THE UNITED NATIONS: Implications for US domestic affairs

I was a child in Europe during World War I, and so was familiar with horrors of war. The League of Nations, in which my Oxford mentor Salvador de Madariaga played a prominent part, collapsed. The result was World War II, with its even greater horrors. This explains the relief and joy with which the United Nations was created at the 1945 San Francisco conference, which I attended as an observer. I had the opportunity to converse, among others, with the charming Molotov. He headed the Soviet delegation to the conference, but he adopted a negative attitude because Nelson Rockefeller, who had been Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, had packed the conference with Latin American republics, only one of which, Brazil, had played any part in World War II. Even Argentina, which until the last moment had supported the Axis, was present. Molotov left San Francisco, and "No-man" Gromyko was left as head of the Soviet delegation. President Truman attended the closing ceremony at which the Charter was signed.

The Pan American Union, headquartered in Washington with a gringo as Secretary General, was ridiculed as the colonial office of the United States. The name was changed to Organization of American States, or OAS, and the Secretary General ceased to be a gringo. I was uneasy because the OAS has no Security Council, and the United States was hopelessly outnumbered by the disunited states of Latin America. As I foresaw, the US became the target of easy attacks by Latin American delegates, and was often left in unsplendid isolation. As a result, Americans lost trust and interest in the OAS, and today most are unaware that it exists.

The United Nations has gone down the same primrose path. The U.S. thought it was smart diplomacy to bring in all the Latin American republics, which at the time were eager to win the good graces of the leader of the victorious Allies. Did Washington foresee that the UN would admit a gaggle of small countries, none of which has any real responsibility for keeping the peace? The US is one of five countries with veto power in the Security Council, but not in the General Assembly. where is has been isolated on several issues, notably regarding the Middle East. It was the pressure of US domestic politics which led to this unfortunate situation.

Now, however, the end of the primrose path is clear. Because of those same domestic politics, the Egyptian Secretary General of the UN was discarded, to be succeeded by Kofi Annan of Ghana, who was been re-elected to a second term. This made me uneasy because it coincided with politically inspired complaints that the US had neglected Africa. Both parties went out of their way to disprove this charge against them; the Black vote was at stake. It also coincided with a Black campaign in this country to get reparations for Blacks for the the slavery which the Civil War ended. This campaign is misguided, because most Americans, including me, had nothing to do with Black Slavery. More deserving than the descendents of the slaves are those of the Union soldiers who died in the war to end slavery. Black Americans are infinitely better off than the vast majority of blacks in Africa, and they have shown virtually no interest in plans for them to resettle in Africa.

Now there is a very disturbing development. The UN sends me a lot of materials which Green Library does not receive, so I send them there. Usually I receive only one or at most two copies, so I was surprised to receive a pile of copies of "World Conference Against Racism", the agenda of a conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 7 of this year. This was a puzzling burst of publicity, but the implcation was made clear this morning in a commentary of Mexico's Televisa. The commentator, possibly with a touch of anti-gringoism, said that the conference was strongly backed by the United Nations (i.e. Kofi Annan), and that the aim is to help Black Americans receive compensation for slavery. He though this was fine, and was not concerned that the UN is interfering in US domestic politics, while Latin American countries complain about US interfvention in their domestic affairs. Is South Africa being held up as a model of black liberation? When I toured South Africa under the old regime it was a model of peace and order, albeit it not justice. Now Johannesburg is the most crime-infested city in the world, and the rest of the country is little better,

We shall see. Will the conference be equally severe on the governments of the black countries which sold the slaves? On those of the Arab countries, whose record is worse than that of the US? Slavery has a long history. It was originally justified as a generous alternative to killing prisoners of war. In any case, my questions about the UN are pressing. The retreat of Jesse Helms from leadership in US foreign policy seemed like a victory for sanity, but that does not justify UN insanity. The hard realpolitik attitude of Henry Kissinger has long antagonized me, but he is justified in defending it in his new book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? At the Durban conference it will be interesting to observe the attitude of other countries, including China and Russia. The US will be on the defensive. Whatever happens, hostility toward Blacks, which has virtually disappeared in the US, may be revived by the reparations campaign . One hope for a US propaganda victory at Durban is that Fidel Castro will attend and make a 17-hour speech.

Ronald Hilton - 8/5/01