By John Catalinotto found at workers.org
The would-be rulers of the world suffered two humiliating setbacks in United Nations votes in early May. They were paybacks for the extreme arrogance the Bush administration has shown towards allies and enemies alike.
The first rebuff was when the U.S. was voted off the Human Rights Commission. Washington had used this commission as a means of punishing those countries that dared to challenge its policies.
This year it had particularly targeted China and Cuba. It failed to win a condemnation against China but narrowly succeeded in getting a resolution passed against Cuba after twisting enough arms.
The U.S. also lost its seat on the International Narcotics Control Board. Washington had viewed this agency as a way to bring pressure against countries that fail to toe its line, coordinating this with the "war on drugs" that is really just a cover for U.S. intervention in Latin America.
The imperialist architects of U.S. foreign policy have grown so used to taking the UN for granted as a handy tool for aggression and intervention that they were stunned when the two secret votes in the 54-member UN Economic and Social Council went against them.
Four Western countries, including the U.S., had been running for three slots on the Human Rights Commission. France won 52 of a possible 54 votes, Austria 41, Sweden 32 and the U.S. trailed with 29. The secret ballot had allowed countries that usually fear Washington's retribution to vote against it.
In a similar vote, U.S. representative Herbert Okun was removed from the International Narcotics Control Board after two terms. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the two losses indicate that "there's something happening out there." He added, "I think it's fair to speculate there may be issues related to how we handled ourselves, to how we position.'' Columnist Maureen Dowd was blunter. "EVERYBODY in the world HATES us," she wrote in the New York Times on May 6. "Even the Swedes can't stand us, for Pete's sake."
Why a revolt now? The major capitalist media list, for starters, the Bush administration's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming and its unilateral rejection of the 1972 anti-ballistics missile treaty. There has also been the Clinton administration's rejection of a treaty to ban land mines, its refusal to support an international court, and the Senate's refusal to approve the nuclear test-ban treaty. And there was the attempt to sue South Africa to keep it from acquiring affordable drugs to treat AIDS.
There are so many other issues: U.S. hypocrisy on human rights when this country is the largest prison house in the world with 2 million inmates. Its arrogant preaching to the world even as its cops shoot down unarmed Black people like Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo and Timothy Thomas and its courts fail to prosecute the killers in blue. And its self-righteousness on fighting drugs when the huge U.S. market for the stuff is what drives the production of coca, poppies and synthetic intoxicants around the world.
Many countries are also sick of Washington's attacks on socialist Cuba, which unlike the rich, capitalist U.S. guarantees free medical care and education for all its children and has been generous to others with its limited resources, providing doctors and nurses to Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
Perhaps the weakening of the U.S. capitalist economy, the end of that raging bull market that seemed to drag everyone behind it, also made it easier to just say no.
Washington has always had a two-pronged approach to the UN.
On the one hand, over the past 56 years the U.S. ruling class has used the UN as a cover for its military interventions--in Korea in 1950, the Congo in 1960, against Iraq in 1990-1991 plus another decade of murderous sanctions, and in Somalia in 1992-1993. The Clinton administration even had the UN oversee the occupation of Kosovo after first relying solely on the NATO military alliance to carry out its war against Yugoslavia.
In a similar way, Washington has used bodies like the Human Rights Commission to condemn Cuba and, depending on the year and the needs of U.S. diplomacy, to attack Iraq, Libya, Sudan, China and others.
At the same time the U.S. has used its vote and influence again and again to keep Israel from being condemned for its brutal human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territories.
But the U.S.--under both Republicans and Democrats--has also withheld support from the UN. It has specifically held back billions of dollars in dues as a form of pressure.
A grouping of reactionary U.S. politicians, led by Sen. Jesse Helms, has made a career of demagogically attacking the UN whenever it fails to be a completely subservient tool of narrow U.S. interests. Helms and others can be expected to use these latest votes as grist for a campaign to withhold some $580 million that Congress was about to authorize for UN dues.
Once Bush's foreign policy team finish licking their wounds, they'll undoubtedly come back with a strategy to bring the rebel nations to heel. But Boucher was right. Something is happening out there. The votes in the UN are just a pale reflection of the seething anger growing around the world at these lords of the universe who would privatize every drop of water, every inch of soil, while trampling down whole nations to get it.
