The United Nations: Realities and Responses

Clifford D. May
January 23, 2005 
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=257027

I want to offer a broad view of the United Nations, what it's become, what we can -- and cannot-- expect from it. Finally, I will offer a modest proposal. 
As I'm sure you all are aware, the United Nations was born just after World War II. Its pre-war predecessor, the League of Nations, died after it failed to stand up to the threats posed by German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese Militarism. The UN was supposed to do better. 
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened. The UN never lived up to the hope and expectations of its more idealistic founders. According to the UN 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. 
According to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” and “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The UN was supposed to take sides with victims against aggressors. It has rarely done so. 
Consider China: When Mao's Cultural Revolution killed millions, the UN did nothing. After Beijing used ruthless violence for political objectives in Tiananmen Square the UN was silent again.   
This pattern was repeated over the years and around the world. When the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering the population of Cambodia, the UN failed to act. When genocide against the Tutsis was carried out in Rwanda, the UN sat on its hands. Actually, it was worse than that: A small UN force that was in the country was pulled back -- lest anyone wearing a blue helmet be killed along with the intended victims. 
When mass murder was waged against the people of Bosnia and Kosovo, the UN made the situation worse. Srebrenica was the site of the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II.  In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army invaded a UN safe area – and with no opposition from UN peacekeepers -- separated Muslim families and murdered over 7,000 men and boys.  
Yet when President Clinton intervened militarily Bosnia and Kosovo, it had to be without UN authorization.
The UN turned a blind eye when Afghanistan was hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists. It allowed Somalia to collapse into anarchy.  
The UN was feckless in its efforts to stop the slaughter of black Christians in southern Sudan, and the slaughter of black Muslims in western Sudan. 
The UN did not respond to Saddam Hussein's genocidal attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980s and his slaughters of the Shia in the early 1990s. 
UN officials ignored and may have helped facilitate the theft of billion of dollars by Saddam from the Iraqi people under the UN's Oil for Food Program – the biggest financial swindle in world history. 
UN peacekeepers working in the Congo sexually abused girls as young as 13. 
In the Indian Ocean areas hit by the tsunami last month, UN officials have rushed to take charge and take credit --- with little evidence of useful expertise or resources. As one American diplomat recently wrote: “To avoid running into the UN, we must go out to where the quake and tsunami actually hit. As we come up on two weeks since the disaster struck, the U.N. is still not to be seen where it counts -- except when holding well-staged press events.” 
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 UN did do something: It removed its peacekeepers so they would not get in the way.  
The UN never became a maker of international law or a source of moral authority --- though through a combination of wishful thinking and clever public relations many people have been misled to believe otherwise.
Instead, the UN 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 UN also has been a failure at contributing to economic development. Name one country -- just one -- more prosperous now than a generation ago due to UN economic expertise and assistance. It certainly was not thanks to UN “development experts” that Taiwan has become an economic powerhouse.
Nor has the UN even been an efficient provider of relief, which is what you must administer when development fails and disasters strike. As a New York Times correspondent in Africa in the 1980s, I saw first-hand how much superior were the relief efforts of such faith-based organizations as World Vision and Catholic Relief Services.
The United Nations, of course, are not really united. There is no “international community.” 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, Australia and Canada, we Americans do share traditions. The newly freed nations of Eastern Europe understand in their bones why Americans refuse to appease tyrants. Israel, Turkey and India are free and democratic, too. 
And Americans share values with the people of Taiwan. More Americans need to understand that the people of Taiwan have created a democratic society, a vibrant society that embraces freedom and human rights and opportunity just as we do. 
The UN is a mixture of democracies and dictatorship. Institutionally, the UN does not prefer the one over the other – though it has long been the dictatorships that have held sway. 
Joshua Muravchik, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who is now completing a study of the UN, recently added that it is not entirely true that the UN, as sometimes argued, “is no more than the sum of its members states.”
He notes that “collective or derivative bodies take on lives of their own.” The Secretary General, for example, commands a budget of $3 billion and a staff of 15,000.
Between attackers and defenders -- the UN is generally neutral. The UN Human Rights Commission is a wonderful organization for human rights violators to join – because by so doing they make themselves virtually immune to sanctions or even serious criticisms. 
As Muravchik has pointed out, “year after year, fully half of the governments that Freedom House cites as ‘the worst of the worst' human-rights violators secure seat on the body overseeing human rights abuses. They include China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, which recently held the chair. … [N]either China nor Saudi Arabia has ever suffered a word of censure.” 
Does any UN official think this is an outrage? If so, he's kept his opinion to himself. 
The challenge posed by terrorism, by radical, fascist Islamist groups that seek the destruction of democratic societies is not something the UN is willing to tackle or, indeed, even assist with. 
On the contrary, a 1970 resolution of the General Assembly essentially says that those who claim to represent “national liberation movements” have a license to commit murder. The resolution essentially validates suicide bombing as an exercise of human rights. 
What does the UN care about? Shashi Tharoor, Secretary Kofi Annan's deputy says that it is “the exercise of American power” that “may well be the central issue in world politics today.” 
Despite all this, there are those who would like to see the UN elevated into some sort of world government. Such ambitions must be discouraged. The UN does not have the moral authority for such a role. Its resume does not qualify it for such a job. 
As for Taiwan's membership in the United Nations, there is no question that all the reasonable arguments are on Taiwan's side. But reasonable arguments, as I hope I've demonstrated, carry little weight at the UN as it is presently constituted. 
The UN's so-called “principle of universality,” provided for in Paragraph 1 of Article 4 of the UN Charter, says that membership in the United Nations is open to “peace-loving states.”  
In reality, of course, many states that obviously do not love peace have been welcomed into the UN. And, since this article applies only to “states,” Beijing can and will argue that Taiwan does not qualify, that Taiwan is not an independent state. Again, logic and morality are on the side of Taiwan – which has not been ruled from Beijing since 1895. 
But, again, logic and morality seldom count for much in the halls of the United Nations. 
Let me add this caution: Any move toward independence carries with it significant risks for the Taiwanese people – you know that much better than I do.  
Within the democratic institutions that the Taiwanese have so courageously built, there will continue to be a meaningful debate regarding those risks, regarding the consequences of insisting on rights to which the Taiwanese are entitled, but which Beijing – obsessed with preserving the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and willing to use the Taiwan issue to stoke mainland nationalism – does not recognize. 
I have confidence in the wisdom of the Taiwanese people, confidence that they will proceed thoughtfully and carefully, understanding the risks, and recognizing that their decisions will have real-word consequences. 
Today, halfway through the first decade of the 21st century, the world looks very different from the way it appeared in 1945. But there are similarities too. 
The democratic societies – indeed the democratic experiment – are threatened by a witch's brew of rogue dictators, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
To cope with these dangers will require fresh and creative thinking, and hard choices. 
I don't believe the UN is going to be abolished. I also don't believe it will be successfully reformed. 
With that in mind, I would argue that it's time to explore alternative institutions and structures, time to explore new models in which democratic societies could work together against common enemies and for common goals. 
And I think it's clear that the Taiwanese people – who have built the first democracy in 4,000 years of Chinese history – should be given the right to choose whether they would want to be a charter member of such an organization. 
That won't happen if, as has been suggested, a caucus of democracies is established within the current structure of the UN. A better idea, I believe, is that proposed by Dore Gold, the Israeli author of “Tower of Babble,” a sharp criticism of the UN. Dr. Gold advocates the creation of a Community of Democracies outside the UN as a sort of substitute or alternative. 
Membership in such a community needn't be limited to entities universally recognized as “states.” It could gather and organize a variety of democratic societies. 
In such a forum, Taiwan's achievements and values would be better appreciated than they ever would be at the UN as it is currently structured. 
In the 20th century, the democratic experiment was endangered by totalitarianism, which took such forms as Nazism, Fascism, Japanese Militarism and Communism. 
Today, in the 21st century, the democratic experiment is again endangered. Those who want to ensure the survival of democracy have a right and an obligation to work together more diligently and more creatively than ever before. 
Thank you.