Ban on Asia

Ban tells it like it is
By Ian Williams
Asia Times 5 March 2010

NEW YORK - When Ban Ki-moon went to Myanmar last July, he was the first United Nations secretary general to enter since his Asian predecessor, U Thant, whose body was taken home after he died in New York in 1974. On that occasion, the military dictatorship of Ne Win provoked massive riots with its funereal disrespect for the country's most famous international figure.

South Korean Ban, 66, came under criticism for speaking to Ne Win’s successors, but was praised for his courage in risking a likely snub. In an interview with Asia Times Online, Ban said his visit was the first in 42 years for a living head of the UN, and he considered it well worthwhile. "I was able to speak to the general public there in an open dialogue. I was told it was the first time that any foreign dignitary had been able to speak to the diplomats, citizens, students of Myanmar."

He added, "I gave them the same message I left for the generals and the rest of the leadership - and hope they will implement it. I am still working very hard: most recently I have communicated again with Senior General Than Shwe, I left a strong message for those leaders. The release of the number two in Aung San Suu Kyi's party was very encouraging, but they must do much more to ensure the credibility of the electoral process," said Ban, in reference to the release last month of U Tin Oo of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The leader herself remains under house arrest.

"This year there will be an election and it is extremely important, crucial, [that it is an] inclusive, transparent and credible one, for that we are working very hard to get Aung San Suu Kyi released and all political leaders released," said Ban.

The junta has said there will be elections this year as a part of a so-called roadmap to democracy, but no date has been set.

Ban's visit to Myanmar summed up his distinctive approach. Despite his low-key public delivery, he claims - and others who have witnessed him do too - that he is firm and principled in private when meeting leaders, whether Sudanese, Israeli or Burmese. "My meetings with those leaders have been quite straightforward and very vocal, and the record will show,'' Ban said. "Most of my senior advisors were quite surprised by how outspoken I was - because I was speaking from my own conviction.''

Ban, who assumed office on January 1, 2007, said: "Normally, diplomatically speaking one should be nice and indirect, but I believe in being straightforward with leaders who are very difficult to deal with, regardless of whom, but I am still able to maintain a relationship with them. Because you know what, I was speaking officially, but at the same time I was trying to tell them of my own experience, what I have witnessed of the Korea experience of the transition to democracy, and the process of economic development from the ashes of the Korean War [in the early 1950s]. And so I have been able to establish some working relationships with those leaders, but I am always straightforward."
So he can talk to President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan, even while welcoming the International Criminal Court's 2008 warrant for Bashir's arrest on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Ban can secure "reimbursement" from Israel for damage to UN property in Gaza and issue statements calling for an end to the blockade of Gaza, while still having his calls answered in Israel - and getting calls to answer.

Indeed, he is about to stick his head into another potential hornet's nest - North Korea. "The last visit from my predecessors to Pyongyang was in 1993 by Boutros Ghali. Before him, it was 1979. This is not desirable. I looked through this historical chronology, and I think we need to have stronger and better relations with North Korea. That is why I dispatched Lynn Pascoe [the UN special envoy] to Pyongyang to open a high-level dialogue where they touched upon all aspects of UN/DPRK relations. If I am invited, I will be prepared to go ... [if] I feel that there is a role I can play.''

It would be interesting to hear what he would say to Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, but it would be in Korean and in private. The UN-imposed sanctions on North Korea after its long-range missile test and then nuclear tests last April and May. Six-party denuclearization talks remain stuck on North Korea's insistence on conditions that have no immediate chance of acceptance, including the demand for a Korean War peace treaty.

Ban has grown beyond the suspicions of some that his orientation is, well, Oriental, although he confesses he began his diplomatic career thinking, "What should I do for my country, totally devastated by war and very poor?'' He said he thought he could help enhance the status and prestige of Korea. "And so my major in college was in international affairs.''

Ban received a bachelor's degree in international relations from Seoul National University in 1970 and earned a Master of Public Administration from the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985.

"It came to our attention that when SG [secretary general] Kofi Annan's term was over [in December 2006], that it was Asia's turn,'' Ban added. "So the Korean government considered the possibility of a Korean being elected, and at the time I was FM [foreign minister] and I was regarded as one of the most suitable.''
Ban was a suitable candidate not only because he was foreign minister. He had worked in Korea’s UN mission as director of the UN department and as chef de cabinet for the Korean president of the General Assembly from 2001 to 2002.

"The dream came at a late stage,'' he said. "But I really believed in the enormous work of the United Nations and its mission and what it could do for world peace and security."

The UN, he says, "Has been and continues to be a beacon of hope. It was the United Nations which really saved Korea. Sixteen countries came to the aid of Korea when North Korea attacked [South Korea in 1950].'' As an aside, he adds, "It was the first enforcement action under the UN charter. The first after only five years of existence."

Indeed, it is often forgotten that technically the Korean War was fought under UN auspices and the flag that flies at Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas is the UN’s blue flag. "It still does," Ban said, pointing out that "the United Nations command does not report regularly to me, but to the Security Council".

Former secretary general Dag Hammarskjold risked big problems with the US by going to Beijing in the 1950s, when Taipei represented China in the UN. Had Ban considered now going to Taiwan to help negotiate, since possibly the biggest threat to peace in Asia is the confrontation over the strait?

A visit by him would be unnecessary, he said. "I know that there is tension between China and Taiwan but I am also encouraged by what China has been doing by encouraging exchanges and cooperation, trying to free [up] investment both ways. Through these exchanges and cooperation I am more or less optimistic that there will not be too much mounting tensions.'' Reminded that the mainland showed no sign of moving its missiles, Ban was understandably unwilling to be drawn. "I hope they will overcome this problem,'' he said.

He is equally unwilling to be drawn on the question of whether he would expect a second term when his five-year spell runs out in two years. "I have been working very hard over the last three years because I believe in the ideals and mission of the United Nations. I will continue to do that, but now we at the UN are facing unprecedented challenges, multiple challenges facing us all at once,'' he said. "So I am very much preoccupied in trying to coordinate the UN’s response. In time I will have an opportunity to consider this issue."

When asked if his answer appeared to be him reverting to his alleged "slippery eel" mode of evading a question, he countered, "First I have to work harder and harder'' before giving thought to a second term. "I am very humbled every day by knowing that there are so many challenges facing us, and I know I am one of the world leaders that has to work very, very hard in close coordination with the others to address those issues. So I begin every day as if it is the first day of my mandate.''

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

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Ban Ki Moon & R2P

Ban Ki Moon and R2P

Ian Williams | August 3, 2009

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Kofi Annan's greatest achievement as UN secretary general was his deft steering of the UN General Assembly to accept the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine at the 2005 World Summit.

Rather than attempting the impossible task of rewriting the UN Charter, Annan got the assembled delegates to reinterpret it. The assembled government leaders declared that the threats to international peace and security that came under the organization's remit included crimes against humanity, even when committed by a sovereign state within its borders.

Annan's successor Ban Ki Moon is a staunch supporter of the concept of R2P. The report he delivered last week, as requested in 2005, framed the discussion in a way that precluded reopening the principle. But opponents at the General Assembly and their ideological allies outside were sedulously determined to weaken R2P in practice as much as possible.

The Chinese delegate, for instance, stood the whole concept on its head by declaring that the UN must not waver from "the principles of respecting state sovereignty and non-interference of internal affairs." In contrast, Ban's report referred with more nuance to the "abiding principles of responsible sovereignty."
Debating R2P

To avert attempts to reverse the 2005 declaration R2P's proponents, not least the UN secretariat, are keeping to a tightly written script. R2P isn't the same as humanitarian intervention, they argue. Its three pillars are the responsibility of sovereign states to prevent crimes against their people, the responsibility of the international community to detect and avert such criminal situations, and the responsibility to apply varying degrees of coercion against the perpetrators from monitoring to sanctions to, if necessary, military intervention.

Proponents of R2P stress that only the UN Security Council can authorize such intervention. Ban Ki Moon's report, however, does mention the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which the United States originally invoked to fight the Korean war in spite of the Soviet veto in the Security Council. Washington has since dismissed the procedure after the Palestinians used it to bypass the U.S. veto for Israel.

Humanitarian intervention — invoked by Hitler in the Sudetenland and Japan in Manchuria — is indeed a slippery and easily abused concept. Most recently, Tony Blair's attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq as humanitarian intervention and Moscow's attempt to invoke in Georgia the principle it denied in Kosovo show the dangers.

Of course, expediency is a global disease. Cuba, which sent Che Guevara to lead rebellions across the globe, is a determined advocate of national sovereignty. Ironically, some of the most determined upholders of state sovereignty are heirs to the Leninist tradition which, in the name of proletarian internationalism, took the Red Army variously to Warsaw, Budapest, and Hungary. One of the most vocal opponents is Hugo Chavez's government, which has hardly been reticent to interfere in the politics of the neighbors.
Chomsky's Intervention

The president of the General Assembly invited noted critic of U.S. foreign policy Noam Chomsky to address the audience on the issue of R2P. Chomsky quite rightly raised the question of why there was no intervention in East Timor or why the UN stood by as Israel attacked Lebanon and Gaza. However, he claimed that the NATO air raids on Serbia actually precipitated the worst atrocities in Kosovo. This latter claim isn't only untrue but morally unpalatable in its spurious causality, like claiming that the British air raids on Germany precipitated the Nazi gas chambers. But at least Chomsky admitted that atrocities had taken place in Kosovo, which is much farther than some of his would-be acolytes have gone.

It also begs the question: Does Chomsky want international action to stop atrocities in Gaza, the Congo, or situations like Timor, or is he only opposed to "Western" interventions? Indeed, the astute delegate from Ghana took him to task for failing to address the principle of "noninterference." The African Union's charter specifically adopted "non-indifference." Its charter includes the organization's obligation to intervene.

Chomsky is quite right to point out the core weakness of the R2P proposals, which puts the onus of decision-making on the Security Council. The permanent five members of the Security Council (P5) use their veto power to protect their friends even as they accuse others of doing likewise. China protects Sudan, North Korea, and Zimbabwe, in the latter case following in British footsteps, since Britain vetoed resolutions on Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in times past. France covers for Morocco in Western Sahara. The United States has until now automatically covered for Israel, and Russia for Serbia. Britain and the United States were confident that they could use their vetoes to prevent their invasion of Iraq from appearing on the Security Council agenda just as Beijing ensures the exclusion of Taiwan from the UN and the issues of Tibet and the Uighurs from its agenda.

This expediency has given opponents of the R2P plenty of ammunition, even if their high-minded declarations about the sacredness of sovereignty tend to conceal an ugly, oligarchic self-interest. In effect, apologists for authoritarian sovereignty imply that they would happily let all murders go unchecked because some states get away with it. This argument boils down to saying that if the United States can do something, everybody else can as well, an anti-imperialism that ends up playing into the hands of leaders like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong Il. Despite their disparate ideologies, these authoritarian leaders share a deep rhetorical attachment to their countries' national sovereignty combined with a cavalier disregard for the sovereignty of others, including their own citizenry.
The Problem of Implementation

While the 2005 summit overturned the principle that what governments did within their national borders was no one else's concern, it has some way to go before achieving practical implementation. In fact, despite Bolivarian bluster from Venezuela and a few others, the real problem is not the possibility of a complaisant Security Council authorizing dubiously humanitarian interventions. The problem remains the paralysis of the body in the face of humanitarian disasters. In fact, conditioning the principle on reform of the Security Council is tantamount to making it contingent on pigs flying in formation past UN headquarters.

The possibility, the probability, and even better the certainty, of retribution would surely give pause to future leaders. The R2P principle will in the end come to life because of global public opinion forcing action. For example, even China was forced to moderate its support of Sudan in the face of international public opinion.

But Ban Ki Moon, who is tougher than his mild diplomatic manner may suggest, strongly reminded delegates that the "Secretary-General has an obligation to tell the Security Council — and in this case the General Assembly as well — what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear." His report says that the Secretary General "must be the spokesperson for the vulnerable and the threatened when their Governments become their persecutors instead of their protectors or can no longer shield them from marauding armed groups," and he singles out the P5, who "bear particular responsibility because of the privileges of tenure and the veto power they have been granted under the Charter. I would urge them to refrain from employing or threatening to employ the veto in situations of manifest failure to meet obligations relating to the responsibility to protect...and to reach a mutual understanding to that effect."

Ban can do a great deal to foment that global opinion, and is giving every appearance of wanting to do so. While the U.S. press treats Ban as invisible, the rest of the world has leant him their ears. In a recent global poll, he was the second most trusted global figure after Obama. Only global public opinion can force the P5 to live up to their responsibilities — the first of which is to ensure that no regime, not even their close friends, has a guaranteed veto against international action.

The single most significant step the United States could take to disarm some of the critics is to reverse John Bolton's dubiously legal "unsigning" of the Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court. Washington can hardly call upon the Sudanese to respect the indictment of a court that it has refused to accept itself. To ensure greater global public support for R2P — and answer some of the legitimate charges of the doctrine's critics — the United States must end its own double standards on international treaties and military intervention. Obama is more likely than any president in 40 years to make moves in that direction, so R2P has more of a future than it did a year ago.

Senior Foreign Policy In Focus analyst Ian Williams is a journalist and author. Much of his work can be found on his blog, Deadline Pundit.