Why do conservatives dislike the United Nations? As far as I can tell, two reasons. The first is that most evangelicals tend to interpret the book of Revelation to the effect that there will be one world government under the reign of the Antichrist, which makes them paranoid about the UN; second, most nations disagree with the perspective of US conservatives on most issues (i.e. war, Israel, international aid, testing of nuclear weapons,etc) so the UN is quite often the bearer of an agenda the conservatives dislike.
However, as neither of these two is much of an argument against the UN per se, conservatives often tend to get incoherent when discussing the UN. A favorite trick: set a high standard for the U.N. it was never meant to fulfill, and attack it for failing to fulfill it. Watch Joe Scarborough do it:
A million Rwandan citizens were hacked to death in the mid-1990's.This would make sense if the UN, you know, had an army it could send. Indeed, if it were within Kofi Annan's power to instantaneously stop the genocide in Darfur, it would be shocking if he didn't. But the United Nations depends on the member states to volunteer armies, and when none do, it is powerless. During the Rwandan genocide, for example, the UN tried to get troop commitments from the member states to be able to stop the genocide; but none agreed.
But the United Nations did nothing.
A few years later, genocide struck the African continent again in Sudan.
That's right. The same Sudan that is once again in the grip of a brutally efficient killing machine.
The situation got so bad by 1997 that I worked together with human rights groups and former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal to get the word out across America that millions were being persecuted.
Once again, the United Nations did nothing.
Reports out of Sudan eight years ago told of children as young as eight years old being crucified for their parents' beliefs. Other young boys and girls were sold into slavery for as little as $15.
Things became so bleak that the United Nations and the Clinton Administration did, well, nothing.
In fact, when I tried to pass a resolution through Congress calling for sanctions against the murderous regime, Clinton's State Department fought it with all their might...
Fast forward eight years and you find that little has changed.
President Bush has called the crisis in Sudan genocide, but he has done little to stop it.
The United Nations has muttered about how the Sudan situation is unfortunate, but once again Kofi Annan has refused to do anything that will end the suffering on his home continent.
This is not a flaw in the design; it is the design. The UN is not a global police force, and it does not try to be. It is a forum and a structure through which member states can coordinate actions related to peacekeeping, international law, and aid.
This is a blindingly obvious point, and yet somehow it has managed to escape Scarborough.
P.S. Incidentally, the part about Clinton doing nothing is a lie.
posted by alex @ 1:34 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Alex,
I'm not an evangelical, so I can't speak to that part of your claim about dislike for the U.N., but it seems you've set up a few straw men here.
Let me list the reasons I (and some "conservatives") dislike the U.N.:
1) The member states represent many different forms of government, such that autocratic and despotic states (which have little or no accountability to their people) have the same vote as liberal democratic states.
2) One of the world's most populous democracies (Taiwan) is de facto barred from participation in the U.N.
3) The Security Council is a product of Cold War geo-political realities, and the Cold War is over. It needs reform; making Japan or India permanent members of the Security Council might go some way toward that.
4) It's not the U.N.'s lack of support for Israel that's a problem, but it's history of turning a blind eye (at best) to the vicious anti-Semites in its midst (the Durban conference on racism is one example). Anne Bayevsky and others have written incisive articles about this.
5. It presided over one of the most corrupt, bloody boondoggles in history.
The U.N. doesn't have its own army, but that doesn't really rebut criticisms of its structure. The situations in Rwanda and Sudan are precisely the kinds of situation that it was thought an institution like the U.N. would prevent; the U.N. has proved ineffectual in exactly the situations where it was supposed to have its most important effect.
What do you see as the purpose of the U.N.? Do you suggest that there are no legitimate criticisms to be made of the U.N.? Do you advocate any kind of reform for the U.N.?
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Dear Kate Marie,
1. I don't think these are straw men, because there are many people out there who critize the UN in precisely the terms I've described. I am a former evangelical, and if you'd like, I'd be happy to furnish many examples of rhetoric which criticizesthe UN based on the book of revelation (The EU, incidentally, is another hobbyhorse).
2. Are the reasons you listed really good reasons to dislike the UN?
a. I think we can all agree that we need some sort of international institution to coordinate between world governments, promote human rights, provide a forum for the avertion of war, etc.
b. Such an organization will not be able to fulfill its function if it discriminates against autocratic member states - these are the very countries that tend to initiate war most of the time.
c. The UN is far from perfect, but it does the job OK. It has coordinated countless aid missions, supervised many peacekeeping operations and brokered many peace treaties.
d. You expect too much from the UN. It has always been the product of uncomfortable compromises and will always remain as such. This is true for any conceivable international institution.
e. Finally, assuming you are referring to the oil-for-food scandal as "one of the most corrupt,bloody boondoggles," let me counter by saying I consider that program to have been one of the most wildly successful programs in history.
Take a look at the child mortality rates in Iraq before and after oil for food (the 1999 numbers were collected before oil for food was implemented). You will discover a drop of 8% immediately at the implementation of the program. Iraq, at the time, had about 22 million people, which, at its crude birth rate of 35/1000, translates into roughly 800,000 thousand births per year which further translates into about 60,000 lives saved per year.
(I'm using approximate numbers since I do not have exact statistics for Iraqi population and /or birth rate in 2000. Iraq's current population is about 26 million, growing at 2.7% per year - which I can project back and say it was about 22.75 million five years ago).
Anyway, 60,000 lives saved every year - multiply that by the number of years it was an operation, and you get a number thats considerable despite the errors that this back-of-the-envelope calculation inevitably involves. Frankly, it was worth the corruption in my opinion.
3. "The situations in Rwanda and Sudan are precisely the kinds of situation that it was thought an institution like the U.N. would prevent; the U.N. has proved ineffectual in exactly the situations where it was supposed to have its most important effect."
...though by who? The UN was "supposed to have its most important effect" in situations like Rwanda, you write; where do you get this from? Your conception of the mission of the UN in the world is not the one found in the UN charter. The charter never mentions genocide.
I'd say that anyone who thought, in 1994, that the UN would be good at preventing genocides exhibited a very naive view of international politics and world history.
4. "What do you see as the purpose of the U.N.? "
There is no need to have a debate about this sort of thing, as the UN charter specifically tells us:
"The Purposes of the United Nations are:
1. 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, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends. "
That is, not a world police, but a forum for countries to take collective action.
5. I think its pretty clear that the UN has been indispensable. When the US was looking for a caretaker government for Iraq, who did it turn to? The United Nations, of course. Why? Because widespread demonstrations based on al-Sistani's comments had completely undercut previous US plans. Only the United Nations had the legitemacy to make a decision that would be accepted by Iraqis.
This is a perfect example of why it is crucial to have an international institution without national allegiances, however flawed it may be.
6. "Do you suggest that there are no legitimate criticisms to be made of the U.N.?"
Of course not - but none of the criticisms that can be made of the UN justify the kind of anti-UN rhetoric I am hearing from Scarborough and company.
Alex,
"That is, not a world police, but a forum for countries to take collective action."
-- What kind of action are you talking about? Lighting candles for peace? If the U.N. is nothing but a big international social service organization, fine, but then liberals should stop suggesting that any action taken without U.N. approval is illegitimate.
(Your assertion that the involvement of the U.N. confers legitimacy in Iraq might be disputed by the Iraqi people themselves, who don't seem to care much for the United Nations.)
Conservatives certainly recognize the value of multi-national organizations, but they don't overvalue this particular multi-national organization's effectiveness, and they seek reform. What's the big problem there? Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought much the same thing decades ago.
"Your assertion that the involvement of the U.N. confers legitimacy in Iraq might be disputed by the Iraqi people themselves, who don't seem to care much for the United Nations."
Source?
I was referring to a specific incident (summarized in these two news stories from the time), which I will recount to you in detail.
If you recall, Bush's plan was to hand over sovereignty to a caretaker Iraqi government. The idea was to select this government without having elections; either have the CPA appoint its members, or use some sort of caucus-like procedure that involved local leaders. Sistani objected, and the US plan had to be put on hold due to mass protests and demonstrations after Sistani's statements.
As the above-linked Post article summarizes,
"Sistani's insistence on elections has stalled the Bush administration's plan to hold regional caucuses to choose an interim government that would assume sovereignty by June 30. Under the administration's plan, Iraqis would hold elections by March 2005 to select people to write a constitution, but elections for a new government would not occur until December 2005."
But,
"Although Iraq's senior Shiite Muslim cleric has called for an interim government to be selected through elections before sovereignty is transferred, the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, suggested at a news conference that Iraqis would need more than a few months to conduct "reasonably credible elections."
The Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has not issued any pronouncements on the feasibility of elections since meeting with Brahimi on Thursday. People close to Sistani have said he would be willing to drop his demand if the United Nations deems early elections too difficult."
Of course, we know how the story worked out: after the UN envoy sided with Bush, Sistani dropped his objections, on the condition that it would be the UN who would supervise the process. As Bush said during a press conference at the time,
"QUESTION: Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?
BUSH: We’ll find that out soon. That’s what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He’s figuring out the nature of the entity we’ll be handing sovereignty over."
As I said, this is a perfect example of why the UN is indispensable: in situations like this, where the trust between parties is nonexistent, an organization of this sort is needed to act as an honest broker.
"...liberals should stop suggesting that any action taken without U.N. approval is illegitimate. "
Liberals do not suggest it - I think you are thinking of the green party.
Neither John Kerry, nor John Edwards, nor Wesley Clark, nor Howard Dean, nor Joe Lieberman, nor Bob Graham took this position (I've given a link for Dean as a pre-emptive strike of sorts - the positions of the Democratic candidates were, in my opinion, endlessly misrperesented) (though I have no idea what the views of Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun are - and I think it likely the first two would actually agree). The point is, you have to go pretty far left, all the way to the fringes of the Democratic party to find support for this viewpoint. An equivalent would be claiming that the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Pat Buchanan or the nutty ramblings of Alan Keyes represent the Republican party.
The point of Kerry, Dean, and most of the other candidates was:
i. Iraq did not represent an imminent threat to the US
ii. Because of (i), fighting Iraq without the approval and material support of the United Nations was a bad idea for the US.
The argument was not that its illegitemate; it was that the cost-benefit calculus translated fighting alone into a bad decision.
"Conservatives certainly recognize the value of multi-national organizations, but they don't overvalue this particular multi-national organization's effectiveness, and they seek reform. What's the big problem there? Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought much the same thing decades ago."
Well, that is hardly a controversial issue; everyone is in favor of some kind of reform.
But:
i. I think I've made the case that the specific criticisms peddled by Scarborough in the column I cite make little sense.
ii. I think conservatives have a UN fetish - they agressively scavage the news for anything that can be used to criticize the UN. Sometimes they hit the mark - after all, who can deny that the UN has some real problems? Just as often, they are wildly off, making the kinds of criticisms I attack in this post (or worse).
Support: browse through the results of these two searches of the two most popular conservative sites, and you see many examples of the thing I'm referring to.
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