6-24-05, 9:34am
The recent attacks on the United Nations have nothing to do with the so-called 'scandals' involving the oil for food program. Rather, they are part of a well-orchestrated campaign by elements of the Bush administration and their far-right allies in the U.S. press, aimed at punishing the UN for its refusal to support Bush's war in Iraq, and at undermining the overall power and influence of the UN and international law. Certainly U.S. domination of the UN is an old story, extending back as far as the very creation of the global organization in 1945, when U.S. agents wiretapped the train cars and hotel rooms of 50 nations' diplomats heading to San Francisco to create the United Nations.
But in response to the UN's eight months of defiance in 2002-2003, when the UN joined the global mobilization against Bush's war in Iraq, Washington has launched one of its most intense attacks on the legitimacy and credibility of the UN. The U.S. goal is to make sure that the United Nations never again stands with the peoples and governments around the world who mobilize to 'prevent the scourge of war.' And in undermining the UN, the Bush administration seeks to legitimize its replacement of international law and multilateral decision-making with unchallenged U.S. unilateralism and military prowess.
One part of the administration's campaign has focused on escalating attacks on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, weakening the SG's ability to manage the UN, and crucially, muzzling his voice. Certainly, like any big bureaucracy, the UN faces problems of individual staff members' corruption and incompetence. But that is not why the UN is under attack in Washington. The attacks are designed to insure that never again would Annan state (however reluctantly) that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was 'illegal.' Never again would the UN itself dare to stand up to Washington, however illegal the U.S. action. President Bush is determined to make real his 2002 claim that the UN is 'irrelevant.
The first sign of the UN's response to U.S. pressure was the shake-up within Annan's own cabinet, particularly the appointment of UN Development Programme chief Mark Malloch Brown as Annan's chief of staff. Long viewed as Washington's man at UNDP since moving there from his earlier post heading public relations at the World Bank, Malloch Brown's appointment was understood to be aimed at pacifying the U.S. and shifting the UN away from any defiance of U.S. militarism and hegemony. According to Malloch Brown himself, 'getting the [U.S.-UN] relationship repaired is key.' Following the ouster of his predecessor, Iqbal Riza, who had urged a more independent UN role, Malloch Brown quickly took charge of Annan's response to the oil for food and other attacks. Washington's anti-UN campaign also resulted in the resignations of Annan's close adviser Elizabeth Lindenmayer and longtime spokesman Fred Eckhard.
As part of a parallel U.S. effort to deny the UN any serious role in Middle East diplomacy, U.S. pressure also led to a longtime Annan adviser, Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Kiernan Prendergast, being denied appointment as special envoy to the region. And the secretary general's office refused to renew the contract of the very effective Peter Hansen as director of UNRWA, the UN's Palestinian refugee assistance agency, because of U.S. as well as Israeli pressure. The Bush administration is also working hard to prevent the reappointment of the internationally supported Mohammed el-Baradei as head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Washington never forgave el-Baradei for telling the truth regarding Iraq's non-existent nuclear weapons program.
Among new UN appointments, the selection of former Bush administration Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman to head the UN's children's fund, UNICEF, stands out. The head of UNICEF has traditionally been an American, something accepted by the world community on the theory that it would guarantee greater support for the organization - but never an American like this. Veneman, who has no background in children's rights, health or education, came to the Bush cabinet after years as a lobbyist for major corporations, particularly in promoting genetically modified food. She likely sees her role as opening up UN aid procurement business to U.S. agri-business and particularly GM food, as well as imposing the Bush administration's right-wing social agenda on the premiere UN children's program.
Perhaps the most dramatic new appointments have been those made directly by the Bush administration: Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, and John Bolton (whose nomination has been delayed by Democratic Party opposition) as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Only three months after the UN issued a rare public criticism of the World Bank's failure to give insure greater representation for poor countries within the institution, the world community stood silent, accepting Washington's unilateral choice of U.S. Undersecretary of Defense and chief architect of Bush's Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz to head the Bank. Beyond his neo-conservative, pro-corporate outlook and the fact that he has virtually no experience with development, Wolfowitz represents a particularly virulent invade-first-ask-questions-later approach to politics. He was a primary author of the Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy, which advocated war with Iraq and called for U.S. economic and military supremacy around the world and pre-emptive attacks on any country that defies U.S. policies.
John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the UN is a powerful assertion of the Bush administration's commitment to unilateralism and its disdain for international law and diplomacy. Those claiming that Bolton does not represent the White House have it wrong: his views are indeed the administration's views taken to their logical conclusion. Bolton has appalling views of the UN - in a debate with me in 1994 he said, 'there is no United Nations.' He is famously willing to challenge actual intelligence findings in favor of ideologically-driven assertions - such as his persistent claims that Cuba had biological weapons when all the U.S. intelligence agencies said there was no such evidence. But for a U.S. administration eager to let the world know that unilateralism and U.S. military power, not multilateralism and diplomacy, are the linchpins of U.S. policy, John Bolton makes perfect sense at the UN.
Bolton and Wolfowitz have many things in common: primarily their extremism and commitment to military solutions to solve the world's problems. Both have shown contempt for international law and international institutions. Their appointments have shocked people and governments around the world. But there are significant differences as well.
First, no one doubts the right of the U.S. government to appoint whomever it likes to represent the U.S. in the United Nations or anywhere else. The same cannot be said regarding choosing the president of the World Bank. That position is supposed to be filled by an international search to find the most qualified candidate - not by a secretive process with only one candidate allowed. And while all Bank decisions (like those of the IMF) are ultimately determined by financial power within the institution rather than by anything remotely resembling multilateral democracy, the secret U.S. selection of the chief of the bank represents an astonishing assertion of Washington's unilateral power. It is breathtakingly hypocritical for the U.S. to impose its chosen candidate on the World Bank in this way, particularly since the U.S. has criticized precisely this kind of secretive, closed-door decision-making in developing countries all over the world. There is unease in the global South especially because of what appears to be European acquiescence to the U.S. selection of Wolfowitz, in return for Washington accepting Europe's candidate, the French former EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, to head the World Trade Organization.
Further, the president of the World Bank has significant actual power to help or to undermine development in impoverished countries across the globe. While the Bank remains a key instrument of U.S.-led corporate globalization, how much damage it does or whether its damage can be mitigated, can be significantly shaped by policies established by the Bank's president. Urgent necessities including a solution to the debt crisis, a response to HIV/AIDS, access to clean water, affordable education and healthcare, livable wages and a clean environment all may be achieved or ignored depending on decisions of the Bank.
The U.S. ambassador to the UN, on the other hand, is a spokesperson for a set of policies created by the president and the administration as a whole. Bolton's confirmation is being opposed by a wide range of policymakers and other Americans eager to avoid sending to the UN a representative known for his efforts to dismiss intelligence analysts with whom he disagreed, who publicly asserts false claims regarding other countries' alleged weapons, and who believes international law and treaties are not binding on the U.S. And certainly his appointment would send a stark message of contempt and arrogance to the UN and to the international community as a whole. 'U.S. Ambassador John Bolton' would arrive at the U.S. Mission to the UN across the street from UN headquarters flush with a mandate from the White House to do whatever he could to destroy the organization.
But the United Nations is made up of 190 other member states. And it is certainly possible that Ambassador Bolton would find it much more difficult to win support for his president's anti-UN positions than would another, perhaps more diplomatic, diplomat. With Ambassador Bolton in New York, it might even be easier for European and other governments to return to stand firm against U.S. unilateralism - and to help the United Nations join the people of the world in doing what its Charter requires: saying no to war. Institute for Policy Studies
[Originally published in Dagens Nyheter magazine in Sweden, June 2005]
