Harper’s magazine is running an essay, Wishful Thinking: The Aspirations and Failures of the United Nations, by Amanda Chicago Lewis. I guess if your name is Chicago you may be forgiven to be somewhat myopic, and present your country in the best light possible, or at least everyone else in a bad light.
Over many years, writers and public intellectuals in the global south have been quite critical about the way that especially the USA has undermined the United Nations, and simply ignored what passes for international law and UN regulations. Ms Lewis, has come aboard the anti-UN train, and builds her opposition, or her criticism of the UN (it is not free from criticism) on the right-wingers, anti-globalists and at least one person whom we are reminded, was a US Navy seal, as if that necessary carries weight and credibility among those people who have had to face the wrath of the US military.
Just a small note to Ms Lewis: The rest of the world, more than six billion people in almost 200 countries, don’t see Navy SEALS as peacemakers, as a benevolent force in the world or as the good guys!
The US has undermined the UN’s work in many ways since its creation. This effort to undermine the UN rests on deeply held beliefs about US exceptionalism, as expressed by George Kennan, the Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State for Foreign Affairs to his colleagues in that country’s government.
“We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity… We should cease to talk about the raising of standards, human rights and democracy… The less we are … hampered by idealistic slogans, the better,” Kennan said.
He would, of course, go on to become a respected scholar (respected by his own people)….
What Ms Lewis seems to ignore is the way that the US has used its influence and veto power in the UN security council to protect its own interests, and blocked resolutions on Israel. Ms Lewis correctly states that the UN aspired to prevent war, but she fails to detail that the US has been at war almost constantly since the 1950s and, (with the 2003 invasion of Iraq) ignored the Security Council such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Surely these beliefs (by Kennan) and the wars of the US has contributed to the undermining of the UN – less so, I would argue (as the Navy Seal would have us believe) that the UN was “heavily corrupt by nature,” “untrustworthy,” and “not effective at stopping conflicts. They’ve never had a program that’s been successful”.
It is almost as if the actual most important and powerful people in the UN never presided over the corruption, they were always trustworthy and have been effective at stopping conflicts. For instance, the US tried to stop conflict in Afghanistan, first by helping the Mujahedeen durng the 1980s, then again with the invasion in 2001…. And the violence (especially against women) in Afghanistan has not stopped. If the UN is corrupt, then the most powerful leaders within the UN-System ought to be held accountable. Ms Lewis does not seem to care. She writes straight out of the anti-globalist textbook of the Trump-era (presaged by John Bolton, to whom she refers, and before that the John Birch Society)
With respect to international law and institutions…. People in the global south have turned to international/multilateral institutions for stability. There were, of course, notable exceptions. But for a country (and a people) who imagine themselves as holders of the moral highground, the US has seriously undermined international/multilateral institutions – and because of the US power and influence in these institutions, Washington may be held at least as accountable as any country that the Navy SEALS have invaded or where Washington has fomented or waged war; from Vietnam to Chile!
I guess the biggest surprise, to me, was that Harper’s ran Ms Lewis’s essay. In more than 40 years of reading Harper’s, I never associated it with status quo patriotism or defenders of the most egregious and violent US foreign policies.
To be clear. The UN-System (which includes the Bretton Woods twins, and the World Trade Organisation) needs reform. I wrote about the need for this reform three decades ago, and did my doctoral dissertation on inequality within the WTO, on the inequalities the US and its allies built into the organisation. The problem is, mainly, how this system is manipulated by the US and its allies. The UN-system has done a lot of good work in the global south. Because the US is upset (now) does not make it any more urgent! Unless, of course, the US is more important than the rest of the world.