Well it’s sorely nee…

Well it’s sorely needed. We’ll see if it’s ideas are implemented.

The United Nations on Tuesday proposed the most sweeping changes in its history, recommending the overhaul of its top decision-making group, the Security Council, and holding out the possibility that it could grant legitimacy to pre-emptive military strikes.

The changes were outlined in a much-anticipated report commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan a year ago after bruising division over the Iraq war left the United Nations feeling ill-equipped to meet modern challenges represented by terrorism, failed states, nuclear proliferation, poverty and violence.

Frankly, under Kofi Annan, some of the worst of these problems flourished. It’s good to hear he commissioned the report. The big question will be; will he attempt to implement any of it? Annan is expected to take up the reports main topics with the General Assembly next September, although some parts can be put into effect by Annan himself or by the portion of the UN that would be affected.

The report recommends increasing the Security Council from 15 to 24 members and gave a couple alternate solutions for how to add them. Veto power would still be conferred only on the 5 permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States).

The panel was very critical of the Human Rights Commission, a body that has often brought the United Nations into disrepute by incorporating some of the worst rights violators like Cuba, Libya and Sudan into its membership. The commission, which is based in Geneva, “suffers from a credibility deficit that casts doubt on the overall reputation of the United Nations,” the report said. The official who briefed reporters added that too often the chief motivation for countries to join was to deflect attention from deplorable rights conditions at home.

Many more people other than this panel have been critical of the HRC, but that hasn’t changed much. The UN has to have been aware of the horrible irony having these violators as members of or, in some cases, presiding over the commission. The bureaucracy is such that it can no longer react and adapt as it should, and the Iraq situation, 12 years in the making and including tens of billions of dollars in graft, is a classic example. The fact that after all that time and money wasted, there was a “bruising division” over the war only serves to point out how badly the UN is broken. It remains to be seen how these changes in the UN apparatus will change the underlying problems. No matter what the UN Charter may say, if France is too hooked on under-the-table cash from a rogue state, their veto blocks any action. Corruption among member states can still stymie it, and where does that leave us?

It leaves us with pre-emptive war, which was also taken up.

Addressing the critical issue of the legitimacy of the use of force, a source of crippling tension at the United Nations last year when the United States was seeking Security Council authorization to go to war in Iraq, the panel said it found no reason to amend the charter’s Article 51, which restricts the use of force to countries that have been attacked. The report said the language did not constitute, as some have asserted, a demand that nations wait to be attacked. And it said many countries had exercised the right to attack when they had felt threatened.

But it acknowledged that a new problem had risen because of the nature of terrorist attacks “where the threat is not imminent but still claimed to be real: for example, the acquisition, with allegedly hostile intent, of nuclear weapons-making capability.”

It said that if the arguments for “anticipatory self-defense” in such cases were good ones, they should be put to the Security Council, which would have the power to authorize military action under guidelines including the seriousness of the threat, the proportionality of the response, the exhaustion of all alternatives and the balance of consequences.

Apparently in anticipation of objections from Washington over that requirement, the report said, “For those impatient with such a response, the answer must be that, in a world full of perceived potential threats, the risk to the global order and the norm of nonintervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted. Allowing one to so act is to allow all.”

It is good to know that this panel understands that fighting terror is different from the wars that have preceded, but apparently this is news to the UN in general and to those who think any pre-emptive action is never warranted. But given my concerns about corrupt governments holding things up, putting our foreign policy to this global test is still a danger to our safety, regardless of any official rethinking about fighting terror. If the Security Council can specify if we can act, when we can act, and by what means we can act, we will be stuck with what we had before the Iraq war; an international body unwilling to act on anything where a member state has a vested interest in keeping the status quo, but very willing to submit more paperwork tut-tutting the bad guys.

The official said that at the outset, some of the panel members had been in the habit of faulting the United States for exaggerating the threat of terror and seeking what they called “perfect security.” But he said the members had come to a sharp new appreciation of the menace of nuclear and chemical agents and how easily they could be infiltrated into Western societies.

Good morning, United Nations. Welcome to the post-9/11 world. Time to stop hitting the snooze button

The report breaks new ground with respect to the nation of Israel (at least, with respect to how most UN members view it).

Addressing a long sought codification of terrorism that would not allow people to class it as an acceptable act of national resistance, the panel suggested defining it as any action “that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.”

In a sentence that may have been directed at members of the United Nations who habitually condemn violence by Israel while making no mention of attacks on Israel, the report said, “There is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.”

This last sentence will no doubt be fought by the pro-Palestinian contingent, but even it’s suggestion by someone other than Israel itself or the United State is a breakthrough. I’m very happy to see this, but again, it’s all in the implementation.

The list of people involved in this panel really is a diverse group.

The panel was headed by Anand Panyarachun, a former prime minister of Thailand, and included Brent Scowcroft, the United States national security adviser under the first President Bush; Yevgeny Primakov, a former prime minister of Russia; Qian Qichen, a former foreign minister of China; and Amr Moussa of Egypt, secretary general of the League of Arab States.

These are folks from all across the spectrum, which may give more weight to the need to implement their recommendations. If the United Nations is to be legitimate and relevant in any way, this opportunity to reform should not be squandered or delayed.

And it should not be considered a destination; only the first step in its redirection. “Better is the enemy of good enough”, as Jerry Pournelle has said.

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