Hi. I try to use weekend mailings for topics of an enduring life and impact. This is definitely one of those. -Ed
Progreso Weekly - Sep 28, 2006 http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Eduardo_Dimas&otherweek=1159419600 Farewell to Kofi Annan The UN: Between reform and continuity By Eduardo Dimas A long time ago, a well-known diplomat with a long trajectory in international relations, by now dead, said to me -- perhaps in a moment of sincerity, something unusual among people in his profession -- that the United Nations Organization was inoperable but it was the best the world community could come up with to maintain a certain balance among the interests of the states. And he added: "In the final analysis, the U.N. was what the major powers wanted it to be." He alluded, of course, to the five permanent members of the Security Council, especially to the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers at the time. Twenty or more years have passed since that confession, but life has proven him right. Perhaps he didn't say -- for a better definition, such as the one made recently by a working diplomat -- that the U.N. is the mirror that sometimes reflects, sometimes in a form distorted by political discourse, the relations between the states, the interests of some, big and small. It is a place where the contradictions emerging from those interests are either resolved or worsened, according to the prevailing correlation of strengths and, above all, to the desires of the permanent members of the Security Council who regularly negotiate in private their differences, agree or not and almost always avoid confrontations that might cause them mutual difficulties. Since its creation in 1945, the U.N. has maintained the same structures, plus a few additions, and the same Charter that regulates its operations and the relationships between states. The world has changed substantially in these 61 years, for good and evil, but the U.N. hasn't. What worked and was positive at one time, no longer does or is. And, as in everything related to the development of humanity, there are forces that want to keep it the way it is because it's convenient to their interests; other forces, numerous but weak, aspire to a greater democracy in its decisions. There are also those who would like to see it disappear. You don't have to be very shrewd to figure out who those people are: they're the ones who want to turn the world into a private landholding to further their interests. People have been talking about reforming the U.N. for more than 10 years, ever since its 50th birthday. In 1945, only 52 states signed its Constitution, because the rest were colonies or had been on the side of the World War II losers. That was the case of Germany, Japan and Italy. The process of decolonization, still unfinished, and the dismembering of some unions, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, boosted the number of members to 192. However, the foremost world organization continues to maintain the same structure, the same levels of decision that make it particularly antidemocratic in the present state of affairs. It is paradoxical, and absolutely unfair, that the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, where all 192 members have a voice and a vote, are not mandatory, whereas the resolutions passed in the Security Council, formed by 15 member nations and particularly by the five with a right to veto, are of mandatory observance for all states. If only one of the permanent members vetoes a resolution, no matter how important it may be for humanity as a whole, the resolution cannot be adopted. Different criteria exist to reform the U.N. Some governments, or groups of governments, have posited that the reform needs to turn the General Assembly, the most democratic element of the organization, into the only body that can adopt mandatory decisions either by a simple majority or by two thirds of the votes. Others, knowing that the abovementioned proposal would be rejected by the great powers, suggest that the number of permanent members with a right to veto be raised to nine or 11. Some favor raising the number of permanent members without a right to veto. Other governments -- and their numbers are rising -- say that if you want to democratize the U.N. you must eliminate the right to veto that permits only five nations (the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia, all nuclear powers) to have a greater power of decision over world events than the other 187 countries. However, because "whoever writes the laws writes the loopholes," the U.N. Charter itself has a clause that says that any change in the structure of that entity or in its decision-making system has to be approved -- guess what -- by the five permanent members of the Security Council. Catch 22, wouldn't you say? So, I "venture" to predict that the reforms sought by the majority of the U.N. members will wait until hell freezes over, unless the correlation of world forces changes drastically -- and that's not visible in the foreseeable future. It is evident that the pressures to reform the U.N. will continue on the part of the nations in the so-called Third World and several developed countries (some of them not so developed) that consider themselves entitled to become permanent members of the Security Council. Brazil, South Africa, Japan and Germany have created a mutual-assistance bloc to achieve that objective. Have they the right to do so? Unquestionably. Japan and Germany are the second- and third-largest world economies, whereas Brazil and South Africa are the most developed countries in South America and Africa. India, with more than 1 billion inhabitants and the possessor of nuclear arms, has an equal right. Italy hopes that the Security Council seats reserved for Europe will rotate and that France and the United Kingdom resign their permanent membership. That's difficult to even contemplate. As you see, the outlook is quite complex. Meanwhile, new ideas emerge to change the voting system and reform the U.N. The White House, through its spokesmen, has suggested that the voting system be proportional to the amount of money each country contributes to the U.N.'s upkeep, in the manner of the International Monetary Fund. The U.S. pays for almost 25 percent of the U.N. budget, so the U.S. would be the country with the largest number of votes. In the same manner, the Americans want to apply corporate formulas to the U.N.'s operation to make that body more effective. That proposal has been rejected by a huge majority of the countries, among them several permanent members of the Security Council. Some days ago, John Bolton, Washington's handpicked ambassador to the United Nations, said that if the U.N. is not reformed, the U.S. will take whatever steps are convenient to its interests. One of them would be to reduce its funding quota, which is calculated on the basis of its Gross Domestic Product. Unless other countries can take up the slack, the American cutback could bankrupt the United Nations, already in a financial crisis. The worst aspect is not the United Nations' economic situation but its loss of credibility, to the degree that the more powerful nations, led by the U.S., have imposed their agendas and double standards at the time they settle international conflicts. This is not at all new, but it becomes more visible now that only one superpower is trying to impose its interests. A typical example of that double standard is the case of Iran, whose nuclear development has been artificially converted by the U.S. into an international problem so it can apply sanctions to the Persian nation, among them the military option. In turn, Indian, Pakistan and Israel possess nuclear weapons but have not been the targets of sanctions from the Security Council or the U.S. And none of the other permanent members have requested sanctions. In his farewell speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary General Kofi Annan said, referring to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that, as long as the Security Council is incapable of ending that conflict, after almost 40 years of Israeli occupation, "respect for the U.N. will continue to decline." Later, he said: "We should all play our roles in a true, multilateral world order, within a renewed and dynamic United Nations." Under the current circumstances, that will be hard to achieve. The Secretary General himself is not immune to the discredit suffered by the world organization. Annan's words reminded me of the statement made by Richard Perle, former Pentagon aide and one of the key creators of the Project for the New American Century, in an article published shortly after the invasion of Iraq: "Thank God, the U.N. is dead." And they reminded me of another statement, by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, to the effect that if the 10 top floors of the U.N. building were lopped off, absolutely nothing would happen. Is the objective of the current White House administration to put an end to the United Nations? The appointment of Bolton, a bitter enemy of the U.N., without the approval of the U.S. Senate, has led many to believe that such was the true intent of the W. Bush administration -- unless the United Nations becomes an appendix of Washington's foreign policy. As I finish this article, I learn of the detention at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York of Ricardo Maduro, Foreign Minister of Venezuela, in an act that might be casual but that has all the characteristics of being a clumsy and stupid provocation. According to international law, a diplomatic functionary is entitled to immunity. Added to this is the revelation by President Hugo Chávez to the General Assembly that his security personnel and personal physician were denied entry to the United States. And that wasn't the only instance. These acts are totally contrary to the obligations of the U.S. government as host to the United Nations. Is the current administration creating the conditions to remove the U.N. from U.S. soil because Washington is unable to achieve its designs? Given the characteristics of the W. Bush administration, it all seems possible to me. In the meantime, the efforts by Third World countries to reform and democratize the U.N. continue. That was one of the unanimous accords reached at the 14th Summit of the Nonaligned Movement -- also at the 12th and 13th summits. We should ask ourselves what will happen at the U.N. if its converted (despite protests) into a kind of conduit for the interests of the most powerful nations, yet it remains the only organization where imperial pressures and blackmails can be denounced. Without the U.N., humanity would return to the era of gunboat diplomacy that characterized the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century and led to World War II. Some important figures in the United States' far right, like Newt Gingrich and James Wooley, say that World War III has already begun. If that is so, the United Nations are an impediment. Therefore, we should make every effort to conserve, transform and strengthen it, lest we return to the era of colonialism under new disguises. As usual, I invite you to meditate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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