[R-G] U.N. perceived as tool of the West

[Anthony Fenton]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/343275_unonline13.html

U.N. perceived as tool of the West

ADRIAN HAMILTON

Answering questions about the bomb attack on its offices in Algiers,  
a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees  
was cut off in mid-sentence. When asked why the United Nations was  
targeted, she started to say: "Unfortunately, the U.N. is not any  
more the innocent, humanitarian organization that can work anywhere,"  
before she was hustled on to the next question as to why the U.N.  
didn't take better precautions against attack.

But, however uncomfortable the question, especially when the aid  
organization has just lost nearly a dozen employees in the bombing,  
what its spokesman was saying has a terrible ring of truth about it.  
In the West, the U.N. is regarded as largely a good thing, with its  
many arms dedicated to helping refugees, resolving conflicts and, if  
necessary, to stepping in with the blue helmets to keep the peace.

In other parts of the world, however, the U.N. is no longer regarded  
in this benign light. Indeed, in a substantial part of the developing  
world it has come to seem an instrument of western oppression and  
U.S. hegemony -- a club of the big boys intent on bullying smaller  
countries in the interests of Washington and its European allies.

When al-Qaida blew up the U.N. offices in Iraq in 2003, killing its  
envoy, it was trying to drive the outside world away and make sure  
that nations hesitated to support the U.S. and Britain in the  
occupation (in this it was, in fact, brutally successful). When al- 
Qaida North Africa, as the militant group now calls itself, blew up  
the UNHCR offices in Algiers, it was to show that it too had the  
power and determination to bring down a symbol of western presence.

Iraq has much to do with this change in perceptions. Of course, the  
U.N. had been attacked elsewhere before the invasion took place. But  
Washington's decision to press ahead with occupation regardless  
showed to much of the Muslim world both the U.N.'s powerlessness and  
the extent to which it was regarded as a tool of the U.S., not an  
independent source of global governance. The rest of the world has  
been brought up to believe that the security role of the U.N. was to  
keep a peace already agreed. Now it saw that the U.N. was being  
pushed to impose a peace on terms dictated from outside.

The trouble with denying this and protesting the U.N.'s innocence is  
that the Third World perception of it as an instrument of the West  
has some basis to it. If you take the Middle East, the succession of  
resolutions on Palestine, never implemented and almost universally  
ignored, the relentless pinioning of Saddam Hussein through sanctions  
and then enforced regime-change, the current pursuit of Iran through  
sanctions and threat, are all seen expressions not of international  
concern but western self-interest. And the same is true of much of  
Africa, where the blue helmet has come to represent western ideas of  
order rather than local concerns for justice.

The heart of the problem is the U.N. Security Council. So long as the  
Cold War defined the world, it made sense to lock the nuclear powers  
into a committee that could stop local conflicts escalating into  
global confrontation. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the Security  
Council lost its purpose. Instead, it has been used by its western  
members as a sanction for whatever intervention they deem right. As  
they, and particularly the U.S., are the chief funders of the U.N.,  
it is hard for the organization to avoid going along with them.

All sorts of ideas have been presented to reform the U.N. to take it  
into the post-Cold War world, including a standing army and an  
expanded Security Council. Britain has been especially keen on the  
latter, pushing for the addition of Japan, Brazil, an African country  
and Germany to the existing five members.

The trouble with this is that it merely extends (as it is meant to)  
the dominance of the big powers. Why these new countries? Because  
they are all free market, democratic, middle-sized powers that can be  
relied on to accept the terms of reference of the Big Three of the  
Security Council -- the U.S., Britain and France. Hence the early  
faux pas of the new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in letting  
slip that what Britain thought of as "an African member" was, quite  
specifically, South Africa.

How you could honestly regard as representative a council that  
excluded the Middle East, the single greatest source of insecurity in  
the world, beggars belief. But then how could you regard Japan as  
somehow the voice of Asia, given its past?

It won't work and it shouldn't. If the U.N. is to be reformed, it has  
to provide at its centre an inclusive voice, not an exclusive one.  
But then if it is to recover its former reputation as an "innocent  
humanitarian organization" welcome around the world, it needs to  
rethink its mission from the bottom, stepping back from the military  
interventions with which the West would saddle it.

Adrian Hamilton is a columnist for The Independent in Britain.