Empowering the UN in the Guise of Reform

October 3,  2005  

Last month at its “World Summit” in New York, the United Nations took another big step toward destroying national sovereignty - a step that could threaten the United States in the future. The UN passed a resolution at this summit that, among other things, establishes a “Peacebuilding Commission,” creates a worldwide UN “democracy fund,” and most troublingly codifies the dangerous “Responsibility to Protect” report as part of UN policy. The three are certainly interrelated.

I have been concerned for some time about the establishment of a UN Peacebuilding Commission, an idea I first found so troubling when the International Relations Committee marked-up the UN Reform Act containing this provision earlier this year.

According to the UN, this commission will bring together the UN Security Council members, major donor states, major troop contributing countries, United Nations organizations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to develop and integrate conflict prevention, post-conflict reconstruction, and long-term development policies and strategies. The commission will serve as the key coordinating body for the design and implementation of military, humanitarian, and civil administration aspects of complex missions. Think of this as the core of a future UN army that will claim the right to intervene in any conflict anywhere.

The misnamed “Democracy Fund” created at the World Forum may well provide the funding for this UN army. We must ask ourselves whether this “global democracy fund” will be used to undermine or overthrow elected governments that do not meet some UN-created democratic criteria. Will it be used to further the kinds of color-coded revolutions we have seen from East Europe to the Middle East, which far from being genuine expressions of popular will are in fact fomented with outside money and influence? Could it eventually be used against the United States?  What if the US is determined lacking when it comes to UN-defined democratic responsibilities such as providing free public housing or universal healthcare?

Most disturbing, however, is the UN adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect,” a report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (www.iciss.ca/report-en). Whenever the UN names a commission to study intervention and state sovereignty you can bet that it is to promote the former and undermine the latter. This “Responsibility to Protect” report adopted by the UN commits member states to intervene in the internal affairs of other sovereign states if the state in question does not protect its population from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity,” or does not protect its population from the “incitement” to such crimes. Who determines the criteria for this policy of global pre-emption? The UN, of course.

While it may be true that the United States exerts considerable control over the United Nations at present, this may not always be the case. It is certainly conceivable that at some future date a weakened US may face a financially and militarily stronger China, for example, that demands UN action within US borders after determining that the US has not lived up to its “responsibility to protect.” This is the lesson for conservatives who are cheering on a “reform” process that is actually strengthening the United Nations. What will happen when the sovereignty we undermine through measures like this turns out to be our own?