Obama's challenge: Rebuild U.N.-U.S. relations

The new Obama administration, after dealing with the meltdown of the U.S. economy and resolving the ill-conceived war in Iraq, needs to thoroughly rethink and revise U.S. foreign policy and practices with regard to the United Nations.

Today the United States is in explicit breach, or has refused to join or comply with, a range of U.N.-promoted international agreements, conventions and treaties, including the U.N. Charter itself, and dealing with human rights, the rights of the child, discrimination against women, climate change, environmental pollution and emissions, torture and prisoner abuse, peaceful use of outer space, strategic arms limitation, nuclear non-proliferation, biochemical weapons and the International Criminal Court. In 2008, for example, the United States was the only country in the world to vote against the U.N. resolution on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. (The vote was 177 for, 1 against.)

The Obama administration needs to review and revise the U.S. position, and in some cases sign, these agreements. Sometimes, the United States has a legitimate concern, but we should be upfront about it. In most cases, any signatory state can, if necessary, sign on board while making a statement of specific exception, such as for example, the age definition of the “child,� or the continued use of land mines in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

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The United Nations has been operating as many as 60 peacekeeping missions, brokered 172 peaceful settlements, ensured free elections in 45 countries, and responded to hundreds of natural and manmade disasters. Too often the United States responds too little, too late, or not at all, or tries, usually unsuccessfully, to “go it alone.�

Yet, when the United States joins fully with the United Nations and others, the result is remarkable, as when in 1994 the UN/WHO-USA joint operation in Rwanda/Burundi/Congo put an end to the Hutu-Tutsi genocide and eradicated at the source the seemingly unstoppable, untreatable “El Tor� disease, which threatened to hop on a plane and ravage the entire world.

The “go it alone� or “join only if we lead� policy of the United States in recent years has usually produced mixed results and resentment. Even in dealing with such an obvious candidate for U.N.-U.S. and East-West cooperation, namely the H5-N1 avian or bird flu, the U.S. administration, ignoring the science, tried to set up a U.S.-led and dominated North-South alliance in the Americas, and failed, because too many South American countries distrust U.S. motives, and the real threat is East-West, and is being dealt with by the UN/WHO and other countries at the source.

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The United States routinely finds ways to delay, hold up or cut both regular and voluntary contributions to the United Nations and its operational affiliates. For example, for the last eight years the United States refused to contribute to the human reproduction, birth control and family planning programs of WHO and UNFPA, in spite of the obvious fact that overpopulation and excessive family size underlie most major global issues, such as food and water shortage, lack of education and housing, overcrowding, pollution and global warming.

The United States has chosen not to recognize the fact that the U.N. system carefully tailors its family planning programs to the local needs, customs and religions of the countries served. Poverty and distress are causes of local conflict and global insecurity, yet the U.S. administration has been slow to cooperate with the U.N. system in medical advances and means of preparedness for nuclear disasters and radiation accidents, particularly where stem cell science is involved. It’s time for that to change.

The U.N. system is engaged in a wide range of programs for disease control, water supply, agriculture, food, nutrition, housing, culture, labor, education, training, refugees, communications, transportation, large- and small-scale industry, small business and micro-financing.

In many countries, local USAID and other U.S. personnel, including the military, have cooperated closely with the U.N. system, but by and large the policies from the top have not normally favored or supported diplomacy and cooperation. Sure, the United Nations can be improved, but let’s do it together. When the United States and the United Nations work together with countries, their synergy produces more successful outcomes at lower costs.

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The United Nations provides a platform and a practical means of developing diplomatic and cooperative solutions to seemingly intractable problems, such as the long-sought, two-state solution to the otherwise endless dispute over Israel and Palestine. Polls taken by the United Nations and NGOs repeatedly show that 70 percent of both Israelis and Palestinians favor the peace compromise already proposed by the United Nations and private groups. This involves fair sharing of land, water and transportation access. United Nations cooperation is the solution. The United States cannot “go it alone� or dictate the solution. Obama knows this, and has said so repeatedly.

U.N. diplomacy and cooperation also provide the solution to the nuclear standoff in Iran. If both the United States and Iran honored the terms of the U.N.-sponsored Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, which they signed, and if both countries (and indeed all members of the Nuclear Club) agreed to accept full and continuing U.N. inspection of uranium production and use in all countries, then the Iran problem would be solved. We cannot expect others to respect international obligations or cooperate with the United Nations, unless we do so ourselves.

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The Obama administration has a major challenge ahead: To restore good working relations with the U.N. family of nations. The United Nations was, after all, “made in America,� designed to achieve international cooperation, human rights, freedoms and well-being for all. The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, is tasked with conveying, and giving effect to, this rekindled spirit of America, in cooperation with the rest of the world. U.N.-U.S. relations are the key to a peaceful, prosperous future for all mankind.

Sharon resident Anthony Piel is a former director of the World Health Organization and a current member of the UN-USA Association of NorthWest Connecticut.