Walking the Walk
The United Nations Enters 2004
Newton Bowles remarks
Group of 78 Luncheon, with UNAC and SID
Ottawa
March 30, 2004
Good afternoon. I am glad to be here, and I feel lucky to be a Canadian. The United Nations, where the gap between words and deeds is so evident, can be a school for cynics. Are we walking the walk or just talking the talk? No government is clear and consistent, but in the company of nations Canada looks pretty good. Of course, it is easier to feel good about Canada when you don't live here. Apart from our political squabbles and our own share of home-grown nuts, we have hockey as our national sport, a most violent game. Peacekeeping is for export; at home we put it on ice. But then, to keep us laughing, we also have our share of clowns, even here in Ottawa.
It is your turn to say: Look who's talking. Sometimes I wonder why you keep asking me back, year after year. But I have a clue. Last fall, when our Board was considering whether to have a panel discussion (as we did last year) or just me, Peggy (Mason) said, let's have Newton, we make more money from Newton. So now I understand why I am here.
With us today we have friends from the UN Association and, for the first time, from the Society for International Development. In welcoming SID, I am welcoming myself. For many years I have been a member of SID; my old friend, the late Jim Grant, was a founder of SID. We are all in this together.
Around the UN, there is a magic formula for problem solving: put heads of state together. This is called a summit, a gathering at the mountaintop. I recall a saying of one of my uncles. He delighted to say: The mountain goat leaped from precipice to precipice, and back to piss again. Old goats never die.
You will understand that this is not something I would say at the UN. Heads of State have sensitive egos. Though I remember Hugo Chavez of Venezuela saying that in his first months as President, he had already been to six summits. We go from summit to summit, he said, while nothing changes for the poor.
At the UN, the summit of all summits was held at the start of this century, the UN Millenium Summit in the year 2000. A set of Millenium Goals was adopted at that Summit. The goals are comprehensive and serious, with specific targets covering poverty, peace and security, human rights, education and health, to be reached by the year 2015. This is a plan of action for the entire UN system. This is entirely new for the UN, deliberately designed to move from talk to walk. At the UN, endorsement by Heads of State is the highest level of commitment. The UN entered the new millenium as the bands played on.
But the music didn't last very long. In less than a year came the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington sending a shock wave around the world. Panic in our great neighbour to the south led to the Iraq crisis, sending US-led military into Iraq despite the opposition of most members of the UN. In the USA, dormant paranoia was aroused by the very real terrorist threat and led to the proclamation of a radically new foreign policy, the right to strike before being attacked -- pre-emptive action. The USA alone would decide who is a threat.
This is no joke, it would be a complete retreat from UN principles for peaceful settlement negotiated among nations; force only as a last resort, through the Security Council. Iraq was, and is, the test case.
The Iraq crisis also ignited dangerous religious and quasi-ethnic passions. Islam was too often tarred with the terrorist brush. The flip side of this was that anti-Semitism was intensified, fed by the festering wound of Palestine/Israel.
Very much to the point are comments by Madame Megawati Sockarnoputri, President of Indonesia, speaking at the General Assembly last September. Remember, Indonesia had suffered a terrorist attack in Bali. Here are excerpts from her speech:
...As in other Muslim countries, adherents of mainstream Islam in Indonesia practice moderation and are strongly opposed to violence. Although they are a small splinter group in the large Indonesian community of Muslims, the perpetrators of those terrorist acts represent a branch of international terrorism. The motives and justifying arguments of their movement apparently stem from the prolonged unjust attitude exhibited by big Powers towards countries whose inhabitants profess Islam, particularly as regards resolving the Middle East conflict.
Let us prevent the root causes of terrorism from spreading and triggering the emergence of other unsatisfactory aspirations, including in the social and economic spheres. The failure to reach consensus at the recent meetings of the World Trade Organization and the continued slow progress -- not to say stalemate -- in the implementation of various social and economic global agendas will only complicate and proliferate existing global problems.
(A/58/PV.8, pp. 16-17)
Besides Iraq, there is Afghanistan with its convulsive chaos.
Can peace and democracy ride on the heels of an army?
Terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq: what an icy blast after the Millenium Summit. Bringing this to the very heart of the UN was the bombing of the UN office in Baghdad. Nineteen UN staff were killed, including Sergio De Mello, one of our best. This happened on 19 August 2003. Kofi Annan was deeply hurt. Not long after, he spoke at the General Assembly. This is what he said:
We have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than in 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded...
Now we must decide whether it is possible to continue on the basis agreed then, or whether radical changes are needed...
(A/58/PV.7, pp. 3)
A fork in the road. Where do we go from here? Yogi Berra, the great sage of baseball, said: If you come to a fork in the road, take it. This sounds funny, but it is the kind of advice that comes out of political paralysis. Have terror and Iraq brought the UN to a dead end, or have terror and Iraq forced us to find a better way? Is reform possible?
What is wrong with the UN is both history and today. The structure of the UN is out of date, with its Security Council in effect empowered to run the show -- as you know, the Council is in the hands of its five permanent members, the World War allies. The Council's job is to keep the peace, and its decisions are binding on all 191 members. Everyone agrees that the Council should be more representative of the world today; but so far, after 10 years gestation, nothing has happened. To be effective, to act, the Council has to be small, so there is room for only a few more. Left to themselves, regional blocs cannot agree on their candidates. For now, there is no way out of this impasse, so the old Council carries on.
As for the General Assembly, from its recent session there came at least an attempt to streamline its work, to consolidate its agenda, to focus on decisive issues. This looks procedural but it could be political, aligning the agenda with the Millenium Goals.
So it's Kofi Annan to the rescue. Anticipating paralysis, the Secretary-General did two things:
First - he revived the Millenium Goals: Look, this is what you said you would do.
Second - reaching outside for help, he appointed a panel, seasoned internationals, to come up with ideas on how to get moving. He called this a High Level Panel on Global Security: Threats, Challenges and Change. Although the spring-board for the panel is security, it is plunging into the whole big blue UN sea: structure, functions, resources. The word is change, not reform; pragmatic, not perfect. The Panel must say its piece to the General Assembly by next September.
Meantime, we have the Goals, a framework for judging and planning. Kofi Annan takes the Goals seriously. He has presented the Assembly with a detailed analysis of what has been done and what needs to be done. It is the first and best of its kind, a realistic picture of the UN voyageur. You can get it on the UN web -- document A/58/323.
Kofi Annan's High Level Panel will take note of a fascinating development in the UN system, the fact that the Security Council is now into nation building. There are now some 15 UN peacekeeping or peace-making operations with 40,000 personnel. The Council has come to realize that any stable peace rests on human security, not military power. Nowadays, peace operations launched by the Council are predominantly civilian for nation building, with the military subsumed. This has happened because the narrow military approach simply does not work in nations torn apart by civil war or in the new-born like Timor Leste (East Timor).
The General Assembly of course is not happy about this deeper approach to security, in which the Council takes on functions that the UN Charter assigned to the Assembly. Although only a few countries are under the wing of the Security Council, yet they are the main beneficiaries of UN nation building. And only the Security Council can do it. But this does nothing to bridge the gap between the Security Council and the General Assembly.
Terror, Iraq, human security, nation building, all converge to tell us that a piece-meal approach toward a better world won't work. We desperately need a new structure for growth, for development, replacing the bitter fruits of market-driven globalization. A great achievement of the last bloody century was the legalization of human rights through international treaties. Most nations have signed up to the basic treaties. Thus we have a normative framework for peace, security and development. The summit goals are markers of where we are on that road.
Of all the goals, poverty reduction is the most basic and the most comprehensive. It is also the problem that the political UN, the house ruled by Kofi Annan, is least equipped to deal with. In the loosely associated network of international institutions, only the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization have the potential to push globalization towards serving the poor. Trade and investment are the keys to growth; and at present there is no overall authority or policy governing and steering these runaway engines.
Once again I say meantime, and fortunately because of the UN the times are not all mean. The UN does play a critical role in social development (health, education, rights) and in the 50-odd poorest countries. To combat killer disease, especially HIV/AIDS, there is none other than the UN system. Nor should we forget the compassionate role of UN humanitarian assistance reaching out to some 50 million victims. A sad fact about our violent world is that the UN gets hardly one-half of the funding it needs, even for the specific jobs it has been asked to do.
So where are we? You could say that, as a human family, the world is in its infancy, just learning to walk. We can take a few steps, we fall, we turn back. Where are we going? Painful lessons are thrust upon us. And by us I must include our great neighbour to the south. We are reluctant to learn.
One lesson is that basic problems of poverty, inequity and tyranny cannot be solved by military power. Force is needed to protect against force, but not to eradicate force.
Blind use of force can create problems, not solve them. This is what Madam Megawati of Indonesia was saying. This is specific to terrorism. Right after 9/11, the USA took terrorism to the Security Council, and the Council launched a world-wide action against terrorists. Although this action continues, the USA has tried to go it alone, relying on its military. So far we seem to be less, not more secure from terrorism. There is no substitute for brains.
And then, you can't control weapons of mass destruction by creating more of them. This can play into the hands of terrorists. For the USA to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons will hardly induce other nations to hold back. Planning so-called missile defense, a disguise for putting weapons in space, can only make the whole world less secure. Fear is no substitute for brains.
So much for reliance on military force. On human rights, where are we? On the down side, many countries have reacted to terrorism by curtailing political freedom, civil rights. Kofi Annan warns that, in so doing, we can be creating more terrorists. Canada's Louise Arbour will have a tough job when she takes over as UN Human Rights Commissioner in June. We salute her courage and wish her well.
And now we have a functioning International Criminal Court. Canada's Philippe Kirsch presided over the birth of this Court and now is its presiding judge. This is a first in human history. Brutal warlords won't bed down so cosily any more.
A paradox, on the darker side, is that, here and there, the UN has become a target for violent attack. Despite the fact that the UN did not support US invasion of Iraq, the UN was bombed in Baghdad. Osama bin Laden and Al Quaeda regard the UN as their enemy. In Arab states, the bitter Palestine/Israel conflict is somehow laid at the UN doorstep. More generally, in domestic wars where the civil population is the target, it is almost impossible for UN humanitarian operations to be regarded as impartial. UN people are harassed, killed.
Paradoxically, the tragedy of Iraq may end up by strengthening the UN. Already the USA has called on the UN to introduce some expertise into giving Iraq back to its people. How long can US occupation be maintained? The Spanish election was a moment of truth. Spain is pulling out of Iraq until the UN takes over.
As a student, I spent my undergraduate years at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. Over the college portico you could read: “The truth shall make you free.” Everyone can embrace that, so long as you don't define the truth. The UN is our best definition of truth among nations. Freedom will come only by living the truth. I hope that Kofi Annan's recent visit to Ottawa was more than talk, that Canada will take its mind and heart to the difficult UN walk.
My UN home in New York is UNICEF, where I have a desk in the UNICEF emergency office. The superb emergency team includes half a dozen young Canadians. They are wonderful. They give me hope.
Many of you will have read Chris Hedges' little book called War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. Chris is an unusual person, a Harvard graduate in Divinity who spent 15 years as an addicted war correspondent in the most gruesome places. In the end of his book, trying to rise above the horrors he has seen, this is what he says:
To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures.
(Hedges, pp. 184-185)
Who are we? Why are we here? In the new edition of my book on the UN, the last sentence is this:
The future is inevitable after it happens.
Questions, concerns or comments can be forwarded to the Group of 78 at: group78@web.ca.
