Its those people again! the US and the UN!

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2017, pp. 32-33

United Nations Report

Just Like the President-Elect, Trump Cabinet Appointments Send Mixed Messages

By Ian Williams

Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji, president of the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly, addresses a special meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, held in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Nov. 29, 2016. (U.N. PHOTO/MANUEL ELIAS)

CRYSTAL BALLS DO NOT work well in the United Nations at the best of times. If you want a recipe for chaotic outcomes, then take 193 direct players, 5 of whom have an ace up their sleeve in the form of a veto, dictating to an organization with dozens of relatively autonomous agencies whose heads often apportion their allegiances to the nations who proposed them and those who finance them. And into this, Donald Trump has thrown the Tea Party-backed governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, born Sikh, converted to Methodism, one of whose few foreign policy stands mandates state opposition to BDS efforts.

On the bright side, the new U.N. representative did have the courage to oppose Trump earlier, and to oppose deportation of Muslims, and we can assume that her subcontinental origins will to some extent inoculate her against xenophobia, and perhaps even American exceptionalism. However, quite how this works for future American foreign policy in general, let alone toward the United Nations, is even more of a mystery than before.

The previous pattern was that Democratic presidents included the U.N. ambassador in their cabinet, while Republicans do not. But Donald Trump has promoted Haley to the cabinet. Was this because he was not aware of previous practice, or because he wanted a minority woman in his cabinet? Or was it a bribe to get her to give up her independent position in South Carolina?

Previous U.N. ambassadors have always had to cope with the ghost of Andrew Young, the U.N. envoy fired for meeting informally with the Palestinian representative at the U.N., so even those who privately disagreed with the Lobby’s manipulation of U.S. Middle East policy have gone along with the flow and dutifully—and shamefully—leveled the veto on the mildest criticism of Israel.

It would be difficult to piece together a coherent foreign policy from Trump’s erratic statements on the campaign trail and afterward. From one point of view, his phone conversation with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen was a welcome sign of refusal to be bullied by Beijing—but if it was not part of a considered policy, it was an indication that we have a president-elect who could puckishly start World War III with an ill-considered gesture. And to add to the confusion, it is not clear against whom he would start it!

So, on the one hand, he opined that the Israelis should pay for their U.S. weapons supplies—but on the other, he made the standard pledge of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But had anyone explained the intricacies of international law to him? Or, since almost every other candidate made the same pledge, did he, too, have his fingers crossed behind his back when he said it?

Trump’s nominee as defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, has wisely suggested that Israeli policies in the occupied territories are a clear and present danger to U.S. forces in the region—but then wants to step up pressure on Iran, just as Netanyahu and the Lobby ordered.

We are not even sure what Trump’s views on the United Nations are. From some quarters, hostility to the organization is engendered by the member states’ insistence that Israel does not have an automatic pass for breaches of U.N. decisions. Certainly the Democratic Party has been torn for years between supporting the great creation of Roosevelt and Truman and deploring its support for Palestinian rights. Since the Republican/Likud Axis has become so prominent, the GOP has merged its pro-Israel stance with its nativist dislike of foreigners—a blend manifest in Rudy Giuliani, the curmudgeonly ex-mayor of New York who in 1995 ordered PLO leader Yasser Arafat out of a U.N. anniversary banquet.

To some extent Trump has prejudices rather than policies—but he is enough of a businessman to realize that it is often profitable to overlook reflexive aversions. Trump the realtor obviously appreciates the U.N.’s effect on property values in New York City, building one of his most outstandingly tasteless edifices just across the road from U.N. headquarters. Whatever prejudices he and his father had against African-American tenants is clearly not carried over to the many African and Arab diplomats who rent and buy his properties.

So will the policy be neglect, or will he see what other administrations, not least Bill Clinton’s, have: that the U.N. saves a lot of effort compared with being the world’s self-appointed cop? It is really difficult to say, but then that is true of previous regimes. Clinton posed as a liberal internationalist and then issued his Policy Directive 25 that vetoed any expenditure on peacekeeping that did not directly serve self-defined U.S. interests. The victims of Rwanda and Srebrenica were not, we discovered, essential U.S. interests.

In contrast, President Barack Obama amended that directive last year, in a reasoned assessment that asserted, “Multilateral peace operations, particularly United Nations (U.N.) peace operations, will, therefore, continue to be among the primary international tools that we use to address conflict-related crises.”

The crucial question is whether a Trump administration will have anything like a coherent foreign policy—and to what extent it sees the United Nations as helping in fulfilling that.

Using the old Confucian cliché of crisis as opportunity, new U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has a better chance of independence than most—even if the major powers will nominate most of his senior officials. As previously noted (see Nov./Dec. 2016 Washington Report, p. 30), elected unanimously as a former prime minister of an important, if small, power; as head of one of the U.N.’s most called-upon agencies; and even as former president of the Socialist International, he has far more experience and better international connections than Trump—or any of his cabinet members.

Interestingly, Guterres had the support of China for his candidacy, and China has upped its dues payments, so that it is now the next biggest financier, after the U.S., for U.N. operations—and provides more peacekeepers than any other great power. The U.S. might still be the “indispensable power” Madeleine Albright claimed it to be, but it has never been more dispensable than now, as its primacy is increasingly challenged.

ANNEXING U.N. TERRITORY?

Meanwhile, back at the U.N., Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon has shown his heritage in the settlement movement since he became chairman of the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth Committee, which deals with legal affairs. He is clearly enjoying himself and has expanded the toehold to annex more and more organizational territory. His latest escapade was to convene a meeting of self-appointed legal experts that included Alan Dershowitz and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America to consider legal action against advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It appears to be a tendentious extension of the claimed privileges of the chair, but has no legal effect.

However, politically, it surely is time for the Palestinian Mission to convene a U.N. conference on how to give international legal effect to the decisions of the International Criminal Court on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions on Occupied Territories to the Israeli-occupied territories.

On Nov. 29 the U.N. commemorated its Annual Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Ban Ki-moon has been an articulate defender of international legality, not to mention humanitarian solidarity, in the region, but his statements have rarely been reported, not even in indignation by pro-Israeli press—almost as if they realized that condemning such a mild-mannered and manifestly principled person would only validate his statements. So it is only fitting that as he leaves office we reproduce his remarks:

“Recent years have witnessed two unsuccessful attempts at negotiating a peaceful settlement, three armed conflicts, thousands of dead—the vast majority of them Palestinian civilians—rampant incitement, terror attacks, thousands of rockets and bombs fired at Israel from Gaza, and an expanding, illegal Israeli settlement enterprise that risks undermining Israel’s democratic values and the character of its society.  This year, the number of demolitions of Palestinian houses and other structures by Israeli forces has doubled, compared to 2015. Gaza remains a humanitarian emergency, with two million Palestinians struggling with crumbling infrastructure and a paralyzed economy, and tens of thousands still displaced, awaiting reconstruction of homes destroyed by conflict.”

While it contains the obligatory “balance” so often demanded by U.S. and Israeli representatives, the inescapable truth of who is most to blame emerges clearly from its enumeration of the details. In the General Assembly debate on the resolutions, U.S. representative Richard Erdman came out with the usual worries about “the disproportionate number of one-sided resolutions that had been designed to condemn Israel.” Interestingly, he added, “While the United States consistently opposed every effort to delegitimize Israel at the United Nations, his delegation would also continue to view Israeli settlement activity as illegitimate, corrosive and a threat to a two-state solution.”

Erdman failed, however, to identify how much of Israel Palestine occupied and how many settlements it had built there. Nor did he identify what steps Washington had taken to persuade Israel to give up its corrosive ways, short of stuffing its arsenal with offensive weapons and its treasury with cash.

In fact, he missed a golden opportunity to suggest ways to take the wind out of the sails of the international BDS movement. If the U.S. and U.N. took the action they had against South Africa, then consumers’ boycotting bath salts from the occupied Dead Sea would be totally unnecessary. ◙

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U.N. correspondent Ian Williams’ book UNtold: the Real Story of the United Nations will be published by Just World Books in Spring 2017.

A line in the Sand for International Law

Letter from America – Ian Williams

Written By: Ian Williams

Published: March 19, 2016 Last modified: March 18, 2016

The paths of two much mis-underestimated, highly ethical individuals crossed recently. A year before he became leader of the Labour Party, I saw Jeremy Corbyn at the House of Commons report back from a visit to Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. It was an impressive performance. Invoking Western Sahara is no way for a politician to win votes, nor even for a writer to win commissions! Second, the audience was loaded with Moroccans whipped in by their ­government to support its claims to the territory.

He dealt with them impressively, listening respectfully while calmly stating facts and restating principles in a way that averted provocation and conflict. I did not know it then, but he was foreshadowing his remarkable self control in the face of fanatical New Labour types who cannot believe they lost with all the certainty of Moroccans who cannot believe that anyone could question their right to rule the Sahara.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went to Western Sahara earlier this month and stated a few home truths about the continuing occupation there and compounded his sins by visiting the headquarters of Polisario, the Saharwi independence front. Morocco went into paroxysms of counterfactual denunciation and claims that the UN and the international community accept its annexation. In a breath-taking abuse of language it accused the UN Secretary General of “semantic slippage”, for using the term “occupation” and expressed, among even more incoherent indignation noted with “utter dismay the verbal slippages, faits accomplis and unjustified complacency” of Ban.

In reality, away from whatever they smoke in offices of Morocco’s highly paid Public relations company, the International Court of Justice has ruled that the people of Western Sahara are entitled to self-determination. The UN Security Council has ruled that Morocco should withdraw from the territory and allow an act of self-determination. For more than 20 years, there has been a UN mission there to conduct a referendum – and Morocco has officially accepted those terms – even though in international law they do not really have any option. The world’s maps all show the territory separate from Morocco.

The Security Council resolution in 1975 called for Morocco to withdraw from the territory, and it has been defying it ever since. However, underlying their indignation, which highlights Ban’s courage, is that Morocco and its friends have thoroughly compromised the UN system. Successive UN officials have been bribed, suborned and browbeaten not to challenge the Moroccan version with anything as upsetting as the truth. ­Interestingly, MINURSO’s own website begins its list of UN resolutions in 1991, when it was set up, not in 1975, when the Security Council asked Morocco to get out.

Morocco has had outright support from France, and it benefits from good relations with Israel. In the words of then US ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan about Sahara and East Timor in 1975: “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” Since then, it has tried to tidy things up but not enough to annoy the Moroccans, and one supposes that the issue was clinched by the $5 million-plus paid to the Clinton Foundation by the Moroccan-owned phosphate company that is looting Western Sahara’s phosphates.

Hillary Clinton, as US Secretary of State, tried to push Barack Obama’s administration to accept the dubious “autonomy” plan promoted by King Mohammed that excluded the option of independence for Western Sahara from the terms of the referendum. One should add that Polisario is about as compromised as any other “liberation movement” of the seventies in terms of its adherence to human rights. But the most convincing element of the Sahrawi claim is the Moroccan refusal to allow a referendum. The King knows he would lose it.

History should provide a pre-emptively answer to anyone who asks why we should worry about “a quarrel, in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”. Britain is a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, pledged to uphold the UN Charter, and with a few notable exceptions has been fairly good at it. The UK delegation has been reluctantly supportive of what Robin Cook would have called the ethical dimension of foreign policy over the Sahara, but is palpably discomforted by all the sordid reasons it should go along with others who would happily sell the Sahrawis down the sand dunes.

Both Ban and Corbyn see that an injustice perpetuated like this attacks the basic principles of the United Nations. In the face of the frantic Moroccan assault on Ban Ki-moon, Britain, and indeed ­Jeremy Corbyn, should be signalling ­support for the Secretary General’s brave initiative, aimed as it is at rescuing­hundreds of thousands of people from life in exile of under occupation.

About Ian Williams

Ian Williams is Tribune's UN correspondent

The Sort of Triumph of the Sort of Will!

Letter from America – Ian Williams

Written By: Ian Williams

Published: December 19, 2015 Last modified: December 15, 2015

There are shades of euphoria from supporters of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change announced so triumphantly at the beginning of this month. “Universal” and “legally binding” are epithets brandished in its favour. Well, up to a point.

The mere fact that there is an agreement, of any kind, understandably warms the hearts of the many committed people who have for years tried to effect a change. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, has made it a major issue since he took office – and he and Gordon Brown played a major part in turning the previous Copenhagen talks into a holding operation rather than a complete disaster. So trying to count the ways in which Paris is a more limited success than the headlines suggest, let us accentuate the positive.

The mere existence of a global agreement accepting the reality of man-made climate change is a big step forward. It rebuts untold millions of dollars poured into public relations by oil and coal producers with direct mercenary interests, not to mention conservative kooks who have decided that the whole idea of global warming is a communist plot to subvert entrepreneurial activities.

If the Shadow Chancellor can quote Mao, so can I. One of the lines in the Chairman’s Little Red Book was that ideas can become a material force, and without endorsing the rest of the Maoist oeuvre, that is very true. In that sense, the Paris Agreement is a turning point in international sentiment for combating the unfolding ecological disaster, ideological leverage in the coming struggle.

The right have become experts at having their will triumph, both positively and negatively over the years, which is why they have fought this outcome so hard and so long. Even relatively rational politicians in America and elsewhere, faced with the wrath of the carbon fuel lobby have temporised about the reality of global warming. Saudi Arabia, continuing the constructive role that it plays in so many spheres, has spent enough hiring the mercenary PR companies to fight its oil-soaked corner globally for it to have resettled several threatened low lying atolls by now.

That is why the Paris agreement at the beginning of December was such a landmark event, despite all the compromises and weaselling that went into it. The simple fact of acceptance of reality, no matter how belated, is a great leap forward in the face of the industry lobbyists.

Gaining recognition of that premise made other forms of progress possible – like the Pacific mini-state of the Marshall Islands who campaigned to ensure that there would a review of the targets within five years instead of 15. However, the review is desperately needed. The targets are hopelessly inadequate and it is a small consolation that the signatory countries recognise when the agreement effectively postpones the reaction needed now until the second half of the century. It is as if we stood in a burning city and congratulated ourselves for noticing the flames and temperature, but decided not to set the fire brigades on the case for a while longer.

In that sense, the Paris agreement is an egregious example of the fun and frivolity that the city was once so famous for. Having evaded the targets set in Kyoto, Bali and other resorts, the nations of the world have now set a non-binding set of targets that they will probably ignore and evade again.

While considering the triumph of the will, one can see in this agreement how the faith-based solutions of the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan era still haunt us. A carbon tax, on the fuel used could be one of the most effective inducements to encourage investment in more efficient energy use and generation, and thus emissions. However, reflexive right wing (and now “centre”) recoil from the very idea of taxation – which would put cash in the hands of governments for the public good –- has been subsumed by the idea of alleged market mechanisms and trading emissions.

The agreement is deeply flawed, weak and ineffectual. But it lays down what should be done – at a minimum. It is up to the rest of us to risk a few virtual carbon-emissions by holding the feet of governments to the burning coals, making sure they keep their promises.

Why China has a P5 seat, and Japan is unlikely to!

Opinion: Why China is in the Security Council and Japan is Not

By Ian Williams
From InterPRess ServiceReprint |      |  Print | Send by email |En español

Ian Williams is Senior Analyst, Foreign Policy in Focus and columnist for the Tribune, and who recently completed a new edition of The U.N. for Beginners

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 2015 (IPS) - Will Tokyo’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council be frustrated by its Foreign Ministry’s undiplomatic and uncalled for attack on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon?

Japan’s attempt certainly will not be helped by the Japanese Foreign Ministry official who complained sniffily that the world body “should take a neutral position on events that focus mostly on the past” and expressed “strong displeasure” at Ban’s attendance in Beijing for the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

The churlish rebuff, with overtones of anti-Korean sentiment came just as the issue of reforming the Security Council is having a periodic upsurge of interest in this 70th session of the United Nations. It is of course no accident that the 70th Anniversary of the U.N. coincides with the 70th Anniversary of the end of the War. It was World War Two that gave birth to and shaped the United Nations, which is why China is on the Security Council and Japan is not.

But the U.N. Charter is about controlling inter-state aggression of the kind that the defeated nations in the Second World War indisputably started. Japan invaded its neighbors, not the other way round, and in general its occupations were brutal, despite the rhetoric about co-prosperity.

The U.N. is not neutral, it was an organization founded to defeat the Axis powers, particularly Germany and Japan and that is explicit in the U.N. Charter still. Although Poland moved a pious resolution in the General Assembly after the reunification of Germany declaring that the “enemy states” clause in the U.N. Charter no longer applies, the clause is still in the Charter – and the unrepentant attitude from the Abe administration is calculated to remind the Chinese, and indeed the Russians that because of the war they have a veto on all reform proposals.

Certainly, Poland realized that the reunified Germany was not the same country as in 1939 and was expediently magnanimous in its declaration. One can hardly imagine either of the Koreas emulating that with Japan, which had to be pressured by the other members of the Council to vote in the end for the Korean Secretary General to make it unanimous.

There is no end of skeptical comments one can make about the seventieth anniversary of Axis defeats. Historically, maybe Ban should have gone to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial in Taiwan – or the Republic of China as Beijing prefers they call themselves! It was after all the ROC not the PRC that was the official combatant and final victor in the war and which was accordingly granted a seat on the Security Council.

But then it was the USSR and not Russia that won a permanent seat and did so much to defeat the Nazis that we, as much as Moscow, tend to overlook the Stalin Hitler pact just before. Each of the victors has skeletons in their cupboards, from the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn Wood to Dresden and Hiroshima.

After 70 years, it is indisputably time to reform the Security Council, but it is also indisputable that the permanent five have a veto on that process and that many other members have mutually contradictory plans for how to reform it. It is highly likely that the Japanese comments have given ammunition to those hostile to its bid for a permanent seat.

There are in fact very good reasons, for justice and efficiency, not to expand the number of permanent seats on the council. Many countries have braved the displeasure of big neighbors who are candidates to say so, and to demand that at best the contestants be eligible for re-election or to have a longer mandate. The likely result is a stalemate in the reform process and Tokyo’s intemperate response has made that outcome even more likely. Chinese hostility and potential veto make the other reform proposals.

Speaking before the Beijing parade, Ban’s office said he “believes that it is important to reflect on the past, look at the lessons we have learned and how we can move ahead to a brighter future based on these lessons.” Shinzo Abe should have drawn some lessons. He would have been better accompanying his former colleague Tomiichi Murayama to Beijing and reinforcing his historic apology for the war in 1995 in Beijing.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

The Road To - And Fro- Damascus

Tribune  17 May 2013

The Road To - And Fro- Damascus
The old anecdote about the directions given to a lost traveller in Ireland often applies to international affairs, but with added force to Syria.  “If I was you, I wouldn’t be startin’ from here!”  There is almost no conceivable happy outcome to the inferno in Syria, and although there must be some happier conclusions than others, no one will ever be sure that the roads not taken might have been better.

In part, ordinary Syrians are paying the price for the maladroit handling of  the earlier intervention in Libya - and indeed in Iraq.  Blair and Bush’s great adventure in Iraq understandably soured the enthusiasm of much of the world for intervention in general. One does not have to subscribe to the crazed leftist defence of bourgeois sovereignty that would have led some people to picket the Normandy landings, nor even listen to the supporters and deniers of genocide in the Balkans, to see that the Iraq invasion was unjustified and its outcome was disastrous.

Russian evocation of Libya to justify inaction in Syria is expediently amoral. Russia agreed to NATO involvement in Libya, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian FM, with his long experience as Moscow’s man at the UN, must have been well aware of how far NATO would take it. The Russians abstained partly because the Arab League was behind the UN resolution, and also because the much unloved Qaddafi had threatened to wipe out the rebels in Benghazi. Those who point out that there was some ambiguity in the actual wording of the threat, should bear in mind that there had been plentiful evidence over the years of his willingness to eliminate enemies as his prison massacre of 1998.

While the UN Resolution on Libya did not specifically endorse regime change, in the real world, faced with a deranged and murderous dictator what other logical result was there?  However, the West clearly should have done much more to involve and thus implicate  Russia, and the failure to do so added heft and sharpness to the chip on Moscow’s shoulders that weighs so heavily on its foreign policy. After all, if the UK and France have still not got over their long-lost Superpower status, Russia certainly has a much more recent excuse for post-power peevishness.

Which brings us back to the Superpower itself. In Washington the Republican opposition could have been making hay with the administration’s failure to develop a coherent policy towards Syria.  Instead, however, they are beating a dead horse that has no interest from the electorate and little connection with the real world. In their incestuous universe, the big issue is not Damascus, but Benghazi and the killing of the US diplomat there last year.  It gives them an obsessive stick with which to beat Hillary Clinton.

To be fair, there is little that the Obama administration could do directly in Syria with the historical baggage the US has accumulated over the years. The interventions in the Muslim world, even when not malicious have tended to be maladroit and all too often counterproductive by any standards. But if not the US, who?

Enter the UN - once again as diplomatic cover. Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian diplomat who succeeded Kofi Annan as the UN representative has been considering quitting. His reasons are obvious and honorable: firstly the UN is not a negotiator, rather as Ban Ki Moon says, it is a facilitator. It can provide the ladder for the various parties to climb down from their trees. But as Annan once said, diplomacy is very effective, when backed by the threat of sufficient force.

Currently neither the US, nor the Europeans can muster enough persuasion to get the Russians to lean on their ally Al-Assad. The Russians are providing enough diplomatic and military coverage to keep him fighting even if doing so empowers the Islamists in the opposition and increasingly imperils the position of the Alawites and other minorities.  The US is unable to stop its Israeli tail wagging, and the UN, Bank Ki Moon and Lakhdar Brahimi, without a unified global community behind them are reduced to calling for a ceasefire but have no means to enforce one.

It comes down to US. With all its faults, financially enfeebled, morally tainted and militarily entangled as it is, only the White House has the power to browbeat and cajole an international consensus that could stop the fighting, even if that implies having the strength to say pretty please to Moscow, to guarantee security to the various factions.

It needs a UN resolution, it needs  a no fly zone and eventually, probably boots on the ground - from almost anywhere except Europe and the US. One almost has pipe dreams of a joint Russian-Turkish peacekeeping operation, but more likely the conflict will just drag on until it spills over into the rest of the region.

A Modest Proposal! UN and Israel

I was in an Irish bar with Mo Sacirbey, the former Foreign Minister of Bosnia, when a local woman who had overheard us talking about the UN launched into an intemperate tirade against the organisation. Oddly enough, it inspired a modest proposal for the UN and Israel Lobby to work together for a swift response to the US budget crisis. But first, some background. In Blazing Saddles, one of the funniest films ever made, the black sheriff holds himself hostage at gunpoint. This improbable scenario is now being enacted on Capitol Hill. To get a budget agreement Congressional leaders signed a pact that would bring about “sequestration” - deep across the board cuts in Federal spending - including for that Republican Shibboleth, the Pentagon, which they hoped would force Congress to deal.

Fully aware of the voting proclivities of pensioners, the authors of the deal agreed that sequestration would not affect Social Security and Medicare the old age pension and medical programmes, which, technically are pre-paid from previous pension contributions and not part of the budget, although Republican die-hards keep circling them while sharpening knives.

Alas, the framers of the economic suicide pact underestimated the ideological obduracy of the new Republicans, so at a time when the economy teeters on the brink of recovery Federal spending cuts begin, laying off workers and stopping hiring new ones. The Obama administration is, understandably, talking up the consequences. Like  Blazing Saddle’s Sheriff Bart (played brilliantly by Cleavon Little, by the way) he is dealing with idiots, in this case the GOP economic illiterates.

It will indeed have an inhibiting effect on the economy, but the heavy spending cuts would be way down the line. The defence programmes are already committed which is why Boeing its peer companies are not already strafing Capitol Hill.

But then in ride the hobby horses.  The Israel Lobby is trying hard, but discreetly, to ensure that the steady torrent of cash from US taxpayers to its favourite state continues unchecked through the sequestration. Traditionally the Lobby hid behind the Foreign Aid budget as if food for starving refugees were in the same category as phosphorus shells for the IDF. But some of its supporters now want to decouple to connection.

“Despite ongoing budget woes, it is critical that the United States live up to its aid commitment to Israel,” AIPAC states. “As our one reliable Middle East ally, Israel serves critical national security objectives. Any reduction in that aid would send the wrong message to Israel’s — and America’s — enemies.”

It sends a message to US voters as well which is why wiser souls who support Israel want to keep their heads down, since taxpayers who do not have a national health service and free higher education might cavil at shovelling their money as aid to a state that does - and which uses the aid to defend settlements that Washington opposes!

And so to my proposal. An odious, albeit ironic comparison of aid to Israel and dues to the UN as a packaged, essential public-diplomacy exception to the sequestration. While most countries regard United Nations dues and peacekeeping contributions as treaty-bound obligations, the US Congress treats them as discretionary items, ever since they began, half a century ago to penalise the organisation for its votes on, of course, Israel. Under Bush’s second term and under Obama, the US has essentially been paying up without too much demur, which is just as well since peacekeeping operations in places like Mali depend on a flow of contributions from richer countries, above all the US which is desperately interested in Saharo-Salafist affairs.

Listening to the rabid pro-Israeli supporters among local New York politicians, this might appear to be a stretch, since antipathy to the UN is in their ideological chromosomes. But in contrast to their local supporters, Israeli politicians assiduously court the organisation. Secretary General Ban Kimoon welcomes them when they visit New York - even though his public statements forcefully repeat the official UN lines on, for example settlements and Gaza, that the American lobbyists would punish any American politician for. But Ban has a rare talent for understated diplomacy that allows him to speak truths and to keep the Israeli pols coming - albeit probably helped because they can do some fundraising of their own in New York while visiting the UN on official business but also because they have a talent for not listening to advice from outsiders anyway.

Such a tie in would neutralise the bloc that does most harm to UN financing in DC and do no harm at all, since just as it has always done,  in the end, AIPAC will get its money even if kids go hungry in the USA,

Ban again, and again!

Ban shoots for the stars
By Ian Williams
Asia Times
June 7th 2011

WASHINGTON - It is very Asian, or at least Confucian, that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his team have kept so close-mouthed about his decision to run for a second five-year term, which was announced on Monday.

Ban's first term expires at the end of this year, and the vote for the next UN head could take place by the end of June at a General Assembly session. No other candidates are in the running so far.

It would imply a tremendous loss of face for Ban, South Korea and even to some extent Asia, if he had overtly indicated interest without being sure that that he had all the ducks in a row. In itself, it suggests some serious diplomatic skills to get member states united behind his candidacy, not least Japan and China, but he has clearly done so. There has not been a serious voice raised in


opposition, unless there is a serious misstep, and the reappointment will soon be confirmed by the Security Council and General Assembly.

It is possible that the last one in the convoy was indeed a Peking, or Beijing, duck, since he met the Chinese vice president last week. Human Rights Watch criticized Ban for not being more vociferous about human rights in China, and it would have been a great gesture if he had. But this would have been the diplomatic equivalent of seppuku (ritual suicide).

Ironically, John Bolton, the rebarbative former acting US ambassador to the UN, has endorsed a second term for Ban on the grounds that he did not regard himself as a "secular pope". Bolton is not known for nuance, and he was a strong supporter of Ban's original nomination.

Ban is South Korean, and thus reliably anti-communist, and Bolton and others saw a grey self-effacing bureaucrat who would not rock the boat. But perhaps they should have listened. Even on the hustings, Ban declared himself a strong supporter of, for example, the International Criminal Court, whose destruction was Bolton's great, and unsuccessful, crusade.

On issues like climate change, the financial crisis and certainly on human-rights issues and the Responsibility to Protect (the latter loved no more by Bolton than by Beijing) he has been far more outspoken than his predecessors.

To begin with, he spoke strongly about particulars in private, but in public expressed general principles. In Myanmar (Burma) he told off the junta, but kept lines of communication open publicly. However, as he gained confidence, on issue after issue he has become more open, more precise in his delineation of principles and their application.

On the Middle East, calling for a Palestinian state, an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and other UN positions forcibly has not prevented his office being the first port of call for Israeli politicians in New York.

Cynically, one can wonder if they are not using it to claim government expenses for fundraising trips to the diaspora's capital, but for whatever reason, it takes the UN out of the Israel Lobby's firing line in the US. This no bad thing for the beleaguered UN since the lobby in the US unites both conservatives and the liberal politicians who in many other countries provide the backstop for the UN's local support.

But that illustrates the dilemma. Bolton is of the ilk that finds it difficult to admit error, so he would not go out of his way to find fault with Ban. Even so, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week he called for the US Congress to again cut funding to the UN to force it to bow to Washington's and Israel's positions on Palestinian statehood - without mentioning Ban or his position. In times past conservative critics like him could be relied upon to personalize battles with the UN by belittling its secretary general.

It does suggest that Ban's outspokenness has been attenuated by his earlier self-effacement. He has pushed the boundaries of the sayable for the UN. Indeed even human-rights organizations who criticize him for not raising human-rights issues with China, have admitted that Ban has been outspoken on other human-rights issues, and indeed, during the Arab Spring, he has singled out heads of state like former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for criticism in a very public way, before self-professed human-rights champions like the US, whose recent statements on such issues have been extremely expedient.

Indeed, he has broken quite sharply with long standing UN practice of servile deference to any head of state, no matter how cruel or corrupt. One only has to contrast the respect the organization and its emissaries offered former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for example.

In that context, it is perhaps understandable that he demurred on public criticism of Chinese human rights. It would be somewhat Quixotic for the secretary general of the United Nations, with, as Boutros Boutros-Ghali once complained, no army nor police force, to take a tougher stand than the member states who appoint and give him orders.

Not least if it knocked him out of office to be replaced by someone else hand picked to be even more complaisant. In the absence of the Madeleine Albright and Senator Jesse Helms team that knocked out Boutros Ghali, the Chinese are the only ones to have nixed the reappointment of other secretaries general - such as Kurt Waldheim.

But the dilemma of his second term is inherent in such contradictions of office. Sixty-five years after its founding, there has never been such a concatenation of problems demanding a global response that only the United Nations is equipped to mediate. Climate change, food security, energy shortages, financial crisis, pandemic diseases, uneven development and a host of other issues cannot be solved by any one country, as even the indebted energy poor US is now discovering. They demand global solutions which entail a revived, re-energized and modernized United Nations.

Once confirmed, there are strong reasons to hope that, on his present trajectory, Ban will be able not just to say the right things, but also to inspire others, his staff, the member states and the peoples of the world, to do what is needed. He has shown strong principles so far. Now he needs to inject charisma-building steroids to ensure those principles are heard.

Having secured reappointment, he now has to draw up an agenda for his second term that will inspire a jaded world to unite against the common enemies and for Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms that originally inspired the UN: Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Once he does not have to look over his shoulder at Beijing and Washington about a second term, he will have the freedom not only to articulate positions that they would prefer unsaid, but to marshal others as well. Even so, one can be sure that while he will try to steer boats, he won't try to rock them. He is a diplomat above all, even if some might hope that he will indeed become the secular pope that Bolton did want!

Bank on Ban Ki Moon for term two

Tribune
Bank on Ban Ki Moon for term two
by Ian Williams
Sunday, June 5th, 2011

Sometime soon, Ban Ki Moon is almost certainly going to announce his willingness to accept a second term as United Nations Secretary General. He is unlikely to meet any serious opposition. In part that is because it would be rude not to reappoint him. After all the only other SG denied a second term was Boutros Ghali, because Madeleine Albright offered his head on a platter to Senator Jesse Helms as the price for her confirmation as Secretary of State.

But courtesy apart, there are good reasons to offer Ban a second term. Like his predecessor Dag Hammarskjold, who died fifty years ago, this year, Ban has been growing into the position and becoming increasingly effective. When Hammarskjold was appointed UN Secretary General, the eminently forgettable Trygve Lie, the first to hold the position, dismissed him as a colourless bureaucrat. Hammarskjold is now widely regarded as the very model for a UN Secretary General.

When first elected, Ban Ki Moon light-heartedly delighted in the title the Korean press corp had given him, “the Slippery Eel” for dodging questions and for his self-effacing diplomacy. With the lazy conservatism of the media, his image is still shaded by those first impressions. It did not help that his instinct in the first few years was to work behind the scenes rather than on the public stage, so much of his good work was unrecognised. US acting ambassador John Bolton and the Bush administration nominated him precisely because they wanted a gray apparatchik who would keep the UN its proper place – in the closet until wanted on occasion by the White House.

However, neither the White House nor much of the media checked the reality behind their presuppositions. Even before his election, for example, Ban was publically declaring his support for the International Criminal Court that Bolton had made his life’s work destroying. As soon as he had he taken office he was pushing positions on climate change calculated to get right up the nostrils of the Republican right.

When he first took office, he combined diplomatic delivery in public with strong words in private to national leaders. There was a notable change as he gained confidence and realised that the post of UN Secretary General demanded a public, pulpit role. For example, in the Arab spring, he has been outspoken about naming and shaming the leaders who have used force against demonstrators, which marks a break from the UN tradition of slavish respect for heads of member states.

While he has consistently displayed his principles in a similar way since, he has also been a quick learner. That has been most visible on Middle Eastern issues, where he started off with an almost reflexively pro-Israeli position adopted from his American friends. Now he is now far more outspoken than his predecessors – but as a testament to his diplomatic skills, his office is still the first port of call for Israeli politicians coming to New York. It was little remarked, but he actually made history by getting the Israelis to pay compensation for destroying UN premises in Gaza, and he has consistently condemned the Israeli blockade of the enclave.

It is true that the UN no longer inspires the hopes it did at its founding, but it is a body whose relevance has been renewed by the demands of the era. From finance, to development to human rights and global warming, the world’s problems demand multilateral, global solutions and Ban shows every sign of appreciating that.

His first term has coincided with circumstances that have persuaded even Americans that they cannot singlehandedly run the world. Most of us noticed they weren’t very good at it anyway.

Ban’s approaching second term offers an opportunity for the world to reappreciate the role of the United Nations and its collective approach to the world’s problems and a revival of some of the idealism of its early days and the battle for the Four Freedoms seems appropriate when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to be hovering the on horizon of an overpopulated, financially precarious yet overarmed world.

Why No Go for US No Fly

Tribune 11 March 2011

Ian Williams on Libyan intervention

Some people would have picketed the Normandy Landings as imperialist intervention. (The Communist Party of the USA did actually condemn the British blockade of Nazi Germany as an imperialist attempt to starve German workers!) On the other hand, when I went to the UN legal department at the time of the belated attempts to help the Kurds after the first Gulf War, they shuffled their feet, and admitted that one of the few modern precedents they could find for “humanitarian intervention,” was Hitler’s land grabs in Czechoslovakia when he claimed to be rescuing Sudeten Germans from persecution.

When Kofi Annan persuaded the governments of the world to reinterpret the UN Charter to encompass “The Responsibility to Protect,” even supporters of intervention invoked the maxim “First do no harm,” and warned of the need to consider carefully the motives, intentions and methods of those intervening. Beware of brain surgeons with grudges and hatchets.

So, even though there are good ethical reasons to help the rebels in Libya, sadly there are few candidates qualified to do it. Obama has certainly blown it with his recent veto, which regresses US standing back to the inglory days of George W. Bush. (By the way, the UK went against the Blairite tradition and supported the resolution.)

In the face of Netanyahu’s refusal even to pause building settlements which the US coyly calls “illegitimate” but which the rest of the world unequivocally condemns as “illegal,” the US stood firm - and threatened to withdraw aid to the Palestinian victims unless they withdrew the embarrassing resolution!

One consequence is that this effectively rules out any attempt at international intervention in Libya, even to enforce a no-fly zone - at least if it involves US or NATO forces. There would be too many questions in the region about whether the jets flew for democracy or Israel, which was after all invoked by Mubarak’s security forces and the Yemeni president against protestors.

Gaddafi is still in some parallel universe where he thinks invoking Al-Qaeda gets him a free pass in Washington. This sounds like he is not quite hundred dirhams to the dinar, but put in the regional context of US support for any murderous autocrat who signs on for the anti-terrorist crusade and it is not that stupid. It might work yet, but if it doesn’t and there is any Western intervention, you can guarantee that he will invoke Israeli interference.


It is an interesting exercise to compare Obama’s recent stands, (or in some cases “prones,” might be a better word) on events in the region with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has categorically condemned settlements as illegal, and called for Mubarak to step down long before the leaders of the free world screwed their courage to the sticking place. After making the call, he returned to New York to fierce protests from the Egyptian mission to the UN, which have one gathers, been replaced with thanks and plaudits from the new regime in Cairo.

In Libya Ban called for "an immediate halt to the government's disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". This is welcome change from the UN’s traditional inability to distinguish between victim and perpetrator in conflicts and reflects Ban’s unprecedentedly forthright condemnations of member governments committing crimes - and, it is worth remembering, his public support for the International Criminal Career when he was running for the office with the support of the Bush administration.

Of course, Ban has no troops of his own, even if he wanted to deploy them. The UN is now sending a fact-finding mission which could restrain regime excesses in Tripoli, and one also suspects that other countries are sending less public missions to help the rebels, which one hopes are more circumspect than the arrested British SAS team. Any help has to be hands off to be successful. And the ironic result of democracy in Libya, like in Egypt, will be an elected government more anti-Imperialist than its paid-for predecessor.

When the Enemy Attacks....

A life under fire for Ban Ki-moon
By Ian Williams

Asia Times September 10th

WASHINGTON - United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has been under attack in the Anglo-American press. This is perhaps why, despite a recent global poll [1] showing him to be the second-most popular political figure in the world after President Barack Obama, his ratings are not so glowing in the United States and Britain.

In August, the leak of a negative assessment from Norwegian deputy ambassador to the UN, Mona Juul, seemed to suggest that the criticism extended beyond the Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal consensus, but its effect was rather countered by a previous Norwegian invitation to the secretary general. Norway provided the UN's first secretary general, Trygve Lie, and helped organize Ban


Ki-Moon's visit to the North Pole last week to see the effects of climate change.

The Norwegian leak is puzzling. Unsourced, relying on gossip and clippings from conservative press outlets, the "highly confidential" report [2] to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry was relentlessly negative, calling Ban "spineless and charmless".

However, for UN insiders, its effect was somewhat mitigated by the recent, unsuccessful but active interest of its author, Juul, in an assistant secretary general's job under the same direly assessed Ban. That her husband, Terje Rod-Larsen's expectations of a UN position had also been allegedly frustrated by Ban did not add to her credibility.

Half-way through Ban's first term there is indeed room for a critical assessment of the former South Korean foreign minister, but the sources cited by Juul in her report bear similar examination of their motivation. For many of them, like Rupert Murdoch's London Times or the National Interest's Jacob Heibrunn - who wrote a blistering assault on Ban in Foreign Policy magazine (which in fact looked like the main reference for Juul's report) - the UN is always wrong.

Indeed, their attacks could suggest that Ban has in fact outgrown the do-nothing role that former US envoy to the UN John Bolton allegedly scripted for him on his election. This has led to him joining the long line of UN secretaries general to be excoriated by the conservative press for not following orders.

There are many odious comparisons made with former secretary general Kofi Annan, whose charisma is contrasted with Ban's. In fact, to some observers, Annan was not "charismatic" in the real sense of the word. His soft-spoken oratory style was not aimed at firing up the masses, despite the intensive efforts from his team. Rather he was "numinous". A charismatic leader can incite people to run over a cliff: Annan's demeanor reassured people that he would never allow that to happen. He exuded trust. And while he stood by his principles, he was no more forward in seeking out gratuitous enemies than Ban is.

One may remember that Annan drew down furious conservative fire for suggesting, under pressure from a BBC interviewer, that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was illegal (as did, incidentally, the late senator Ted Kennedy). But he had not exactly used the bully pulpit on which he stood to push that view.

Many analysts beleive Ban is most certainly not "charmless and spineless". He is remarkably affable, charming and has shown strong attachment to principle - which may be one reason for the neo-liberal disaffection. He went on the hustings to campaign for the seat and while running explicitly avowed support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept - a new international doctrine on the responsibility of sovereign states and the international community to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes - and the International Criminal Court. Neither of these moves were calculated to win the affections of president George W Bush or Bolton, who were in office at the time - nor indeed of China. He has maintained those stands, and recently steered the R2P concept away from the shipwreck planned for it by the Nicaraguan president of the General Assembly.

Since taking office, he has made climate change his pet issue - once again not music to the ears of his original Republican nominators, nor the Chinese, and he has not eschewed berating the powers for not taking it seriously.

It was hardly spineless to chide the US for being a "deadbeat" over its UN dues arrears, as he did this year, and even if there is no direct causal relationship, he cannot be accused of sabotaging diplomatic efforts. The US is now paying up. In London, he was one of the major players in the successful incorporation of the needs of the developing world into the global stimulus response.

And just as Annan excited obloquy for going to Baghdad to avert a war, Ban is now under fire for going to Myanmar to persuade the junta to see sense. The recent Western style of what passes for leadership is that politicians will not take any steps until they are assured of success. Historically, this is not very effective. Ban went to Myanmar with the support of the UN Security Council, and returned to its applause. He had after all successfully pressed the murderously myopic junta into accepting foreign assistance after Typhoon Nargis in 2008. It is surely better to risk his reputation by trying than by keeping out in case it failed.

Where he has shown the most rapid learning curve has been on the Middle East. As South Korean foreign minister, surrounded by Japan, Russia, China and the US, not to mention North Korea, it is understandable that the issue was not top of his agenda. Under those circumstances, it is not totally remarkable that his initial stands took the Israeli point of view. Ironically, he deepened and consummated the purge of "Arabists" at UN headquarters who upheld UN resolutions, which Rod-Larsen had attempted under Kofi Annan.

However, even without them, exposure to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reality on the ground seems to have brought him a long way towards the UN view on the issue. Although his burying of the recent report he had commissioned on Israeli actions in Gaza is part of a long secretariat tradition of protecting Israel and shows that he still has some way to go.

There are valid criticisms of Ban's administration, but in fact he has shown other signs of learning from experience. Part of the problem is indeed cultural. He suffers in the West from his "Confucian" background, which avoids public, and thus newsworthy, confrontations. However, aides and others report that in closed rooms with leaders he can be very forthright. One might think that "kick and tell" was not a desirable trait in the world's arch-diplomat, but the Western press differ. Despite his affability and accessibility to the media, Ban's refusal to deliver controversy or sound bites appears like evasiveness to the Western media.

Annan achieved great amplification by allowing his team to speak freely and occasionally controversially on major issues. One only has to think of former deputy secretary general Mark Malloch Brown's eminently reportable speeches and comments or former under secretary general Shashi Tharoor's ubiquity in the media. Disownable if they went too far, their media presence enhanced Annan's.

However, Ban's uncollegial administrative style and, in some cases inept appointments, have muffled his genuine achievements. All secretary general's have to be cliquish: their senior officials are foisted upon them by the permanent five (P5) and by major donors and under the circumstances it is remarkable how independent of their sponsors many of them are.

As a result, at the UN kitchen, cabinets are the name of the game. In Ban's case, it is a very small, Korean kitchen. He has appointed some very able senior officers who should really be encouraged to speak out more. He certainly needs to reassure UN staff that "thought-crime" will not result in the termination of the short-term contracts on which far too many of them are working - and contrarily, like all previous incumbents he needs to show that long-term contracts for incompetents can and will be terminated.

That a South Korean should be so popular in Japan and China indicates some serious diplomatic talents, as does his public espousal of views that irritate the permanent members on whom his second term depends.

Somehow, he has to combine the style that allows him to do that with the presence that moves the hearts and minds of other publics. But if the neo-liberals and unilateralists in the English language press attack him, it is worth considering that he may well be moving in the right direction.

Notes
1. Obama Rockets to Top of Poll on Global Leaders WorldPublicOpinion.org, June 29, 2009.
2. Norwegian UN diplomat slams Ban Ki-moon Foreign Policy, August 21, 2009.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, (Nation Books, New York).

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

The Witchfinder and the Secretary General

Well, here is more on the Andrew Toh case and the latest about throwing UN staff to the Foxes.

click on Guardian Commment is free

Throwing Anti-Abortionists to the Lions

Dead End Positions


Ban Ki-Moon at his first press conference tried to put to rest the vengeful spirit of Saddam Hussein following his early off the cuff remark that it was up to each country what they did on the execution front.

"I believe that life is precious and must be protected and respected,
and that all human beings have the right to live in dignity. International law affirms these values. I recognize the growing trend in international law and in national practice towards a phasing out of the death penalty. I encourage that trend. As Member States are taking their decisions, I expect they will comply with all aspects of
international human rights law. As you know, I have also urged restraint by the Iraqi authorities in the execution of death sentences imposed by the Iraqi High Tribunal."

Apart from saying "well-wiggled!" to Mr Ban who seems to relish the title the Seoul Press Corp gave him – "the slippery eel," I could not help thinking about American attitudes to execution. Incidentally, he avoided answering the question from veteran Mexican correspondent Ricardo Alday about abortion.

Many Americans proclaim the "right to life" for any sperm that has hooked onto an ovum and most of them, it would seem are equally fervent about injecting, hanging, electrocuting or shooting fully grown people. President W. Bush, who never once offered clemency for the almost 200 executions in Texas while he was governor, is a case in point.

Indeed some of them think it is fair game to top any medical staff who perform abortions, which has always struck me as a somewhat eccentric way to demonstrate the sanctity of life.

Among the "Right to Lifers" are many American Catholics… who seem to partially deaf. Having got over its love affair with the Inquisition, the Church is actually equally fervently against executions as it is against abortions. But that is not a text you hear often from right wing Catholic politicians drumming for votes.

In Britain, I knew many left wing Labour members who were opposed to abortion – but they were at least consistent and opposed the death penalty as well. In the US being opposed to abortion means many Liberals would not be seen dead with you, while opposing executions will have the right exorcising you on the spot.

Surely there is room for a wedge issue here for Democrats of faith to expose the spurious claims to exclusive morality of the Christian right?

An old Asia hand to the UN
By Ian Williams

Some of the article covers material that I've already posted. Click for the full article, or just read below for the update.

Asia Times


NEW YORK - Seemingly substantial rumors are sweeping Washington and the UN that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, at President George W Bush's suggestion, is about to appoint Burton Lynn Pascoe, currently US ambassador to Indonesia, as head of the UN's Department of Political Affairs.

At least it won't be former ambassador John Bolton, and at least Pascoe is a foreign service professional deeply aware of the rest of the world. A three-year spell in Taiwan and a knowledge of Mandarin, time in Central Asia and China and you begin to see why Ban could feel he could appoint such a nominee.

Indeed, one cannot help speculating how much toing and froing there was before the White House came up with a candidate so unusually experienced and knowledgeable by this administration's (or indeed others') standards and whose Asian experience would make him acceptable to Ban.

Even so, it does not augur well for the United Nations or the United States to have any American identified with the current White House (or for that matter any previous administration's) heading such a crucial department, especially as one of the leading neo-cons, ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, has been nominated to replace Bolton.

………
Pascoe is too sophisticated to thank Bush publicly for his appointment, as did Christopher Burnham, the previous under secretary general for management. But one cannot help thinking that he will keep his fingers crossed when he takes the international civil servant's oath.

……..

However, it is still early days. Ban's "mis-speaking" on the UN's attitude to the death penalty over Saddam Hussein's execution was a rite of passage in which he had not yet shed his mental position as South Korea's representative. However, he has a considerably better chance of transitioning into a genuine international civil servant than Pascoe.

Ban, American Moguls at UN?

Khalilzad: Good News and Bad for UN
The Nation

Ian Williams
The impending appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad to replace John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations is mixed news. Khalilzad takes his directions from Vice President Dick Cheney, and since the beginning of the Reagan Administration has been an ardent supporter of the various neocon adventurist positions.

While he almost certainly shares the neocons' bedrock contempt for international law and the UN, Khalilzad does not carry Bolton's baggage: decades of obsessive fulmination against the international body. As a Muslim of Afghan descent who possesses more social and diplomatic graces than his predecessor, he will probably do a better job of advancing the White House agenda.

Progressives who called for the dismissal of Bolton might have crossed their fingers and hoped he stayed. After all, do we really want an effective diplomat representing the Bush-Cheney agenda? Much better, surely, to have an ineffective bully and blowhard who provokes opposition than someone who has charm and diplomatic skills. We may now be seeing that experiment in real time.

But Khalilzad's appointment leaves open the question of who will be the next US nominee to high office in the UN. It was rumored that he was under consideration to be under secretary general for political affairs, and the United States had expressed interest in taking over the position as head of peacekeeping.

The French seem to think that they have a lock on peacekeeping... but then the British thought that their man John Holmes was on the trail for that or political affairs until he ended up in the important but less politically sensitive position heading humanitarian affairs, so there may be room for disappointment. Maybe Paris misinterpreted Ban Ki-moon's still-less-than-perfect French? Perhaps to ward off American interest, Ban has reportedly been considering splitting the responsibilities of peacekeeping between its administrative and logistical side and the more overtly political aspects.

There still may be the chance for a nightmare scenario in which Bolton is nominated for one of the presumed American senior positions in the UN hierarchy. I advance this theory for several reasons: The Bush Administration is arrogant and/or stupid enough to try such a stunt, and Bolton is obsessive enough about the UN to seek another post. But my main reason for raising it is prophylactic--the hope that people will be so horrified at the thought that they will not let it happen. (Note that these positions are not subject to confirmation by the US Senate since they are technically made by the secretary general. It is considered polite for everyone to pretend not to notice the US arm-twisting when the Secretary General makes his decision.)

However, we should not get too personal about Bolton. It would be a disaster for the United Nations and the United States to have any American identified with this White House (or for that matter the previous one) heading such crucial departments.
Indeed, Britain's recent close proximity to US positions probably counted against the appointment of Holmes to the peacekeeping post. The advantage of the UN for rational American policy is not only that it provides a global legion of sepoys to carry out duties that would swamp the US military. An independent globally respected body can implement resolutions, even American-inspired ones, while one that is overtly American-dominated would have far less credibility. Indeed, the perception of following narrow American interests that would accompany almost any conceivable nomination from this Administration would put UN staff and peacekeepers across the world at considerable risk.

For all the complaints from Republicans in Congress, Washington has always had far more say in the UN than is good for the organization, and while on one level such senior appointments would line up perceptions with reality, they would reap no benefits for anyone.

If Ban Ki-moon thinks that putting a US-approved appointee in such jobs will insulate the organization from criticism, he should consider that American presidential-patronage nominees have been in charge of UN management for fifteen years of unrelenting American media and Congressional criticism of UN management.
In fact, the first item of any serious reform of the UN was already derailed by the United States with the enforced appointment of Josette Sheeran Shiner as head of the World Food Program, which rescinded Kofi Annan's already belated declaration of personnel independence.

Ban Ki-moon was off to a good start in reclaiming that lost ground by appointing two women--Alicia Bárcena of Mexico to the traditionally US-held position of under secretary general for management, and Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro of Tanzania (hitherto foreign minister) as his deputy, replacing Mark Malloch Brown, the retiring British incumbent.

American for Peacekeeping? -- And Which American would that be?

Blair Cronyism derailing UN Reform

Here we, three days into the New Year, and it is already apparent that when the Permanent Five members talk about UN reform they are only kidding. The first major appointment of the New Year is in fact a Major appointment, albeit out of Blair.

When I heard that John Holmes was going to take over from Jan Egeland as USG for humanitarian affairs, my first confused thought was "The porn star with a ten-incher? But he's dead!"

Alas, no one so colourful. Rather Sir John Holmes is a protégé of Tony Blair and sometime host of the Prime Minister on his frequent freebie holiday junkets around the world. Before he was Personal Private Secretary to Conservative Prime Minister John Major, but his career survived that of possibly the least memorable and colourless premier in British history. The British wanted him for Political Affairs or Peacekeeping, and instead of putting forward several candidates, at Blair's instructions lobbied heavily for him alone when Ban visited London last year.

At least it was not the former BeeGee who was Blair's most recent host.

Ban Ki-Moon is of course under pressure to appoint staff from the P5, and it is even possible that in the best mandarin way Holmes could turn up trumps in the job, despite his complete inexperience in the field of humanitarian relief. However, the appointment sends a signal: that reform is what the West expects the Third World to do, not what the major powers do.

It reflects more discredit on the West than on Ban. Such outstanding ostensible cronyism, in the wake of the appointment of a former Washington Times editor and Bush protégé, is hardly likely to convince the majority of the UN members of the bona fides of the would-be reformers.

While few could take exception with the meritocratic but geographically balanced appointments of Indian Vijay Nambiar as Chef de Cabinet, or Haitian (and Francophone!) Michelle Montas as spokesperson, Ban's team is so far remarkably water-tight as far as leaks go and so at this early stage, reading the runes is made all the more difficult because there are so few runes to read, and each could be read in an opposite way.


The appointment of Alicia Bárcena of Mexico as USG for management could be taken as a double blessing. A non-American heading the department is a welcome break with tradition, and a discrete finger to those not unadjacent to John Bolton who demanded a complete break with the Annan team, not to mention her being Third World, women and all the other beancounting pluses.

On the other hand, it lets the Americans off my personal hook – for decades they have railed against UN management while all that time the person responsible has been an American Presidential appointee. More worrying is the implication that an American will get one of the really important posts: peacekeeping or political affairs. Quite apart from the nightmare scenario of John Bolton rising like Rasputin from the dead and being appointed to one of those positions, it is difficult to conceive of a Bush nominee in either position who would not confirm the growing suspicions of the rest of the world that the UN is there to further narrow American interests.

It would put every blue-helmet and UN staffer under increased risk – not to mention the political damage to the organization. If anyone knows how to slip a memo in Korean under the SG's door on the 38th floor, now would be a good time to do it.