militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was without U.N.
authorization).
The U.N. turned a blind eye when Afghanistan was hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists.
It snoozed while Somalia collapsed into anarchy. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya
currently heads its human-rights commission — and if Kofi Annan or
any other U.N. official thinks that an outrage, he's kept his opinion to
himself.
Have there been any exceptions, any successes? Well, in 1967, when Egypt,
Syria, Jordan, and other Arab countries were mobilizing for a war to wipe
Israel off the face of the Earth, the U.N. did do something: It removed
its "peacekeepers" so they would not get in the way. (It was as
a result of winning that war, you'll recall, that Israel came into possession
of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories over which fighting
continues till this day — with no constructive role ever played by
the U.N.)
The U.N. never became a maker of international law or a source of moral
authority — though through a clever combination of wishful thinking
and public relations many people were misled to believe otherwise.
Instead, the U.N. has been a cozy retreat for transnational bureaucrats.
Leave aside such lofty goals as peace-making, peace-keeping, and the spread
of human rights. The U.N. also has been a failure at contributing to economic
development. Name one country — just one — more prosperous now
than a generation ago due to U.N. economic assistance.
Nor has the U.N. even been an efficient provider of relief (which is what
you administer when development fails and famine strikes). As a New York
Times correspondent in Africa, I saw first-hand how much superior were
the relief efforts of such faith-based organizations as World Vision and
Catholic Relief Services.
As for the "International Community," a term often bandied about
in recent days, here's a bulletin: It doesn't exist. The word "community"
implies common traditions and values. What traditions and values unite the
people of the United States with the dictators of North Korea and Syria,
or with the mullahs of Iran?
But, yes, with Britain and Australia, we do share traditions and values.
The newly freed nations of East Europe understand in their bones why Americans
say no to appeasing tyrants. Every day of its life, Israel fights blind
hatred and terrorism of precisely the sort now being directed at the U.S.
And in the not-too-distant future, we may find that a liberated Iraq values
freedom as highly as Americans do.
The kickoff of the 21st century is very different from the era that began
in 1945. It is not an exaggeration to say that our way of life and perhaps
our very existence are now threatened by a witch's brew of rogue dictators,
terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
To cope with this danger, we'll need to take a hard look at old institutions
and old alliances. We'll need to make tough calls about which to preserve,
which to reform and which to simply toss away.
— NRO Contributor Clifford D. May, a former
New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank on terrorism formed immediately
after 9/11.
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ive things that grownups should no longer believe in: Santa Claus, the
Tooth Fairy, Tinker Bell, the United Nations, and the "international
community."
