Beyond the U.N. Experiment

What serious thinker still believes the United Nations still reflects the values of its own charter, much less contributes to seeing them realized?  Much has been said about what was unexpectedly not found in Iraq, much less so about what was unexpectedly found:  proof of just how completely the U.N. had been corrupted by arguably the second-worst dictator on earth.  Not that all of the U.N.’s corruption is monetary:

Recall what Churchill told the audience at Fulton about the United Nations: He said, “We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words. I am afraid that a “force for action” is not a phrase that leaps to mind when thinking of the U.N. today. It is an institution where Sudan is elected to the Human Rights Commission; Iran is elected vice-chairman of the Disarmament Commission; Syria is elected vice president of the IAEA Committee; and Zimbabwe is elected to the Sustainable Development Commission.  [National Review]

That’s Donald Rumsfeld, accepting the  Claremont Institute’s 2007  Statesmanship Award, which honors Sir Winston  Churchill.  Rumsfeld makes his  argument sharply and economically (though the progress in Iraq after his departure suggests that the management of wars  may be best  left to others).  Rumsfeld isn’t the only one talking about creating a new multilateral institution to replace the U.N., an idea that would have significant political appeal among the voters of the U.N.’s largest donor.  Rumsfeld nominates NATO for this task:

To assist in this problem, we should work with NATO to expand its role, encouraging relationships with other like-thinking countries. We should encourage NATO to develop linkages with other like-thinking nations such as Australia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea that. A global alliance of free and responsible nations could better focus collective action against the very real and growing threats to the nation-state system.

Rumsfeld then undercuts his own argument by showing just how adolescent the electorates of  his own nominees  can be, including those who have gained the most from  the willingness of other nations to sacrifice for a greater good: 

I remember being in South Korea a few years ago, and looking out over the lights of the city of Seoul at night. A young journalist walked up to me with a microphone. She said, “The South Korean parliament is currently debating whether to send South Korean troops to Iraq. Why in the world should young Korean people go halfway around the world to fight and possibly die?”

South Korea has the same people and resources as North Korea.

Not exactly.  The populations may have been similar 50 years ago, but the South’s population is now double that of the North.  The North  began with  more mineral resources and most of Korea’s industry.  We all know how that has changed:

Yet today South Korea is one of the most successful economies on the face of the earth. It is a success because of its free people and free economic system. And so I told the journalist, “Why should young Americans have come to South Korea, halfway around the world, to fight and potentially die fifty years ago? The answer is that you only need to look out the window. South Korea is fortunate that the United States and a coalition of willing nations fought on the Korean Peninsula — for South Korea’s freedom — some 50 years ago.   

What if the same thing happened again?  South Korea’s behavior in the last ten years has done as much as possible to reduce the odds that other nations would intervene on its behalf.  Japan’s good will has been squandered, Europe’s good will is about as meaningful as a U.N. resolution, and the only Americans not completely repelled by South Korea’s policies are those who are least likely to support foreign military interventions, and those who weren’t paying attention.  And whatever assistance China offered  could come at a very high price, as has generally been the case with “help” from  Korea’s neighbors.

Nor is South Korea’s selfishness — especially at the expense of the North Korean people — unique to South Korea.   We can at least hope that a  league of democracies would still be able to agree on the fundamentals:  that it is wrong to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of innocent people in death camps or slaughter monks in the streets,  that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, and that an imperfect Iraqi democracy is better than a theocracy imposed by terror.  But in these short-sighted, self-indulgent times, it’s hard to imagine the world’s democracies having great success in propagating  their values.