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Oh Really, O’Reilly?

Here's Bill O'Reilly last night: "So far, the United Nations has not responded to the pirate threat. Are you surprised? 'Talking Points' believes the U.N. could blockade the Somali ports where the pirates live, thereby crushing the threat. Is that hard? No, all it takes is will."

This is a cheap shot.  The United Nations has been on top of this for several months.  In fact, the UN's World Food Program is the single entity most directly affected by piracy off the Somali coast. Some 95% of all humanitarian aid to Somalia and other east African countries passes through the region. Indeed, WFP humanitarian aid en route to WFP's Kenyan headquarters was the cargo of the Maersk Alabama.   

Back in June, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1816, which called for international coordination of anti-piracy efforts in the Indian Ocean. It also authorized the use of force to combat piracy, providing the legal foundation for things like sniper shots and attacks on pirate vessels.   The international fleets in the Indian Ocean today are there precisely because the UN took action.  Oh, and back in December the Security Council passed Resolution 1851, authorizing "land pursuit" of pirates.

Also, for the record, the United Nations does not have a navy.  It cannot "blockade" the Somali ports.  Of course, "blockade" seems to imply that the action would be geared toward denying the enemy access to goods that it would otherwise receive absent the blockade.  What exactly would a blockade of Somalia accomplish?  Intercepting humanitarian aid before it reaches Somalia?  Wouldn't that sort of defeat the whole purpose of fighting the pirates in the first place?

UPDATE:  Two thoughtful op eds explain what, precisely, a blockade would entail. Still, "the UN" does not have a navy.  Conducting a cordon of Somali ports would require the cooperation of a multi-national coalition of the willing.

You indict our human rights? Well, your peacekeeping sucks.

Even if you're the president of the country in question, even if some of your frustration is justified, and even if you're not feeling particularly thrilled with the UN at the moment, this should still not be how you commemorate the 15th anniversary of a horrendous genocide. "Lambast[ing] the 'cowardice' of the UN," as the BBC juicily titles its account of Rwandan President Paul Kagame's speech today, is neither productive nor justifiable, and it does nothing to honor the memories of over 800,000 Rwandans who perished in the brutal 100-day span that began 15 years ago today.

When the scant contingent of UN peacekeepers all but departed Rwanda during the genocide, over the protestations of General Romeo Dallaire, it was indeed a shameful exhibit of cowardice. The cowardice, however, was not that of those UN blue helmets, ten of whose comrades were slaughtered at the genocide's outset and who were pulled out of the country by forces beyond their control. Nor is it the cowardice of "the UN" cum blanket entity that deserves reprehension. The community of nations writ large bears no small share of responsibility for allowing the genocide to develop, accelerate, and climax, and each country in that mix -- including post-conflict Rwanda itself -- needs to deal with that painful legacy. But scapegoating a few UN peacekeepers, whose mandate was beyond their control, and who were the only token response that powerful countries deigned to allow, sidesteps the real questions of justice, culpability, and reconciliation in Rwanda.

The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping (DPKO) learned a great deal from the tragic experience of Rwanda. Its failure there, coupled with others in the 90's, spurred the development of the seminal "Brahimi doctrine," a 2000 report outlining the appropriate circumstances for UN peacekeeping engagement and the overriding imperative of garnering adequate support for missions. While DPKO -- and, more importantly, Security Council members and troop contributors -- could probably stand to refresh themselves with the dictates of the Brahimi report these days, the UN and the international community have unquestionably learned lessons from Rwanda.

It couldn't be that President Kagame's pot shot at the UN is in retaliation for this critique of Rwanda's human rights practices, now, could it? That wouldn't make much sense; not only are DPKO and the UN Human Rights Committee completely different entities, but such a petty gesture certainly would not befit such a somber anniversary. Plus, you'd think France would be more deserving of Kagame's ire.

(image of Rwandan President Kagame, speaking in front of the UN in 2007)

Straw Men at the Foreign Policy Initiative

Newly in the minority, conservative heavyweights Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol have started up a new advocacy group, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), to combat the specter of isolationism they see looming in the United States. The problem is, the worldview that they have set out to oppose is just that -- a specter. According to the comments of another of the group's co-founders, Dan Senor, to FP's Laura Rozen, the Foreign Policy Initiative's mission seems to be relying on a whole bunch of straw men:
"We believe America is the indispensable nation, as President Clinton said," Senor, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Foreign Policy. "And we believe it's the exactly wrong time to demote America's role in the world. And we are seeing an emerging bipartisan consensus on a range of issues from cutting the defense budget to a minimalist approach in Afghanistan to the importance of currying favor with the Russian government at the expense of democratic allies Ukraine and Georgia. We think there needs to be consensus on the other side of these issues." [emphasis mine]
They're right -- America is an "indispensable nation." What's disturbing about this critique is the suggestion that, by engaging in more multilateral efforts, by emphasizing diplomacy over confrontation, the United States is somehow "demoting" its role. Foreign affairs is not a zero-sum game -- just the opposite, in fact. By enhancing relationships and improving cooperation between countries, everybody wins; America's role -- not as bully, but as leading partner -- is validated, its alliances are strengthened, and its objectives are more easily achieved. In my eyes, this is a promotion of America's role in the world. As for the "emerging bipartisan consensus" that Senor alludes to, I'm not exactly sure what government he is observing. The Obama Administration actually plans on increasing the defense budget (and Republicans are certainly on board for this as well), and the President's Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy being unveiled this morning certainly does not curtail current U.S. presence in the former. And again, the beauty of a more open foreign policy is that the United States can both replace saber-rattling with Russia with rapprochement and retain good relations with its democratic neighbors. A good foreign policy think tank from the minority is a very healthy part of American democracy; hopefully FPI will begin by contesting policies that actually exist. (image from flickr user Ian Haycox under a Creative Commons license)

In Which Claudia Rosett and I Agree on Two Things

Okay, maybe one and a half. But still. This is not something that happens very often. The first, that General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto Brockman should be using his position less divisively. Rosett quotes d'Escoto as urging "a united nations, not a subjugated nations." He then should work in support of fostering this unity, rather than grandstanding in Tehran to attack certain member states (you can guess which one) and to cleave an even deeper divide than already exists between those he calls "subjugated" and those he would decry as subjugators. d'Escoto is of course entitled to his personal views, but as the most visible representative of the United Nations' all-inclusive body, he should concern himself more with facilitating global dialogue, mending differences, and creating a productive work atmosphere, rather than inflaming tensions and exacerbating existing hostilities. Still, Claudia, there’s no need for jibes about his "substantial girth." The second is the affirmative answer to the question that Rosett poses (albeit derisively) in the title of her column: "does the UN really matter?" To Rosett, it only seems to matter in that it sucks money, grants legitimacy to nefarious actors, breeds terrorists, et cetera -- her standard diatribe. The true answer to the question, I trust, is more easily obvious to any who have ever actually interacted with UN blue berets. Does the UN really matter to the child in Kenya who receives vaccinations from UN aid workers? Does the UN really matter to the woman in Afghanistan who went to the polls for the first time thanks to the UN's help? Does the UN really matter to the family in Haiti whose house UN peacekeepers helped rebuild? As Rosett intones with ignorant sarcasm, yes, the UN matters a lot. (image of General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann)

The Myth of a UN “Green Tax”

Before Drudge readers start scanning the sky for the black helicopters of UN tax collectors, let us quickly explain the misleading fallacy of this headline: UN seeks tax on oil to create $750 billion 'Green New Deal'... Just to make it clear, the UN cannot, will not, and has no interest in imposing a tax -- on oil, or anything else -- for member states. Again: the United Nations cannot tax and has no intention of taxing any country. The comments of the head of the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) in the Reuters article in question -- which is actually titled "$750 billion "green" investment could revive economy: U.N." -- are simply a suggestion of what individual countries could decide to do on their own to both green the economy and get it going again. The recommendations of UNEP's report, moreover, include such sensible policy options as investing in energy efficient buildings, improving public transportation, and bolstering nature protection provisions. Not, come to think of it, too far off from what the stimulus bill here in the United States is already seeking to implement. (image of UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner)

Claudia Rosett’s Fuzzy Fractions

Well, no surprise that this UN-lover is pouncing upon Ban Ki-moon's recent choice of words in chastising the United States for its perpetual debt to the United Nations. No surprise either that Rosett is playing as fast and loose with figures as ever; in the course of begrudging the United States even paying (belatedly, to be sure) its agreed-upon UN dues, she unleashes this bit of baffling number-bending:
Bear in mind that those dues are just a small fraction of the billions upon billions that the U.S. actually forks over every year to the UN in the form of additional funds — including voluntary contributions, support for UN agencies, special programs, donations to emergency appeals, peacekeeping and whatnot.
The United States owes 22%, or a little over a billion dollars, of the UN's current $5 billion regular budget. In addition, it pays is supposed to pay about 26% (still below what it would owe if it paid a proportionate share of its GDP) of the UN's peacekeeping budget, which is about $7 billion. And, all told the U.S. contributions to the other "voluntary contributions...and whatnot" that Rosett so flippantly cites -- and which is "fork[ed] over" to such unimportant causes as funding humanitarian responses to natural disasters, feeding the world's hungry, and building schools and hospitals in the developing world -- amount to another $3 billion. So bear with me for a little basic algebra: a little under $2 billion for peacekeeping, plus $3 billion for voluntary organizations, makes about $5 billion. $1 billion over $5 billion could be translated into the fraction 1/5, or 20%. Is this a "small fraction of [] billions upon billions?" It seems just as well to consider the United States' $1.3 billion debt to UN peacekeeping -- which constitutes about 1/5 of the entire peacekeeping budget -- a "small fraction." And if you ask the peacekeepers facing these shortages whether it's such a "small fraction," I think they'd disagree. (image from flickr under a Creative Commons license)

Response to Durban Hysterics

David Harris, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in New York pens this refreshingly sane rebuke to the most rabid of the anti-Durban extremists (whose excesses I have denounced here and here, among other places). When the United States opted to test the waters and send a delegation to the conference's preparatory meetings in Geneva last month, one of the members was the AJC's Felice Gaer. Predictably, Gaer was demonized, and, as Harris relates, the AJC's participation became "red meat for a chorus of critics, led by writers Caroline Glick in Israel, Anne Bayefsky in the U.S., and Melanie Phillips in the U.K." These frantic voices levelled unconscionable and unhinged attacks on AJC's patriotism, integrity, and support for Israel, also assuring that, by simply appearing for talks, the United States was dooming itself, and the entire West, to complicity in a morals-eroding, world order-destroying "hate-fest." Harris' response to such over the top pronouncements:
In the end, these three well-known observers, in their consequences-be-damned approach to Durban II, got it wrong. They viciously lashed out at anyone who dared to disagree on tactics, irresponsibly questioned motives, incorrectly prophesied the U.S. position and failed to see that European nations were now more, not less, likely to walk out. Indeed, Italy adopted the U.S. stance within days. To become so blatantly and blindly partisan and to irresponsibly accuse groups like AJC of cavorting with Holocaust deniers and doing willful damage to Israel, is, I’d say, well over the top.
An even greater tragedy than the fact that the United States will not be attempting to further its agenda by participating at Durban is that the debate leading up to the conference was so skewed by such baseless, and often ad hominem, attacks. Reasoned debate and discussion would have been the best way to attempt to move the conference to a credible anti-racism platform, and reasoned debate and discussion would have been the proper way to argue in the lead-up to the conference. Unfortunately, we were left with neither.

One More Thought on the “Anti-Blasphemy” Kerfuffle

A few days ago I noted a number of factual inaccuracies in a mindless segment on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight about a purported attempt by the United Nations to curb Americans' freedom of expression. In the course of the course of responding to Lou Dobbs I made one inaccurate statement of my own. I said "There's never been an anti-blasphemy resolution passed in the General Assembly and I don't expect there ever will be." While technically true, the General Assembly has taken up the functional equivalent in resolutions passed under the aegis of "Combating Defamation of Religions." There are a couple of further points I feel I should make about this.