The U.N. Rub

It’s easy to bash the U.N. I mean, here’s a club that just about anyone can join. You’ve got your democracies, your communist parties, your fascists, your quasi-terrorist organizers all sharing the same dance floor and supposedly trying to “get along.” (Taiwan, notably can’t join, but that’s another story.) How can you take seriously an organization whose members, when deciding on how to keep the world at peace, routinely vote their own interests – fears, biases, religions, pocket books, etc. -- over what is “right”? Moreover, it can be argued that it’s largely ineffective, at least in the area of keeping the bad guys in line. On the other hand, it is effectively a soap box for every wacko world leader wannabe who wants to bash the U.S. while waving around Noam Chomsky books. All in all, it’s really a dreadful entity.

But here’s the rub: What are our alternatives?

Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the very worst sort of government – except for all of those others.” He meant that despite all of democracy’s shortcomings – the pork-barreling, the pandering, the corruption – it’s still the best system that has been developed to date. If we don’t have democracy, then what are we left with? Answer: Something worse. So from that perspective, let’s examine some of the purposes that the U.N. serves (although maybe not so well).

Although the assembly might be a place where even the worst kind of people get their say, at least they’re talking and not bombing. So what if they like to badmouth the U.S.? There are worse things that can happen. Sticks and stones. Let them blow off their steam. Leaders are always harangued just like even the best boss is occasionally lambasted by his employees. At least the bad guys are using a forum where we can keep our eye on them. It would be facetious to say that nothing good comes out of the talks. In fact, any talk tends to be good talk. Imagine the world like it was at the beginning of the 20^th century before the League of Nations when European countries squared off against each other just to see who was tougher. A big part of the problem was that there existed no forum for communication. In some way it was easier to fight it out than to talk it out. If you don’t communicate with your enemies, it’s easier to maintain the belief that they’re faceless monsters who want to eat our children. You might say that “talk is cheap” and that we should stick our foot up the ass of whatever country threatens us. I would point to Iraq and say that you’re right: talk would have been a lot cheaper than the mess we’re in there.

The idea that the U.N. is ineffective carries a lot of water. Of course the U.N. is largely powerless. The U.S. helps to keep it that way. An organization like the U.N. can never be greater than the sum of its parts. President Bush bashes and undermines the U.N., then complains that it’s ineffective. Go figure. It won’t be powerful until we make it that way by supporting it with both our words and our dollars. To those who complain about trusting in the U.N. or sending them our money, I say this: It would have been a lot cheaper in lives and currency to have trusted Hans Blix over the warmongers and oil companies. Again, we have to use our imagination: what would the world look like if the U.S. acted as a role model for the rest of the world by truly supporting the U.N. mission?

I can understand some of the arguments against this; for example, why would we want to grant too much power to an entity that could one day come to threaten us? Why would we want to support an international court that could possibly try some of our very own as war criminals? I wouldn’t put that kind of trust in a body that is so clearly influenced by the political interests and wacko’s mentioned above. There are serious, potentially fatal, limitations. On the other hand, there are serious problems with the alternatives. War is expensive in lives, money, and environmental impact. I, for one, would rather listen to Chavez rave for an hour than send my children to war.

The rub keeps on rubbing. The U.N., if not broken, is at least seriously flawed. Should we disband it? No. We might as well just rev up the nukes. Should we reform it? Yes. Take what we’ve got, support it, and make it work. It will never be perfect. No governmental body is perfect – or even close to it. Unfortunately, for the moment, it’s the best thing – the only thing really -- that we’ve got.