LONDON– On too many occasions the UN has been the big man’s whipping-boy. Bill Clinton for one has kicked it harder than his two immediate Republican predecessors ever did. Nikita Krushchev banged his shoe at it and Charles de Gaulle called it “ce machin”. Yet once again we see how in a crisis the big powers run to it to get themselves off the hook, this time for a bombing no one really had the argument or stomach for.
Back in 1954 there was the charged incident over the capture of 17 U.S. airmen by China. American opinion became extremely agitated. There was even some wild talk about the use of nuclear weapons. The UN was asked to intervene and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold went to Beijing to talk to Premier Chou Enlai. It took six months of negociating but finally the men were released. Dwight Eisenhower, the then U.S. president, has a whole chapter in his book on the incident, but Hammarskjold’s central role is almost totally ignored.
It is the same in Robert Kennedy’s book on the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. came perilously close to a nuclear exchange. There is only a passing mention of Secretary General U Thant’s letter to the Soviet Premier, Khrushchev, written in the face of a strong protest by the Soviet ambassador to the UN. Yet it was U Thant’s letter that elicitated a crucial response from Khrushchev indicating that there was room for compromise.
In Suez in 1956, in Lebanon in 1958, in the Congo in 1969 and in the 1973 Middle East war it was the UN that provided the escape hatch for the big powers who had put themselves on a collision course. In the wake of the Yom Kippur war, although both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had agreed in principle to a cease-fire there seemed to be no way of implementing it. The situation looked exceedingly dangerous. Egypt was calling for Soviet help. Richard Nixon put the U.S. on a nuclear alert. It was fast footwork at the UN, principally by a group of Third World nations, that helped break the impasse. They pushed for a UN force to go in–and, unbelievably by the slow lights of modern day interventions, it was on the ground the next day.
Hammarskjold was undoubtedly the greatest of all Secretary Generals. Although elected because he was an accomplished bureaucrat he matured into a leader with a mystical feeling of mission.
He attempted to steer the UN into Laos in 1959 to pre-empt military aid from the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He hoped that once he got the principle of a UN presence established it could be applied to the rest of Indo-China. But the U.S. and the Soviet Union resisted his effort with ferocity–a tragedy since it could have averted the war in Vietnam and Cambodia.
He had a better response with Africa’s first post-colonial civil war in the Congo. Hammarskjold managed this time to persuade the UN to intervene because both the Soviet Union and America feared the development of anarchy and worried about the political cost of pre-empting each other. But when the Congolese government split, with the West and the East taking different sides, the UN effort nearly disintegrated. Hammarskjold was considering resignation when in a final effort to resolve the secession of mineral-rich Katanga his plane crashed and he was killed.
With this victory in Baghdad the present Secretary General, Kofi Annan, looks more ready than any office-holder since Hammarskjold to take up his mantle. He played the cards dealt with him by the U.S., Iraq, Russia and France with subtle patience and strategic finesse.
Yet the UN is a pale shadow of what it could become, as a mediator and peace-maker, not to mention its work with refugees, nuclear proliferation or the critical role its ancillary, the International Monetary Fund, is playing in the Asian crisis. All of these are strapped for cash, mainly because of America’s failure to pay its $1 billion back dues in the case of the central UN or to increase its quota in the case of the IMF.
Even though the finger of blame today is usually pointed at Congress rather than the White House the denigration of the UN that led to Congress’ disenchantment owes much to Mr. Clinton.
Clinton had taken office committed to reinvigorating the UN. Candidate Clinton had even called for the establishment of a small, standing, UN “rapid-deployment force”.
All this was buried in the sands of Somalia during the UN intervention in its civil war in 1993, a mission that went horribly wrong when a great fire-fight led to serious American casualties–18 killed, 78 wounded. Contrary to what was said at the time only a minority of U.S. soldiers were under UN command. And the operation that led to the gun battle was initiated by the Special Operations Command in Florida. But when it all went wrong the Clinton Administration cruelly tried to shift the blame, briefing the press that American lives were lost because of flaws in the UN command.
Right now the White House and Congress owe the UN one. Annan got them off the Iraqi hook where political hype had impaled them. American soldiers’ lives were saved from what would have been an unnecessary war. It really is America’s time to pay up and give this talented and proficient Secretary General all the support he deserves.
