The United Nations and the United States

     While Elián playing and American clerics visiting with his family in Havana made good TV stuff, little attention was paid to the provocative address to the United Nations Security Council by Senator Jesse Helms. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he clearly is important, but the invitation was due to the fact that U.S. Representative Richard Holbrooke is this month's president of the Security Council.
     USSR Secretary General Khruschev banged his shoe before the Council, while Helms, just a Senator, banged his folksy Southern twang, calling the delegates "My friends" and then saying nasty things. His allusion to the General Assembly, made up of vocal countries mostly without power or responsibility, was justified, but to say that the United States would not pay up unless the U.N. did its will was crude. His scornful dismissal of the European Union and the International Criminal Court infuriated those who have been trying to build up a united Europe and an international system of justice. He implicitly supported NATO as being able to act without U.N. sanction, but his remarks elsewhere suggest that he would oppose the creation of an independent European force.
     The speech did not go down well, as Helms must have expected. While Namibian representative Martin Andjaba vehemently expressed the resentment of lesser states, the French delegate Alain Dejammet expressed similar feeling more diplomatically, and even the British delegate Sir Jeremy Greenstock was critical, probably reflecting not only the response of the British government but also of the Clinton administration.
     It would be unwise to speculate on the impact of this session on the future of the U.N., which will presumably become a topic in the U.S. presidential race.

Ronald Hilton - 1/21/00