The United Nations is about out of time. The world has changed so much that having the U.N. as a viable organization to police the world has gone by and everyone knows it. Unfortunately, no one wants to give up their share of the organzation or the power. Take out the US and Japan and they'd go broke, that is 42% of their wages, and we get very little in return. Not a very good investment. I think we can do better.
FM
By JOSHUA MURAVCHIK
Guest Commentary
THIS MONTH, the U.N. Security Council voted to condemn terrorism. The
resolution was introduced by Russia, still grieving over the terrorist
attack on a school in Beslan, and perhaps the unanimous vote will give it a
measure of solace.
But the convoluted text and the dealings behind the scenes that were
necessary to secure agreement on it offer cold comfort to anyone who cares
about winning the war against terrorism. For what they reveal is that even
after Beslan and after the train bombings in Spain and after 9/11, the
United Nations still cannot bring itself to oppose terrorism unequivocally.
The reason for this failure is that the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, which comprises 56 of the United Nations' 191 members, defends
terrorism as a right.
After the Security Council vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
John C. Danforth tried to put the best face on the resolution. He said it
"states very simply that the deliberate massacre of innocents is never
justifiable in any cause. Never."
But in fact it does not state this. Nor has any U.N. resolution ever
stated it. The U.S. delegation tried to get such language into the
resolution, but it was rebuffed by Algeria and Pakistan, the two OIC
members currently sitting on the Security Council. (They have no veto, but
the resolution's sponsors were willing to water down the text in return for
a unanimous vote.)
True, the final resolution condemns "all acts of terrorism irrespective of
their motivation." This sounds clear, but in the Alice-in-Wonderland
lexicon of the United Nations, the term "acts of terrorism" does not mean
what it seems.
For eight years now, a U.N. committee has labored to draft a
"comprehensive convention on international terrorism." It has been stalled
since Day 1 on the issue of "defining" terrorism. But what is the mystery?
At bottom everyone understands what terrorism is: the deliberate targeting
of civilians. The Islamic Conference, however, has insisted that terrorism
must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. In this
view, any act done in the cause of "national liberation," no matter how
bestial or how random or defenseless the victims, cannot be considered
terrorism.
This boils down to saying that terrorism on behalf of bad causes is bad,
but terrorism on behalf of good causes is good. Obviously, anyone who takes
such a position is not against terrorism at all - but only against bad
causes.
The United States is not alone in failing to get the Islamic states to
reconsider their pro-terrorism stance. After the 9/11 attacks on the United
States, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pushed to break the deadlock on
the terrorism convention. He endorsed compromise language proscribing
terrorism unambiguously while reaffirming the right of self-determination.
But the Islamic Conference would not budge.
Far from giving ground on terrorism, the Islamic states have often gotten
their way on the issue, with others giving in to them. As early as 1970,
for instance, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution "reaffirm(ing)
... the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples and peoples
under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and
independence by all the necessary means at their disposal."
Everyone understood that this final phrase was code for terrorism. Similar
formulas have been adopted repeatedly in the years since. Originally, the
Western European states joined the United States in voting against such
motions. But in each of the past few years the U.N. Commission on Human
Rights has adopted such a resolution with regard to the Palestinian
struggle against Israel, with almost all the European members voting in
favor.
Danforth may feel that the U.S. position was vindicated in the new
Security Council resolution, but that is not what OIC representatives
think. As Pakistan's envoy to the United Nations, Munir Akram, put it: "We
ought not, in our desire to confront terrorism, erode the principle of the
legitimacy of national resistance that we have upheld for 50 years."
Accordingly, he expressed satisfaction with the resolution: "It doesn't
open any new doors."
Who is right? Hours of parsing the resolution won't resolve that question.
But in the end it does not matter. As long as the Islamic states resist any
blanket condemnation of terrorism, we will remain a long way from ridding
the Earth of its scourge. And the United Nations will be helpless to bring
us any closer.
Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute.