Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Bush's Missed U.N. Opportunity
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, September 12, 2005; Page A19
Sometimes what the Bush administration doesn't do is as amazing as what it does do. This week is going to bring a Class A error of omission.
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Which brings us to this week's error of omission. After two years of planning, the United Nations is convening a summit of world leaders that was supposed to relaunch the organization 60 years after its creation. The key challenge was to refashion the Security Council, whose five permanent members reflect the power relations of another age, excluding the second-biggest economy in the world (Japan) plus 1 billion Indians and all of Africa and Latin America. Intelligent Security Council reform, which would create a weighted system of representation modeled on the World Bank's board, would serve the United States well. It would end the Russian and Chinese vetoes, and, by bringing in emerging democracies such as India and Brazil, it would strengthen the Security Council's ability to legitimize global action.
Rather than seizing this chance to bolster a key global institution, the Bush administration joined the debate on Security Council reform belatedly and limply. Bowing to congressional pressure,
it declared that reform of the patronage-ridden U.N. secretariat was a higher priority, even though such reform has been on the U.S. agenda for years and is largely hopeless.
Having made the wrong strategic call, the administration compounded its error by picking petulant fights over the U.N. poverty-fighting Millennium Development Goals, jeopardizing the limited prospects for secretariat reform still further.
So whatever comes out of this week's summit, it's not going to be the full-blown relaunching of the United Nations that its sponsors had aspired to. And a large part of that failure will reflect the Bush administration's refusal to get behind reform. It is a squandered opportunity.
Let me see if I understand this. The US thinks that the UN is hopelessly corrupt. The US thinks its a good idea to address THAT before going to great lengths to
"strengthen the Security Council's ability to legitimize global action."
Loose translation give the UN more power, open Pandora's Box open a Can of Worms, take your pick.
I am trying to figure out the Missed Opportunity?
I know I laid it down somewhere, it cannot have just gotten up an walked off by itself.
OH! I get it! This guy Sebastian is UPSET and disappointed, that we did not what? Take one more step towards Transnational Progressivism?
What we really need is more Oil for Food Scandals, more UN official run pedophile and prostitution rings in UN run refugee camps and of course we need more UN officials in the employee of genocidal dictators.
All I can say after reading this article is "Thank God for the Supreme Court and how did Jane Smiley put it? Oh yes "The unteachable ignorance of the red states" or fellows like this Sebastian Mallaby could have been running this country.
PS maybe someone could clue in Smiley that a dialogue is when two parties speak and a statement by just one person is a monlogue? Or maybe she is in the habit of using the Royal "WE" and gets confused.? I noticed in a google hit she is referredt to as an "Award-winning author" that usually means doesn't sell many books or she would be called a "best selling author" has to be on the Left if an author is on the Right google would turn up something not quite as positive as "award winning".
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Updated: Sunday, 3 June 2007 7:16 AM CDT