First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

The US. Getting stuck in.

Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the war in ex-Yugoslavia and President Bill Clinton’s former ambassador to the UN, is now going around preaching the virtues of the International Criminal Court (ICC), although it was the Clinton administration that did not have the guts to push the ratification of US membership through Congress. Holbrooke is also criticising the UN Security Council for not following up on its vote in 2005 to refer the conflict in the Sudan to the ICC, arguing that it was only the threat of a war crimes court that brought the protagonists of the Yugoslavia wars to the negotiating table, and that the same stick is necessary over Sudan.

The announced prosecution by the ICC of the Sudanese leader, Omar al-Bashir, has coincided with a major shift in American elite opinion about the usefulness of the ICC. Democratic foreign policy experts are talking as if the US were already a signed up, ratified, member. But more interesting is the stance of the Bush administration. In the first days of his presidency, George W Bush “unsigned” the US membership. Yet now it is pushing hard in the Security Council for the ICC to act faster over the Sudan prosecution. This turnaround suggests it may not be too long before the US formally endorses the court……

This is not the whole story. Quietly and out of view of the limelight, the Bush administration has become an active and positive contributor to UN activities, as Stephen Schlesinger makes clear in his lengthy article in the new issue of World Policy Journal. “For good or ill, Bush has attained more victories [in the UN] than in any other forum or country….The administration has pursued a conservative but pragmatic mission at the UN under a stealth cover that has seen it carefully selecting its causes and focusing its energies, whether as a routine participant in the demarches at the Security Council; as a sponsor of numerous resolutions, sanctions and other initiatives; as a regular contributor to the UN’s upkeep; or as an overseer of policies and appointments within the departments of the UN. This has been especially true with respect to American policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.”

It is in the work of the Security Council that has shown the current US administration at its best—and most serious. It has only vetoed resolutions 10 times. Ronald Reagan vetoed 41 and Gerald Ford, in his short tenure, 13. In turn, Bush’s resolutions have only been vetoed three times. This is remarkable. But even more remarkable is to note that a quarter of all Security Council resolutions in UN history occurred on Bush’s watch. It is a broad achievement, ranging from the legitimising of the US mission to Afghanistan, fashioning a common programme against terrorism, recognising the US occupation in Iraq, stabilizing Haiti, upholding the peace in Lebanon, imposing sanctions on North Korea and Iran, and, not least, backing and helping fund 17 ongoing UN peacekeeping operations.

We can thank 9/11 for much of this. Before that catastrophe, the US gunned down every UN initiative it could lay its hands on—the ICC , the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Kyoto protocol on global warming, besides delaying payment of $826m in dues.

If this potted history sounds too good to be true, it is. The administration, having agreed to the appointment of Hans Blix to lead the weapons of mass destruction inspection team in Iraq, ignored his conclusions and then attacked Iraq without authorisation, justifying it in terms of preventive war, an act considered unlawful under the UN Charter. The administration tried to get its own back on the UN by exaggerating and distorting the oil-for-food scandal and blaming it on Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Only the growing disaster in Iraq forced it back to seeking UN help in Iraq and blocking Congressional attempts to kill further financing of the UN. These days the US pays a quarter of the UN budget and a seventh of its fast expanding peacekeeping budget, although it has returned to being in arrears.

Much of this has been kept as quiet as possible. Indeed the public perception, which the administration is content to contribute to, is that UN is a minor player and an essentially negative institution.

Both presidential candidates appear to have promised to “out” America’s role in upholding international law. While John McCain does not talk directly about the UN, Barack Obama has said that one of his first acts, if elected, would be to address the UN and declare that “America is back.” Hopefully, after the election the US government will decide to tell America exactly the worth of the UN, that the world’s only superpower many times has to bend to it, and which is a force for good, even for America.