The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

moral rightness, cannot let itself be tied down like Gulliver by the Lilliputians. But Thomas Jefferson’s warning against “entangling alliances” has been twisted by the Bush admin- istration into a preference for going it alone wherever possible. And where we have sought the help of other nations, we have done so by asserting that “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Disdain for the U.N. and other multilateral institutions seems to have become a pillar of a neocon- servative credo, even as allies and adversaries alike have become increasingly anxious about the direc- tion of American policy and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has articulated public worries about the organization’s future. The invasion of Iraq was a crisis point because it pointedly bypassed the provisions of the U.N. Charter, which has the status of a treaty and is therefore, under our constitution, the “supreme law of the land.” To be sure, those provisions had been ignored before, but never by a major power on such a scale and on so flim- sy a basis. Incidentally, the petulant demo- nizing of the United Nations for the fact that most of its member states did not agree with us about Iraq is non- sensical: it is like blaming Fenway Park for the Red Sox. Most members believed, as I myself did, that a weak and debilitated Iraq presented no imminent threat, that we had time to let diplomacy and the inspection process work, that the ultimate human, political and economic costs of a pre-emptive policy were underes- timated, and that Western democracy was not something to be easily trans- planted in an alien culture of which we had little understanding. But even taken at face value, the aim of making Iraq a poster child for the Middle East, in hopes of a reverse domino effect, was thought naïve, even by many of our allies. President Bush’s tendency to conflate the threat of international terrorism with local conflicts, as in Chechnya and Pales- tine, has been particularly befuddling to professional observers, and further increased suspicion of American aims and motives. And the fact that the senior civilian Defense Department officials urging the attack on Iraq were the same ones who authored the infamous 1996 “Clean Break” memo- randum arguing the need to reshape the Middle East to Israel’s “strategic advantage” by overthrowing Saddam Hussein did not help at all. Nor did basic public misconcep- tions about what the U.N. is. The United Nations, now with 191 sover- eign members, is not an independent entity with a life of its own — although most Americans seem to think and speak of it as such. Rather, it is essentially a meeting place — or, more accurately, several places — with agreed rules of procedure and a secretariat to implement decisions reached by its members in accor- dance with these rules and the U.N. Charter. Lamentably, such misunderstand- ings and controversies have obscured the organization’s many accomplish- ments over the past six decades. These reside primarily in its multiple humanitarian and peacekeeping activities, which are carried out by a family of over 20 semi-autonomous specialized agencies, from the World Health Organization to the Inter- national Atomic Energy Agency. The importance of the work done by these organs cannot be overstated but it is seldom recognized or appreciated. Organizational Problems With the end of the Cold War, expectations for restoration of the United Nations’ effectiveness rose. Unfortunately, several institutional anachronisms have prevented any major improvement in its function- ing. As already noted, the Security Council long ago ceased to be the locus of authority it was designed to be. To begin with, major regional and economic powers are not included as permanent, veto-wielding members. Yet reforming its membership to include some or all of these countries presents political problems the inter- national community has been unable to overcome. A large enough expan- sion to satisfy all claimants would weaken its ability to act; in addition, no country was willing to risk losing a privileged position on the Council. So we are effectively frozen in the sta- tus quo of a body whose make-up is regarded by many as having highly limited legitimacy. To fix this problem, Security Council membership should be a function of the U.N. assessment scale that accurately measures economic power and its derivative, military potential. The five countries required to make the largest financial contribu- tions to the body would serve as per- manent members. (Perhaps then the U.S. would be more diligent about paying its dues on time.) This formu- la would automatically put Japan (which pays 19.6 percent of the bud- get) and Germany (9.8 percent) on the Council alongside the U.S. (22 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 4 Demonizing the U.N. because most of its member states did not agree with us about Iraq is like blaming Fenway Park for the Red Sox.