Posted on 02/07/2003 11:25:11 PM PST by Russell Scott
When he visited Fidel Castro in Cuba last year, Jimmy Carter was quick to mention the happy and jubilant Cuban children he saw dancing in the streets. Were he to visit Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang tomorrow, it is likely he would return with a similar story of smiling North Korean marchers waving brightly colored flags.
Certainly, it is important to remember the humanity involved when considering issues of foreign policy, but when the Nobel Committee awarded Carter a Peace Prize after his daft blindness in the face of a laughable Potemkin Village in Havana, it raised some very ominous questions about how our political and social elites define "diplomacy."
The fact that the nuclear non-proliferation agreement with North Korea that Carter had been such an integral proponent of turned out to be a complete sham didn't even seem to occur to the Nobel Committee, nor to Carter himself. More often than not, international diplomacy is defined by intentions and not results; the hallmark of a bureaucratic system where accountability is virtually non-existent.
Recent examples of such unaccountability are astonishing. Take for example the recent election of Libya to chair the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
This occurred despite confirmed reports of torture, detention, and murder by the Gaddafi government, and a confirmed role in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people, a number of them my classmates at Syracuse University.
If that were not enough, we then learn that Iraq is next in line to take over as chair of the United Nations Conference on Nuclear Disarmament in May.
When asked about this ludicrous turn of events, Fred Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the leadership post was "alphabetical" and "has no political significance."
Either Mr. Eckhard is the worst spokesman to have ever appeared at the United Nations since Nikita Kruschev or he actually believes what he is saying.
Either way, this sort of duplicitous diplomatic charade has worn as thin as gauze, and is a perfect example of how the United Nations is nothing more than an elitist fallacy maintained at the expense of those least likely to ever be allowed within its halls.
The theory of "collective security" that the United Nations is founded on has already been debunked through the failure of its predecessor, the League of Nations. Although platitudes to the contrary abound, the fact is that few nations other than the United States are willing to risk war on behalf of their fellow nations unless it serves their own interests.
Because most nations don't care to even spend the money required to build their own military, they rely instead on the blanket of protection provided by the United States and our worldwide alliances.
But because of the pretense that exists within the United Nations that all nations are "equal" these nations that rely so heavily on us are actually allowed to thumb their nose at our foreign policy decisions and dictate to us what we can and cannot do.
Meanwhile, we are required to develop a foreign policy that exposes potential threats throughout the world, while the same countries we endeavor to protect are allowed to pursue a self-serving foreign policy at our expense.
For example, while France would literally rely on our assistance with a suddenly hostile Russia, they offer no such assistance to us with Iran, Iraq, or North Korea.
To add insult to injury, U.N. diplomats have even convinced some of our own citizenry that the U.S. goal in Iraq is really obtaining oil while their goal of avoiding conflict in Iraq is to actually to preserve oil contracts for themselves. American self-interest is deemed "unilateralist," while any another nation's self-interest is deemed "diplomacy."
This charade of pretending that the vote of Laos or Norway should be equal in weight to that of the United States, or should determine our foreign policy decisions in the face of war, is an abomination. How easy it is for elitist foreign diplomats to argue when, where, and how our men and women will be put in harm's way, and how our tax dollars will be spent.
Elite Americans like Jimmy Carter are hailed by the international community not because their policy achievements prove lasting or realistic, but because they openly display contempt for American self-interest, and speak and act as if the interest of a self-serving foreign nation is somehow more "moral."
The fact that Iraq or Libya are deemed entitled by their fellow U.N. members to lead a commission on anything is proof that these diplomats either find the realities of the world cumbersome, or simply believe that they can redefine world events through the power of their own egotism.
That these diplomats function under either delusion indicates how little credence their opinions should be given on any matter whatsoever, least of all those that directly affect the future of the United States.
Copyright 2003, Sterling Rome
One of the best commentaries ever written about the UN.
RIP, United Nations.
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