The relationship between the US and the UN has passed through several phases.
When the UN charter was first being drafted, the US feared that certain parties were seeking to contest the basis on which the UN was to be founded. The forces of Nazism and fascism had just been defeated in a war in which American resources and command played a prime role. The helm of the new world order -- the Security Council -- was placed in the hands of the five nations that had led the allied victory in the war. The US, however, had certain reservations over some of the candidates. In addition there were pressures to place the US on par with other permanent and, perhaps, non-permanent Security Council members. The US resented this reluctance to recognise it at least as the first among equals. Indeed, this was one of the factors that gave rise to the Cold War.
In the 1950s, a decade after the creation of the UN, global upheaval came from the direction of Africa and Asia, where the tide of national liberation movements gained momentum beneath the banner of Non-Alignment. The US perceived Non-Alignment as an alignment against the US. The Soviet Union, for its part, enthusiastically endorsed the anti-colonial liberation movement and grasped the chance to lend emerging nations political, military and economic support to bring them closer to its orbit and to deepen the gulf between them and the US. In this decade, 1956 marks a significant turning point in the history of US-UN relations. The US's opposition to the tripartite aggression against Suez that year was its last major stand as a cooperative and integral member of the UN.
As growing numbers of newly independent nations -- prime among them the People's Republic of China -- became part of the UN order in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US began to feel that "others" had taken control of the organisation. Its response was to draw apart, to let them discover that without the US the UN would be nothing but words without action, resolutions without fire. For words without action, however solidly they are backed by law, are powerless, and resolutions that cannot be enforced, however just their intent, are futile.
But, not only did the US draw apart, it took with it the major international causes, such as disarmament, nuclear weapons, and space exploration. These issues, it held, were too important to give a say on them to countries that were not familiar enough with their intricacies to make the necessary crucial decisions. It also took with it the handling of international crises, such as the war in Vietnam, the Middle East conflict, and the contest between the superpowers at the time. Here it argued that such thorny questions could not be resolved by majority vote, not with the ever-present risk at hand that cold war could escalate to nuclear war.
The 1970s and 1980s brought a precarious fluidity to the Cold War. The Soviet Union was beginning to show the symptoms of crisis and the Third World had begun to beat a retreat. Over this period, the US appropriated all the major causes of war and peace. In so doing, it not only sought to bypass the UN but, often, to exclude the international body entirely. The arena the US had decided to keep for itself, above all, was the Middle East. Thus, from the first contact between Egypt and Israel in 1974 to the Oslo accord between the Palestinians and Israelis in 1993, the US, alone, steered negotiations and engineered settlements, all outside the procedural framework of the UN, and in defiance of its charter as well.
In the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to hopes that the US would take the initiative to reconcile itself with the UN. The Cold War had ended and the confident, fiery spirit of national liberation had deflated considerably. However, it turned out that the US did not want to return to the UN. It wanted the UN to come to it.
In August 1990 the world was stunned by Iraq's bid to annex Kuwait. Many in the Arab world and abroad felt that Iraq had crossed the red line. It was then that the US took a first step towards the UN, after which there emerged a spate of resolutions, the most significant being Resolution 678, sanctioning a new procedure for armed intervention to enforce an international resolution. What is crucial here is that the intervention that took place was not international. It may have been undertaken in the name of the UN, but the power to carry it out was conferred upon a group of nations said to be "cooperating with the government of Kuwait." The result was the US-led international alliance that waved its mandate in the air and acted as it saw fit.
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The decision to permit this form of intervention in the Gulf set the precedent of granting one party, or set of parties, a free licence to take law enforcement into their own hands. Nothing could more flagrantly violate the spirit of law. The law is that corpus of contractual provisions voluntarily and unanimously approved by all parties to a constituent entity. On the basis of these provisions, power to enforce the law is conferred upon a pre-designated agency, and implementation must follow pre-designated regulations and procedures. These provisions, moreover, are intended to ensure that all actions taken to enforce the law are subject to an autonomous body of rules and principles that derives its authority independently from any one party or sub-group of the constituent entity.
In the case of the UN, the law that received the voluntary and unanimous consent of its constituent members is embodied in the UN charter and its subsidiary principles and articles.
When the Gulf War began on 17 January 1991 under the banner of the "international alliance to free Kuwait," it was understood that the UN charter was serving this goal. After the war accomplished its aim, it became clear that there was another agenda. To achieve it the General Assembly had been frozen and the Security Council privatised.
Yet, the sovereignty of law inherently cannot be the preserve of any single party. The law does not brook monopolisation.
It is ironic that the country that has been able to impose the respect for the spirit and text of the law on all its citizens, from the highest official in the land down, and the country that has called the weak and oppressed from around the world to come to its shores to share in the dream of equal opportunity and the equality of all beneath the law -- it is ironic that this country should today be summoned to support the supremacy of law above all nations, including itself.
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The starting point of any session of the UN General Assembly is the agenda. The normal procedure for setting the agenda begins before the session, when the UN General Secretariat takes the previous year's agenda, crosses off those items that have been dealt with or lapsed, and then adds new items imposed by recent events, put forward by the general committees, or requested by the accredited delegations.
Your agenda for this session of the Model UN features a diverse range of fundamental issues. Peace-Keeping, Expanding the Security Council, Human Rights, Crime Prevention, the World Trade Organisation, the International Court of Justice all reflect the prime concerns of today and merit our fullest attention and sincerest dedication.
Nevertheless, may I be so bold as to propose to this generation of youth, which holds the key to the future, that you include another item on your agenda? I am moved to do so for I strongly believe that this item should supersede all other concerns, because, quite simply, it informs each and every one of them and increases their chances of success.
This agenda item is called "The US and the UN."
Below it we read:
* How can we effect a reconciliation between the US and the UN in order to secure the supremacy of law above all nations?
* How can we convince the most powerful nation in the world today and the standard bearer of democracy to respect the sanctity of law and the legitimacy of democratic rule among the community of nations, as embodied in the UN?
* Finally: How do we make the US realise that its attempts to reach a settlement over Palestine, outside the framework of UN's authority and procedures, have not brought peace, and that its monopolisation of the Security Council in its dealings with Iraq has not brought security?
Sustaining international peace and security is the most pressing concern of our times. When the UN sought to undertake this task without the backing of the US, law lacked the might to reinforce it. When the US tried, outside of the scope of the UN, the might was there but the law was absent. Fostering international peace and security demands the coexistence of both: the supremacy of law and the power to enforce it.
both posts where taken from the speech given by renowned political analyst Mohamed Hassanein Heikal delivered on Tuesday 13 March at the opening ceremony of the American University in Cairo's 13th International Model United Nations conference
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