High Stakes at the U.N.
By Fred Hiatt
Post
Monday, May 30, 2005; A21
Democrats are devoting their energies to delaying the confirmation of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. Republicans are delving into U.N. scandals of the 1990s.
Meanwhile, the single most fateful decision for the United Nations' usefulness over the coming half-decade is being shaped elsewhere. Neither Washington's politicians nor the State Department nor the small-d democrats who claim a desire to bend international institutions closer toward principle are paying much attention.
What's at stake is who will replace Secretary General Kofi Annan when his second term expires on Dec. 31, 2006. Maybe that seems a long way away, but in Asia -- which believes its turn has come to pick a U.N. leader -- the politicking has been underway for more than a year.
Or maybe it seems unimportant, since U.N. observers are forever observing that the secretary general is just a hired hand, with no more authority than the member states, particularly the five states with veto power on the Security Council, choose to give him. But a U.N. leader who cares about human rights (like Annan) can operate very differently, all the limitations notwithstanding, than would someone who views human rights concerns as an annoyance or an impediment.
Which brings us back to the politicking now raging, above and below the surface, in Asia. So far the most active player in the post-Annan sweepstakes is Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is promoting his deputy prime minister for the post.
Thaksin is a prime example of a breed of modern leaders who confound democracy advocates: democratically elected, genuinely popular, but not all that committed to democracy. His cousins include Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Vladimir Putin of Russia -- leaders who achieve power through the ballot box and then erode the institutions (free press, independent judiciary) on which democracies depend.
These leaders tend to reveal themselves and their values in the allies they embrace: for Chavez, Fidel Castro; for Putin, the dictators of Belarus and Central Asia; for Thaksin, the corrupt strongmen of neighboring Burma. After China, in fact, no one provides more comfort to Burma's regime than Thaksin; meanwhile, he has inflamed the Muslim world with a counterproductively brutal suppression of Muslim discontent in the south of his own country.
This doesn't prove that Thaksin's candidate for secretary general, deputy premier Surakiart Sathirathai, is unqualified. But when the world's strongmen are so open in their affinities (witness Beijing's welcome to Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov just days after his version of a Tiananmen massacre), do the world's true democracies not want at least to play in this game?
A few years ago, those democracies established a community intended to promote their common interests and then a Democracy Caucus at the United Nations. They've held meetings, to cheer each other on and develop common standards, which is fine. But why not unite on a practical objective: finding a secretary general who really believes in political freedom and human rights? And why not, in the process, illustrate the virtues of transparency that the democracies claim to champion, in place of the behind-closed-door regionalism and favor-swapping that traditionally mark U.N. elections?
It might then be decided that Annan's replacement need not be Asian. The last Asian secretary general was Burma's U Thant, from 1961 to 1971. Other secretaries general have hailed from (in chronological order) Norway, Sweden, Austria, Peru, Egypt and, now, Ghana. You could make the case that the formerly communist bloc of Central and Eastern Europe has never had a chance, and there are many fine democrats in Poland and its neighbors.
But if Asia's claim is accepted, surely there are admirable candidates in such democracies as Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, South Korea and Sri Lanka. And even if Thailand's claim is accepted, the strongman's choice may not be the best; there are democracy-minded Thais, too, such as former foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan. As Adrian Karatnycky of Freedom House notes, an ideal Asian candidate might embody the entrepreneurship of the continent's vibrant economies with the political values of its young democracies -- both of which the United Nations needs.
It's easy to complain about the United Nations and its absurdities, such as Sudan joining the human rights commission. But if democrats want to do more than complain, they should get to the hard political work of finding candidates and building coalitions.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company