From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THINKING THINGS OVER
Who Elected the U.N.?
Dictators and democracies don't have equal moral authority.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Jefferson's phrases are well worth remembering just now. The government created by the Declaration of Independence two centuries ago is weighing war against Saddam Hussein before he acquires nuclear weapons. And high-minded folks around the world are urging it to submit to the judgment of the United Nations as arbiter of when war is justified. Just what is the United Nations, anyway? When and how did it receive "the consent of the governed"?
To ask this question is not to dismiss the U.N. out of hand. It does serve helpful functions on the likes of post and telephone service. Its efforts to aid the world's refugees have often been exemplary. On a grander scale, it is a forum where the world's governments meet and talk; if the U.N. didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. At times it has even advanced the interests of security; when the first President Bush was seeking support for the first Gulf War, the U.N. signed up before the U.S. Senate did. Even in its darkest hours its promise--a forum for settling disputes among nations without violence--is a promise worth preserving.
A moral exemplar it most emphatically is not, however. Its moral standing and moral record deserve to be rehearsed just now. Whatever its pretensions, and however much they're cheered by the limp-minded, in fact the U.N. is the epicenter of world cynicism. Here idealistic rhetoric is routinely invoked on behalf of power politics and often sheer tyranny. In extenuation, it could scarcely be otherwise.
The nations of the world are after all a mixed lot. They range from long-standing democracies such as the U.S. and United Kingdom to one-man-all-the-votes politics in Cuba or Zimbabwe. They range from giants such as China and India to dwarfs such as Andorra and San Marino. Kiribati and Maldives worry about vanishing if global warming raises sea levels on their Pacific atolls. In the Caribbean, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and also St. Kitts and Nevis, claim Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
Under the principle of "state sovereignty," each of these 191 nations has the same vote as any other. Except of course that the five "permanent" members have a veto in the Security Council; the favored members include France but not Japan or India. For that matter, the permanent members are not so permanent, with the definition of China changing at the convenience of "world opinion."
Now,
how many of these governments can claim the consent of their governed? In its
latest annual exercise, Freedom House judged the state of freedom of 192 countries
for 2001-2002 (click here
or on the miniature nearby to see full-size map, in PDF form). Of these 85,
with some 41% of the world's population, were "free," enjoying political rights
and civil liberties. Another 59, with 24% of the world's population, were "partly
free," with significant but abridged rights--in particular one-party political
systems. The remaining 48 countries, or 35% of the world's people, were "not
free," with no consent of the governed or respect for the individual.
The United Nations is what you get when you have this melange send representatives, confine them in a hothouse on the East River, stir briskly, and tell them to go forth to solve the great issues of the world. In the political pushing and shoving, too, some nations follow Marquess of Queensbury rules and others do not. Left to its own devices, the cacophony produces a contorted consensus.
• Consider: While Freedom House counts 192 nations, the U.N. counts 191. The pariah is a nation rated free, indeed a nation of 23 million souls and the world's 17th largest economy. Namely, of course, Taiwan, which has been blocked from U.N. membership every year for 10 years now. China, rated not free, has managed to impose its view; its foreign minister proclaimed "all acts aimed at the independence of Taiwan are doomed to fail."
• Consider: The United States has just been readmitted to the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. It was voted off last year by opposition from the tyrannies and perfidy by the Europeans. Other commission members include such paragons of human rights as Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The agenda concerns much mischief over Israel, as well as efforts to revoke consultative status of Freedom House.
• Consider: In President Bush's U.N. speech in September, he said the U.S. is willing to return to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It withdrew from UNESCO in 1985 after Congress sent its General Accounting Office to confirm that director Amadou Mahtar M'Bow had created a fiefdom without a trace of accountability, financial or otherwise.
• Consider: Secretary-General Kofi Anann thought it was a great victory when Saddam Hussein offered to talk about letting U.N. inspectors back into Iraq on the same terms that didn't work the last time. The important thing is not whether or not the inspections succeed in curbing weapons of mass destruction, that is, but whether they come under U.N. auspices.
President Bush tolled off all of the resolutions the U.N. Security Council passed in its better moments, resolutions that Saddam Hussein has systematically violated these last 10 years. The U.N. now faces "a difficult and defining moment," as the President put it, in progress toward its promise. If it fails, it has no reason in justice or morality to claim deference from a government that has for two centuries now pursued Jefferson's principles.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
