|
SPEECH
by U.N. DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL
MARK MALLOCH BROWN (MaximsNews.com,
UN) UNITED
NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com,
UN/ - 6 June 2006 - Thank
you for allowing me to speak to you
today on Power and Global
Leadership. I often get asked
to talk about leadership, but rarely
about power. I wonder why. SEE
CONTINUED SPEECH...
Remarks
by Ambassador John R. Bolton, U.S.
Permanent Representative to the
United Nations, in Response to
Comments by Deputy Secretary General
Mark Malloch Brown, at the Security
Council Stakeout, June 7, 2006 SEE
REMARKS...
Available
for Media Interviews:
IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com,
UN/ -
12 June 2006 - Last
Tuesday
the Century Foundation
and the Center for
American Progress
jointly hosted a
conference on
"Power and
SuperPower."
Its
centerpiece was United
Nations Deputy Secretary
General Mark Malloch
Brown's measured and
merited admonition
[See: SPEECH
in MaximsNews.com, UN] of
the Bush
Administration's
simultaneous use and
abuse of the United
Nations.
Many
other American speakers
at the conference were
far more scathing,
listing example after
example of Washington's
refusal to accept
international law and
conventions.
It
was a Thoughtcrime Fest
that almost had me
wondering why Homeland
Security wasn't
rappelling through the
ceiling and kicking in
the doors to arrest all,
or at least most, of the
participants.
If
US Ambassador John
Bolton had his way, they
probably would have.
What
made the event
newsworthy was Malloch
Brown's speech.
It
is one thing for rebel
Republicans and
Democrats to criticize
American policy, but for
a UN official to stand
up and talk back inverts
the laws of nature,
which have hitherto
decreed that the UN has
only one position toward
the United
States--prone.
Bolton
has made a career of
abusing the organization
and all who work for it,
but his reaction to
Malloch Brown was that
of a bully suddenly
confronted by someone
who is not scared of
him.
The
truth may not hurt--but
it certainly stings.
Malloch
Brown warned of
"the serious
consequences of a
decades-long tendency by
US Administrations of
both parties to engage
only fitfully with the
UN," a point that
was missed by some of
the Clintonistas in the
audience, who tend to
overlook that
administration's less
than stellar
multilateral record
beneath the rhetoric at
which its President was
so adept.
Far
from being
anti-American, the
speech was a call for
American leadership in
the organization.
But
Malloch Brown was being
old-fashioned,
envisioning the type of
leadership that listens
and pulls a team
together, rather than
the current
Administration's version
of team play: beating up
the other players and
running off with the
ball whenever the rules
do not suit.
He
suggested that one of
the major problems with
agreeing to United
Nations reforms was that,
"very
unfortunately, there is
currently a perception
among many otherwise
quite moderate countries
that anything the US
supports must have a
secret agenda aimed at
either subordinating
multilateral processes
to Washington's ends or
weakening the
institutions, and
therefore, put crudely,
should be opposed
without any real
discussion of whether
they make sense or
not."
Malloch
Brown left unsaid, but
clearly implied, that
the core of the problem
was that the US
Ambassador is a blowhard
whose every
far-from-secret word
tends to substantiate
the worst fears of these
member states.
Malloch
Brown also reminded the
audience that the United
States and the UN have
been
"constructively
engaged on Iran, Iraq,
Lebanon, Afghanistan and
many other
areas."
This
may have been a
euphemism for "the
UN doing what the US
wanted," but in any
case American demands on
such questions tend to
run into epistemological
problems.
For
example, Bolton
currently has to
persuade the other
members of the Security
Council (whose votes he
has dismissed as
irrelevant) to make the
UN (which he thinks the
United States should
quit) enforce
international law (in
which he does not
believe) against Iran
for nonexistent breaches
of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty
(which he had been
trying to sabotage in
his previous position as
head of disarmament
affairs at the State
Department).
Of
course, Malloch Brown
was not so crass as to
name Bolton.
The
clever thing to do would
have been to ignore the
speech, but since Bolton
has all the diplomatic
skills of a bull
elephant in heat, he
rose to the bait and
angrily denounced [SEE
REMARKS MaximsNews.com,
UN] the
Deputy Secretary
General, thus
reinforcing the latter's
credibility with the
nonaligned
delegations.
Bolton
demanded a retraction
from Kofi Annan.
The
Secretary General
happily backed his
deputy. I could almost
imagine him saying,
"I wish I had said
that." We hope he
will.
Knowing
just how astute Malloch
Brown is, one almost
suspected him of
planning exactly that
reaction.
"Objectively"
it made him and Bolton
part of a good cop/bad
cop routine.
However,
even if Malloch Brown
had planned it that
way--and he denies
it--no one would ever
suspect Bolton of being
part of such a
sophisticated
plot.
As
Malloch Brown stated, US
policy is
"stealth"
diplomacy; the UN's
role, so assiduously
worked for by
Washington, is "in
effect a secret in
Middle
America."
And
indeed, it is.
Bolton's
echo chamber in the
Murdoch media, or
"Fox and Rush
Limbaugh," as he
put, have continually
attacked the
organization--not for
its behavior but for its
existence.
The
only thing wrong with
Malloch Brown's speech
is that it should have
been made long, long
ago.
Six
months ago he told me he
would be out of the
office on December
31.
He
has certainly settled
the question now, since
his head will be the
price for American
support for any
Secretary General
candidate.
We
must hope that he will
be equally forthright in
the six months he has
left.
IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com
|
