[Mb-civic] An Annoying, Necessary Friend

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-schlesinger31jan31.story
COMMENTARY
An Annoying, Necessary Friend
In most cases, the United Nations has helped to further U.S. objectives.
By Stephen Schlesinger
Stephen Schlesinger is director of the World Policy Institute at the New
School University and author of "Act of Creation: The Founding of the United
Nations" (Westview Press, 2003).

January 31, 2005

At the conclusion of the 1945 San Francisco Conference that established the
United Nations, President Harry Truman delivered a cautionary exhortation to
his fellow Americans "to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that
we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."

"This is the price which each nation will have to pay for world peace," he
said. "Unless we pay that price, no organization for world peace can
accomplish its purpose. And what a reasonable price that is."

Truman understood from the start what the Bush administration today seems
unwilling to concede: that the benefits of international cooperation are
well worth the cost. Indeed, by joining the U.N. ‹ the first worldwide
security organization in which the United States had ever enlisted ‹ Truman
helped the U.S. overcome a history of stubborn insularity. George Washington
once warned his fledgling nation to "steer clear of permanent alliances."
For most of the 19th century, the United States had conducted its foreign
policy on a unilateral basis. In the first part of the 20th century, the
country briefly dallied with the League of Nations, but then eschewed
participating in it.

Now, in the final days of World War II, the U.S. was suddenly seated in the
U.N., violating its own most hoary and cherished precepts of independence.

The Senate vote in July 1945 was overwhelmingly in favor of U.N.
ratification ‹ 89 to 2. Two world wars within three decades in which more
than 100 million people lost their lives had convinced political leaders
from both parties that we could neither afford another planetwide
conflagration nor prevent a new one alone.

Of course, no one really believed that the U.S. would have to give up all
the prerogatives of its position. With the U.S. the richest, most powerful
nation on Earth and the driving force behind the creation of the U.N., most
American officials believed we would have little difficulty setting the
general direction for the organization. To the extent we were not able to
get our own way within the organization, we would have our Security Council
veto power to fall back on.

By and large, this turned out to be right. We have gotten our wishes in the
U.N. for most of its almost 60 years of existence. For example, the U.N.
backed our dispatch of forces to Korea in 1950 to stop a communist attack,
into Kuwait in 1991 to turn back Saddam Hussein, into Haiti in 1994 to
reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide and into Afghanistan in 2001 to toss out
the Taliban. It helped us settle the Suez crisis of 1956 and the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962. It has even periodically reformed itself at our
urging. When the U.S. has made up its mind at the U.N., it usually has
called the tune.

But, for many Americans, the fear of having U.S. sovereignty compromised by
the organization has always lurked in the background. In the 1950s, for
example, a U.S. senator convened hearings and a federal grand jury sought
testimony that questioned the loyalty of U.S. citizens who worked for the
body. In later years, as resolutions cropped up in the General Assembly
criticizing Washington's embargo on Cuba, and equating Zionism with racism,
Congress threatened to withhold our dues. The atmosphere further soured as
many newly established Third World nations denounced Western values. Most
recently, of course, the Security Council withheld U.N. backing for the
invasion of Iraq.

Nevertheless, despite these ongoing disputes, the United States has never
been willing to risk a real rift with the U.N. Every administration in
Washington gradually realizes that, without it, the U.S. could well drift
alone in a Hobbesian universe of temporary alliances that could vanish at
any time.

For that reason, even President Bush ‹ whose disagreements with the U.N. are
legion, and who likes to say that if the U.N. doesn't show more "backbone"
it could go the way of the League of Nations ‹ this year returned to the
U.N. to ask its support for reconstruction and elections in Iraq. He
understood that the endorsement of the Security Council automatically gives
global legitimacy to our occupation.

Indeed, most presidents sooner or later begin to understand that the U.N.,
for all its flaws, advances rather than diminishes U.S. national security
objectives. The U.N. serves as a round-the-clock diplomatic forum to stave
off conflicts the U.S. desires to avoid. It handles transnational issues
that Washington would prefer to duck, like environmental degradation, sexual
trafficking, drug smuggling, nuclear proliferation and AIDS. Its influence
around the world is enormous.

It is true that the U.S. cannot always get its own way at the U.N. But as
the only superpower on the planet, as the organization's biggest donor, as
the sole nation that can project power worldwide, we retain enormous
influence there. So although concerns over our sovereignty may never fully
abate, the record proves we have already gotten far more out of the U.N.
than we have lost.





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