Viewpoint
Bush actions put U.N. credibility on the line
By PATRICK G. COY
President Bush issued a public
ultimatum to the United Nations in his Sept. 12 speech there. This public act
must be understood as part of a larger gauntlet he has thrown down to challenge
the United Nations, much of it behind the scenes.
Bush challenged the United Nations to force Iraq to adhere to U.N.
resolutions regarding disarmament, or the United States would force it to do
so, presumably through unilateral warfare. In the week following his talk, the
president continued to publicly raise the ante: “The United Nations will
either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st
century, or it will be irrelevant. And that’s what we’re about to
find out,” Bush said. “The United Nations [must] show some backbone
and resolve as we confront the true challenges of the 21st century.” But
he added, “Make no mistake about it, if we [the United States] have to
deal with the problem, we will deal with it.”
Conflict resolution theory and practice show us that ultimatums
issued in multiparty forums typically reveal two things: severe power
imbalances between the two parties, which is what the ultimatum is designed by
the more powerful to exploit; and a corresponding lack of openness and good
will on the part of the party that has thrown down the gauntlet. Both are on
display here.
President Bush claims that Saddam Hussein has “put the
credibility of the United Nations on the line.” True enough, but it is
also true that Bush’s ultimatum also threatens U.N. credibility over the
long term. When the United Nations is seen as susceptible to ultimatums by its
most powerful member, it risks success in speaking with an authoritative voice
to all countries, large and small, influential or not so.
The Bush administration has actually been engaged over the past
six months in a series of strong-arm tactics with the United Nations, actions
that ultimately weaken the organization’s ability to evade the irrelevancy
that Bush purports to be concerned about. While none of these American actions
are as well known as the gauntlet thrown down so dramatically in his U.N.
speech, they are no less corrosive for the United Nations’ health and the
multilateralism for which it stands.
In April, the United States ousted Jose Bustani, the Brazilian
director-general of the 145-nation Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons, the U.N. agency policing the international chemical weapons ban.
Bustani refused to follow U.S. policy, tried to bring Iraq into the
organization’s fold, and forcefully pursued multilateral, nonviolent
solutions to chemical weapons destruction in Iraq and elsewhere. These were the
“ill-conceived initiatives” of which Bustani was accused by
Washington. The first time a director general of a U.N. agency had been fired
in midterm, it was even more remarkable because it came only a year after
Bustani was unanimously reelected to a second five-year term.
Bustani’s ouster followed by a week the dismissal of Robert
Watson as chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a
scientific body charged with assessing causes of climate change. Watson, who
was removed after pressures from Washington and from Exxon-Mobil via
Washington, was outspoken on the threats of global warming and a strong
supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty to reduce industrial nations’
emissions of greenhouse gases, which the Bush administration has refused to
sign. In both cases, U.S. and U.N. officials indicated that Washington had used
direct and indirect threats of nonpayment of dues to leverage its argument.
This is no small threat from the United States, already notorious for
dereliction of its dues-paying duty.
The highest-ranking U.N. official to run afoul of the Bush
administration was Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who was
“eased out” last month as only the second U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights. Robinson, who received high marks internationally for her
dedication to victims and her fearlessness in the face of violators, said she
was let go because of pressure from the United States, which she frequently
accused of violating human rights during its war on terrorism.
The current crisis that President Bush has forced upon the United
Nations is real, not only because of his public ultimatum, but also due to the
private, behind-the-scenes tampering and bullying by the organization’s
sole superpower outlined above. While the United Nation’s credibility and
future effectiveness is indeed on the line, it must be not be understood in the
simplistic and disingenuous way pointed to by President Bush. It is not just
Saddam Hussein whose actions threaten U.N. credibility. George W. Bush may be
the greater long-term threat.
Patrick G. Coy is associate professor at the Center for Applied
Conflict Management at Kent State University in Ohio.
National Catholic Reporter, October 11,
2002
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