Washington fury over UN attack on Bush 'hypocrites'
Tensions between the UN and George Bush's White House have been simmering since the Iraq war, but now it appears that they have broken out into open warfare.
The deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Malloch Brown, said in a speech in New York on Tuesday that much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has largely been abandoned to it's loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. He warned that depending on the UN while tolerating "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping" was "simply not sustainable", he said. "You will lose the UN one way or another."
John Bolton, the US envoy to the UN, and one of the UN's fiercest critics, called the remarks "a very, very grave mistake."
Washington was angered by Mr Malloch Brown's references to middle America, and the influence upon it of conservative commentators such as Mr Limbaugh. Mr Bolton said the speech demonstrated a "condescending, patronising tone about the American people. Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government, by an international civil servant. It's just illegitimate."Of course, the comments by Mr Malloch Brown are actually rather tame and what annoys Bolton is the fact that the bulk of what he saying is true.
The US is heavily reliant on international law and the UN to enforce various trade agreements and to insure protection for US foreign investors through the WTO and similar international bodies whilst, simultaneously at home, playing the game of "what has the UN ever done for anybody and what is it for?"
Malloch Brown is right to point out the hypocrisy of a US position that is simply not sustainable.
You cannot cherrypick international law and say it matters only when it's findings suit your particular position on any given subject.
Indeed, it's highly ironic that the man expressing outrage and defending the US's hypocrisy towards the UN should be John Bolton, the man who once said that "There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States." He also stated that "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
He is the perfect example of the US hypocrisy towards the international community and it's laws. Indeed, many of us suspected that this was the very reason that Bush chose him to be his UN envoy.
The US is attempting to reform the UN and in many ways this is to be welcomed. However, the rest of the world will always view any American attempt at reform with extreme suspicion as long as the American discourse expressed by Limbaugh and Fox News remains so unremittingly hostile to the UN.
The US can't have it both ways. You can't attack the UN as useless whilst claiming to have it's best interests at heart.
A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian the speech was intended to be "a warning call" about a broader crisis. On many issues, including UN reform, "what the US is doing is absolutely right from our point of view", the official said. "It's just that almost nobody else, in the current environment, believes them." The state of public discourse about the UN in America meant that "the rest of the world thinks that the US has a hidden agenda, or is trying to use the process to manipulate the UN".
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