Does U.N. Really Face 'Moment of Truth'?

Feb. 24, 2003 — -- Show backbone. Be relevant. Prove you're more than talk. Don't be defied and mocked.

That's the Bush administration's urgent advice to the United Nations Security Council on Iraq — though to bipartisan critics, it sounds more like Dirty Harry than delicate diplomacy.

With such strong words, U.S. officials hope to convince the United Nations it faces "a moment of truth" and must sanction the use of force against Iraq or go the way of its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations.

But paradoxically, if the United Nations doesn't end up being ignored or scorned, it could be heading into a period of unprecedented influence.

Most doubt the United Nations would collapse in failure, or that even the most strident unilateralists in the administration would want it to. But some say Bush has pushed the agency to something of a defining moment on Iraq, and even some people normally critical of Bush might applaud.

"That's been the great irony of this moment," said Rick Barton, a U.N. deputy high commissioner for refugees during the Clinton years, "that this administration, which has been inclined to be unilateral … and has these concerns with the United Nations, has given it the opportunity to have great relevance."

Added Chester Crocker, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration, "It's a moment of truth for everybody, but certainly it is for the U.N., too. … Are the really major issues of international security, war and peace, going to be managed through a process of consultation in a global body, or are they going to be managed by other units?"

Who Decides — United States or United Nations?

At one time, the Cold War's U.S.-Soviet gridlock had left the United Nations an institution benignly ignored, and at times even reviled and scorned, by countries on the world's center stage. A low ebb came with America's angry refusal starting under President Reagan to pay U.N. dues.

But Gulf War-related events eventually led to increased U.N. influence. Ultimately, it flexed its muscles in trouble spots such as the Balkans, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"For a short time, Bush 41 [the father of the current president] let the Wilsonian genie out of the bottle because he was very keen on getting international cooperation for the first Gulf War," said Thomas J. Knock, author of To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order, about the formation of League of Nations and later the United Nations.

"A form of internationalism, temporary internationalism, gave the U.N. a little bit of a boost," said Knock, associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "I think [the Gulf War] made it something of a requirement to at least go through the motions to involve the United Nations in any sort of military activity that the United States felt motivated to undertake."

Bush: Historic Figure in U.N. History?

Bush has been taking pains to remind the public, "I was the guy that went to the United Nations in the first place." But some believe he went through the multilateral motions because of domestic political pressure, or to convince reluctant allies to join a war.

Whatever the reasons, with U.S. troops poised around Iraq, it's the U.N. that now has leverage.

"The U.N. should insist on robust and intrusive inspections of Iraq until they are completely satisfied one way or the other," using the result to build a case for war and potentially strengthen everyone's hand, argued Robert Wright, author of the book Nonzero, which proposes there is a historical drift toward interdependence of nations.

Added Wright, in a New York Times opinion piece earlier this month: "There remains a slim chance that the president could, however paradoxically, emerge as a historic figure in the United Nations' evolution toward enduring significance."

Wright is not alone in seeing such potential — for Bush and the U.N.

"One of the things that happens to all of the American presidents if they're going to get beyond being just parochial American figures is that they have to get to the global role of the United States. And here it is," said Barton, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Yet while the threat of a U.S. attack may be strengthening the United Nation's hand, a unilateral attack in defiance of the United Nations could embarrass the body.

And a weakened U.N. could have negative ramifications for America, U.N. advocates say. More so than the League of Nations, which America never joined, the United Nations is structured to act as a lever for stronger nations like the United States to collectively impose their will on weaker nations, they say.

In addition, a humiliated United Nations replaced by a unilateralist United States could affect the war on terror, Wright told ABCNEWS.

"If we fight the war on terrorism alone, we will focus more and more of the blowback on America," he said. "The more unilaterally we fight them, the more they'll hate us."

Trash Talking

That's one reason critics question the wisdom of the Bush administration's man-or-mouse rhetoric.

"I disagree with the flaunting of it, or the in-your-face element to it, because I don't think it's productive," said Crocker, now a professor of strategic studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "It's not all that well-received by other nations who might otherwise be with us."

"We seem to have taken an approach that demands, as opposed to builds consensus, both in our dealings with the United Nations and NATO," said William L. Nash, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.N. administrator in Kosovo. "The implication is even if you win the short-term battle, in the long-term you're going to build such a list of grievances, folks over time will look for ways to undermine your pre-eminence."

"My feeling is that if the U.S. could get off being so insulting and just get on the three-week to five-week calendar that we probably need anyway," Barton said, "then the resolution [in the U.N. authorizing force] would be likely to pass."

But the tough talk may have political benefits at home.

"There has always been a suspicion of the United Nations from the far right of the American political spectrum," Barton said. "It's [the Bush administration's] political base, so they've got to respond to it. They just can't oppose agreements about birth-control programs. It's not feeding that monster."

Though some in the Bush administration may have unilateralist impulses, Crocker does not believe any espouse the most extreme right-wing conspiracy theories on the United Nations.

"There may be some folks out there that believe the United Nations is coming in black helicopters to steal their lawn furniture," Crocker said. "But those sorts of conservatives are not central to the thinking of this administration."

And even if the United Nations gets marginalized again, observers don't believe the agency, which deals with issues ranging far beyond global security, will go the way of the League of Nations.

"It will continue to be a place where various sorts of countries go to assert their cases in order to be heard," Crocker said. "There's no way the U.N. dies the next moment. No. It's not that sort of a moment of truth at all.

"We're not going to resign our membership," Crocker added. "The U.N. will continue to play a role because it will be in our interests [for it] to."