Gwynne Dyer, Contributor
IF WE set out to create a farm in the wilderness, we should not expect the top local predators to help. We have our interests, and they have theirs: as our little patch of order spreads, their ability to hunt freely and dominate the local environment will be increasingly constrained. So we should not be surprised that John Bolton is trying to sabotage the reform of the United Nations.
The United States ambassador to the U.N., recently appointed by President Bush in defiance of Congress's wishes, believes that if the United Nations is not an instrument of American power, then it is an obstacle to the free exercise of American power. There is no point in getting angry about that. He and his neo-conservative colleagues are deeply traditional men and women who see world politics as a zero-sum game in which there are only winners and losers, and they believe that America's best chance of remaining a winner is to preserve the world as a free-fire zone for the exercise of U.S. military and economic power. That is why Bolton, at the last moment, entered over 400 objections to the draft agreement on the changes that are needed to make the U.N. relevant to the challenges of the 21 century.
UN ANNIVERSARY
About 175 heads of state and heads of government will be in New York by Wednesday for a three-day session to mark the U.N.'s 60 anniversary and approve the landmark document that has been under negotiation for the past year, but the last-minute U.S. intervention has re-opened many issues that were all but settled, and it is doubtful that there will even be a final document by Friday.
Bolton demanded that all references to climate change be removed, and likewise all references to wealthy countries like the U.S. committing to a goal of 0.7 per cent of their gross national product in foreign aid. There was to be no special help for developing countries to join the World Trade Organisation, and no commitment by nuclear-weapons countries to work towards nuclear disarmament. There should be no reference to the International Criminal Court (which the US is trying to destroy), and no reference either to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals on poverty, education, disease, trade and aid.
Passages promising a larger role for the General Assembly were to be struck out, as was the promise to create a standing military capacity for U.N. peacekeeping. Gone was the reaffirmation that "the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort," the promise to "encourage pharmaceutical companies to make anti-retroviral drugs affordable and accessible in Africa," and any legal responsibility for the Security Council to authorise intervention to stop genocides and ethnic cleansing. Bolton even wanted to remove the phrase "respect for nature" from the section on Values and Principles.
PROJECT CANCELLATION
Since the core project of expanding the Security Council has already been postponed for several months in the face of apparently irreconcilable ideas about how to do it (and may actually be postponed for years), Bolton's demands pretty much pulled the rug out from under the whole U.N. reform project. In three weeks of hectic negotiations, his only significant retreat has been to permit a reference to the "Millennium Development Goals". So the choice effectively becomes to let the Bush administration gut the reform process - or to let it fail for now.
The option of pressing ahead without American participation, as was done with the Kyoto accord, the International Criminal Court and a number of other recent international initiatives, does not exist in this case, for the U.S. is a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council and also contributes a quarter of the U.N.'s budget. But the current administration and its extreme world-view does not represent the views of all Americans. The United States was, after all, the original moving spirit behind the principles of the United Nations - and Presidnt Bush will not be in power forever.
"There is no such thing as the United Nations," Bolton once said.
"There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States." That sums up the neo-conservatives' view of the world, but their political power is waning as their Iraq adventure collapses and their inability to cope even with domestic disasters becomes plain. Rather than agree to an inadequate document now and foreclose the possibility of further reform for many years to come, it would be better to let the current attempt fail and try again in three years' time.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
