ONCE AGAIN the "international community" is clamoring for the United Nations to fix things in the Middle East. It's reminiscent of an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Homer is in dire straits. In a panic, he yells heavenward, "I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!" For some fetishists of multilateralism, the U.N. seems to fill this odd space in their brains once reserved for God, providence or even the Man of Steel — whatever force of good that can save civilization from evil. If religion is the opiate of the masses, then the United Nations is the opiate of the elites.
Global U.N. worship is based on an odd mix of delusion and realpolitik. To self-described internationalists, the U.N. is supposed to be a counterweight to America's "unipolar" dominance. In the wake of the U.S.-led victory in the Cold War, America greeted an ungrateful world eager to see the remaining superpower counterbalanced by, well, something. And the U.N. was the only viable candidate. As U.N. Undersecretary-General Shashi Tharoor wrote a few years ago, "American power" — not AIDS, genocide or global warming — "may well be the central issue in world politics today." Of course, there are others who pay lip service to idealistic U.N. globaloney but who really just like to use the place as a grand global rug under which any problem can be swept. If you hear a world leader start out by saying "something must be done," odds are he's going to finish that sentence by saying "and the U.N. should do it."
Now, it would be one thing if the U.N. actually, you know, worked. But the problem is that the history of the U.N. is a history of unrelenting failure. Oh, not in immunizing kids and feeding starving people. The U.N. gets a passing grade there, though certainly not an A. |