Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Annan's Proposals
Austin Bay links to a Financial Times summary of Kofi Annan's proposal to reform the United Nations. Its centerpiece is his vision of world-consensus anti-terrorism.
Mr Annan's officials say the package basically proposes a bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns. In both cases, Mr Annan says, action must be underpinned by respect for human rights.
The Jerusalem Post has a few more details about what monies are expected in exchange for the alleviation of security concerns.
The secretary-general also urged all rich countries to establish a timetable to reach the goal set 35 years ago of earmarking 0.7 percent of gross national product for development assistance no later than 2015, starting with a significant increase no later than 2006. The US currently has one of the lowest levels about 0.15 percent.
Those nuggets are interesting enough to warrant closer inspection. The text of the report itself can be found here, and from it we find that Annan has themed his proposals in almost concious competition with those of the Bush Administration. His report subtitle is "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all". Superficially, it is an "alternative" agenda towards these same goals, atttainable in the kinder, gentler way that so characterizes the 'World Body'.
The watchword of Annan's counterterrorim strategy is multilateral. It calls for a series of strengthened nonproliferation treaties and additional funding for UN agencies to implement it (paragraphs 92, 93, 98-104). It calls for additional resources to be devoted to Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (capitals theirs in paragraphs 111-119). But the actual use of force to prevent a clear and present danger is an action reserved for the Security Council. Paragraph 126 of Annan's report says:
126. The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority but to make it work better. When considering whether to authorize or endorse the use of military force, the Council should come to a common view on how to weigh the seriousness of the threat; the proper purpose of the proposed military action; whether means short of the use of force might plausibly succeed in stopping the threat; whether the military option is proportional to the threat at hand; and whether there is a reasonable chance of success. By undertaking to make the case for military action in this way, the Council would add transparency to its deliberations and make its decisions more likely to be respected, by both Governments and world public opinion. I therefore recommend that the Security Council adopt a resolution setting out these principles and expressing its intention to be guided by them when deciding whether to authorize or mandate the use of force.
And what should the Security Council consist of? He presents two new visions of how it should be structured following Paragraph 170.
Model A provides for six new permanent seats, with no veto being created, and three new two-year term non-permanent seats, divided among the major regional areas as follows:
Regional area No. of States Permanent seats (continuing) Proposed new permanent seats Proposed two-year seats (non-renewable) Total
Africa 53 0 2 4 6
Asia and Pacific 56 1 2 3 6
Europe 47 3 1 2 6
Americas 35 1 1 4 6
Totals model A 191 5 6 13 24
Model B provides for no new permanent seats but creates a new category of eight four-year renewable-term seats and one new two-year non-permanent (and non-renewable) seat, divided among the major regional areas as follows:
Regional area No. of States Permanent seats (continuing) Proposed four-year renewable seats Proposed two-year seats (non-renewable) Total
Africa 53 0 2 4 6
Asia and Pacific 56 1 2 3 6
Europe 47 3 2 1 6
Americas 35 1 2 3 6
Totals model A 191 5 8 11 24
This new and vastly enlarged UN will require money, which as the Jerusalem Post pointed out, will come from taxpayers in the "developed nations". In Paragraph 169 we read this convoluted paragraph:
They should, in honouring Article 23 of the Charter, increase the involvement in decision-making of those who contribute most to the United Nations financially, militarily and diplomatically, specifically in terms of contributions to United Nations assessed budgets, participation in mandated peace operations, contributions to voluntary activities of the United Nations in the areas of security and development, and diplomatic activities in support of United Nations objectives and mandates. Among developed countries, achieving or making substantial progress towards the internationally agreed level of 0.7 per cent of GNP for ODA should be considered an important criterion of contribution;
In my own opinion Kofi Annan's proposals are a recipe for disaster for two reasons. His entire security model is philosophically founded on a kind of blackmail which recognizes that the only thing dysfunctional states have to export is trouble. He then sets up the United Nations as a gendarmarie with 'a human face' delivering payoffs to quell disturbances. This is the "bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns." Second, his model flies in the face of the recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and the entire democratizing upheaval in the Middle East. It is by making countries functional that terrorism is quelled and not by any regime of international aid, inspections, nonproliferation treaties, declarations, protocols, conferences; nor by appointing special rapptorteurs, plenipotentiary envoys; nor constituting councils, consultative bodies or anything else in Annan's threadbare cupboard.
Nor is this clanking monstrosity particularly efficient, even in contemplation. Neither new Security Council model solves the basic question: how can it compel nations with the muscle to act against their interests? Alliances, like political parties, are the building blocks of global politics. Forcing alliances to work within the artificial structure of the United Nations Security Council (A or B) adds nothing to the process. The sole value of the Security Council should be to rubber-stamp what global politics has already decided upon, as constitutional monarchs do in countries with Parliaments.
It was a dictum in Field Marshal Zhukov's Army that a good commander never reinforced failure only success. It is a maxim of the United Nations that progress is achieved by doing everything that never worked all over again. Probably nowhere is the bankruptcy of Annan's vision (and I use that word consciously) more evident than in Paragraph 29, where he lays out the UN vision for a better world. It is a laundry list of all the special interest 'development' goals the UN has acquired over the years where problems of different orders of magnitude and positions in the chain of causality are jumbled together; a bureaucrat's dream and a human being's nightmare.
Well, go read the whole thing.
