Nitpick : the International Criminal Court isn’t merely “proposed”. It exists since last year.
The problem is that personnally I don’t expect much from the Human Right Commission but thinks that it’s disingeneous to base criticisms of the UN on the failures of this particular UN body.
The UN includes a lot of institutions, and a lot of them do a good job. For instance, who is going to argue that the World Health Organization should be disbanded? Why is the UN so often booed for the way the Commission for Human Right works and essentially never lauded for the work done by the WHO?
clairobscur, you seem to be the only person talking about disbanding the WHO or UNICEF or whathaveyou. I’ve been talking about getting rid of the UNHRC and replacing it with something that actually has the promotion of human rights on its agenda, rather than the “cover your ass” activities undertaken by a good many countries currently on that panel.
And I have suggested that the Secretary General or the ICJ have some ability to rule out countries for non-compliance with existing human rights treaties. What do you think about that?
(And in an aside, if the UNHRC had the guts to admonish the US over Gitmo, I’d be extremely pleased. That failure to do so only argues further that the UNHRC has no guts, no important mission, no ability to achieve its mission at this point, underscoring the need for serious reform.)
So, if it is not perfect we prefer to have nothing?
It is also telling that the USA will use the UN’s backing when it can get it but will dismiss the UN when it can’t. If there is one thing which weakens the UN and makes it ineffective is that the most powerful country, the USA, dismisses it so often. The USA just will not submit to the UN when they are at odds. Why should any other country?
If the USA would give an example of magnanimity and submit to the UN and othr international bodies then it might have an argument but by not respecting the UN it is the USA who is causing the greatest damage.
Regarding Human Rights, every country, including the USA, defines “Human Rights Violations” as “what other countries do and not what we do” so the notion of having some countries in and others out of the panel is just silly. Countries are sovereign and voluntarily submit to and accept decision of the UN. A UN panel where some members are not even allowed to express or vote would be a waste of time. And the USA is a prime example of not voluntarily submitting to International courts. Why should any other countries?
This is like a few members of a condo association saying only those condo owners who are tidy should be able to vote and the slobs should not. Except that the pink flamingo which one considers an eyesore is considered a beautiful ornament by others. Who is going to decide? Any small group is destined to fail because those left outside will not accept any rulings from it.
In the eyes of many countries in the world the USA has a terrible record when it comes to Human Rights. Terrible. Of course, the USA says it has its reasons. . . which is what all other countries say: “we have our reasons”.
Taking the attitude that “we are better” just shows a very provincial understanding of the world which can only get your country into trouble with the rest of the world.
Why bother to replace the UNHRC when you already have the OHCHR.
I think it would be best to give the UNHCHR a more executive role and get rifd of the UNHRC as it is always going to be dominated by poltics, no matter what the human rights record of the countries.
Hee. Hee hee hee. Hee Hee HEE! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
For years IAEA sat on its ass and passed (or failed to pass) worthless pieces of paper around while these guys worked on their bomb programs, one of them acheiving success and becoming a nuclear power. Then, within a year of the coutries getting an up close and personal look of what happens when a regime fails to cooperate, they’re all over themselves to be good boys and somehow this is attributible to IAEA? Sorry, that’s the Bush Doctrine right there.
Kimstu:
Precisely the point I was going to make.
Manhattan:
OK, but where do we go from here? Should the US be Global Dictator from now on? Or should the UN be given the power to use military force under the imprimatur of Law?
manhattan: For years IAEA sat on its ass and passed (or failed to pass) worthless pieces of paper around while these guys worked on their bomb programs, one of them acheiving success and becoming a nuclear power. Then, within a year of the coutries getting an up close and personal look of what happens when a regime fails to cooperate, they’re all over themselves to be good boys and somehow this is attributible to IAEA? Sorry, that’s the Bush Doctrine right there.
Cite? This sounds rather like one of those post Iraq ergo propter Iraq arguments, and it doesn’t seem to account for the fact that, for example, the IAEA was conducting extensive inspections in Iran as early as February 2003.
I agree with you that the invasion of Iraq doubtless exerted pressure for compliance, but I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that the IAEA’s efforts were worthless in and of themselves. The IAEA’s information and negotiation, on the contrary, has been very important in watchdogging nuclear developments. (And I certainly don’t think supporters of the “Bush Doctrine” can afford to laugh at the IAEA’s information about nuclear development, considering what a horse’s ass the Bush Administration made of itself by ignoring the IAEA’s evidence that there was no serious WMD threat from Iraq, which turned out to be perfectly correct.)
Cite? That seems a little unfair. It’s not like anyone is gonna hold a press conference and say "I was hiding stuff until that mean old George W. Bush showed me that sometimes UN resolutions actually mean something, even if the UN itself doesn’t care. That said, in the case of Libya, Hans Blix seems to think it may have had some influence, if one is inclined to accept his analysis. As regards Pakistan, it’s literally impossible that the IAEA had any influence – Pakistan is not a signatory to the NPT and IAEA has (still) never been there. If it wasn’t the Bush Doctrine, it was something else that was not IAEA. In Iran, they’ve been there for years and found exactly nothing prior to the Iraq invasion.
In fact, despite the occasional (correct) assertion that they haven’t found anything but they think somebody is hiding something, IAEA has never found anything. They were shocked when India exploded a bomb, shocked when Pakistan did, shocked when the newly democratic South Africa turned over fully-functioning weapons to the UN. Someday they’ll be shocked when Taiwan explodes one of their bombs, and ghod-forbid they’ll be shocked if some al Qaeda offshoot someday hits lower Manhattan. Among all of the irrelevant UN agencies, IAEA might be “Mr. Irrelevant” – last picked in the draft.
Somewhere, there’s probably a psychic who correctly identifed where a body might be found. That psychic has a better record than IAEA. If you say “no” every single time, eventually it will be the correct answer.
The sad, unfortunate fact is that the OP is, if anything, too kind by calling the UN irrelevant. If they weren’t irrelevant, there would be a UN resolution on Sudan tomorrow and a quarter million blue helmets there next week, just as should have happened in Rwanda. If they had their sights lower, say, not being actively evil, they’d insert a sentence or two about Hamas in their regular tirades against Israel.
Read the UH charter: the UN was born a eunuch.
After reading about the massive graft machine that was “oil-for-food,” I’m inclined to say that you’re being too kind.
manhattan: Cite? That seems a little unfair. It’s not like anyone is gonna hold a press conference and say “I was hiding stuff until that mean old George W. Bush showed me that sometimes UN resolutions actually mean something, even if the UN itself doesn’t care.”
Sorry, I don’t think it’s any more “unfair” to ask for a cite on an unprovable inference than it is to assert such an inference in the first place. If what you’re saying is “I think that the only reason there’s been any progress on nuclear negotiations/discoveries in Iran, Pakistan, or Libya is because of the invasion of Iraq, but there’s really no way to prove that”, fine. Otherwise, I’d like to see your proof.
That said, in the case of Libya, Hans Blix seems to think it [the Iraq invasion] may have had some influence
Well, I already said I agreed with you that the invasion of Iraq had some influence in this regard, but thanks for the cite anyway.
*As regards Pakistan, it’s literally impossible that the IAEA had any influence – Pakistan is not a signatory to the NPT and IAEA has (still) never been there. If it wasn’t the Bush Doctrine, it was something else that was not IAEA. *
Well, according to this January BBC News report, it was in fact the IAEA that found the Pakistan connection during investigations in Libya:
First, the IAEA got access to those Libyan documents precisely because Libya gave up the game to the United States and Britain (note – they didn’t go to the UN, they didn’t go to France or Russia, they didn’t go to another Arab country. They went to the guys with the big planes and the will to use them. Libya’s been reaching out to continental Europe for a while now, trying to rejoin the world community, and I think it’s pretty telling that they went to us on the big magilla) and for no other reason. No Bush Doctrine = no questions to even ask.
Second, IAEA has been questioning Pakistan for decades and has been told (politely) to go pound sand. Something changed their minds and persuaded them to cooperate at least as far as profliferation to bad-guy countries is concerned (They’re still hiding other stuff, IMO).
Yep. I maintain that the something was the Bush Doctrine. If it’s something else, make the case. But there’s literally no case that it was IAEA or any other UN organ – they just don’t have any pre-Bush Doctrine successes at all on which to base the claim.
Republican porn Manny. the Axis of Ultimate Warriors were never going to really go after Libya. rather, Libya saw the oppertunity to score a massive PR coup (something they have been trying to do for years). Gadaffi wants to be allowed sell his oil agaiun, and the Ultimate Warriors want a short term reliable source of oil while their kerfuffle in Iraq is going on. If they ever correct their massive mistakes and the area stabilises, Lybia will be ignored once again and blair won’t hae to suffer through another flatulent meeting with Gadaffi again.
Or perhaps liberal nightmare Twisty. What an awful thought that must be to contemplate; that Bush’s policy actually works! Khadaffi has always worked in mysterious ways (did you see his hot bodyguards!) but don’t you find his timing just a little bit potent. As you say, he has tried for years, but only moved now, when he feels the fire burning. But of course the Axis of Ultimate Peeves deserves all the praise right.
they haven’t jut been trying for years, rather they’ve been taking steps towards a better image. I think the current environment just gave Libya the oppertunity to make a leap rather than them getting a push.
The one inconvenient fact the Republicans want to brush under the rug is that most of the bridge-building between the United States and Libya happened under the Clinton Administration.
As with everything else in his political career, Bush is simply taking credit for someone else’s work.
manny, I think the problem is that you’re assuming your premise. You insist that the IAEA doesn’t accomplish anything useful or constructive, and when I point to something useful or constructive that the IAEA has accomplished, you say “oh well, it must have been something else besides the IAEA that made that action actually useful and constructive, because the IAEA doesn’t accomplish anything useful or constructive”. Hard to argue with that line of reasoning, although that doesn’t mean that it’s right.
I think we are definitely in agreement that the IAEA is certainly incapable of achieving James-Bond-like results in singlehandedly detecting and eliminating illegal nuclear activities. The Agency is restricted in terms of how and where it’s allowed to conduct inspections, and cannot go sneaking around undercover to dig up everything that a government may be trying to hide. That’s not its role—nor would any of the major UN member countries agree to its having such a role—and that IMO is not the goal by which we ought to measure its achievement.
Nobody is claiming that the IAEA is capable all on its own of handling the problem of illegal nuclear proliferation, just that it does some effective and constructive things in brokering disarmament and nonproliferation agreements and in watchdogging compliance. If you’re evaluating the Agency as some sort of international spy whose job is to find stuff that bad guys don’t want it to find, even though the bad guys retain control over what the Agency gets to see, it’s no wonder you’re disappointed in it; but I think the problem is not with the Agency’s work, but rather with your expectation. We’ve known since at least the discovery of Iraqi weapons programs in the early 1990’s that bad guys can successfully hide stuff from the IAEA. That doesn’t mean that its activities are of no use whatsoever, as you seem to think. I’d like to know how you’d propose to monitor and enforce non-proliferation goals without the IAEA.
UN absurdity continues.
Sudan in the midst of an ethnic cleansing campaign gets re-elected to the UN Commission on Human Rights - described as the main UN human rights watchdog.
This is a farce. The UN is steadily pissing away what creditability is left after the recent graft scandal. The next time the UN speak up on some human rights violation I’m afraid a common enough though will be: yeah right, admonitions of piety straight from the mouth of the mass murderers.
(…and Cuba also) http://coranet.radicalparty.org/pressreview/print.php?func=detail&par=5534
That’s an interesting article, and something to think about.
The Clinton administration had its share of spectacular failures to go along with some notable successes, just as any administration. But it’ll take more than one article to convince me they were so bad at foreign policy that they couldn’t work out a deal on Libya’s WMD, particularly since they successfully did work out a deal on the Pan AM 103 suspects prior to the events portrayed in that article.
In either case, though, the IAEA had nothing to do with it.