Some Ideas from the Atlantic

This month's Atlantic Monthly had some interesting stuff in it. They called it the ideas issue, and the first three of the "Quick Fixes" were actually pretty good (the rest, not so much): Allow foreclosed owners to stay in their homes as renters, allow the UN to pay private soldiers to act as peacekeepers, and a more flexible attitude about installing democracy in Afghanistan.

I think only the last of the three, no democracy in Afghanistan, is likely to happen. Some big lenders may allow foreclosed owners to stay on, by I think few will and there is no will to impose that.

And although I do not think it would happen, the private UN peacekeepers is an interesting idea, although not a terrible new one. In fact I think my brother might have mentioned it one time. And it is possible that I dismissed it. But now that I consider it more, I do think it makes sense. It seems to me that the private troops could be more accountable, through contract renewal, than some of the country-sent troops, which have been accused of crimes and abuses themselves. And this way, only funding would stand in the way of peacekeeper deployment, and not the lack of willingness to send troops, which is more common.

Congo: What Happened While We Were Watching the Election

The violence and tensions in the Congo, where tens of thousands of the most violent rapes have been happening, has escalated recently. The Tutsi rebels have advanced on major cities, sending as many as 250,000 civilians fleeing their homes. Right now, African leaders are working to diffuse the situation, while western leaders again don't give this the attention it deserves. And I too must confess my lack of attention recently.

While the lack of awareness about this issue is disheartening as always, the most depressing aspect is the peacekeepers. The largest UN peacekeeping mission is in the Congo, but they have been unable to keep any sort of peace or protect anyone. Protesters, fed up with the UN's inability to protect them, were throwing rocks at the UN.

I don't blame them for their frustration. In fact, their anger is my anger. That so many people's lives are continuously put in danger with only minor efforts to alleviate the situation, makes me want to throw rocks with them. Unfortunately, it isn't the fault of the UN, but of the strong member states in the UN that put such a paltry peacekeeping mission in a place with such extreme violence. It is the deficiency of justice in the real world that you can never really express your full anger to the people who are truly responsible for your situation.

League of Democracies

I heard that McCain has been supporting this idea of creating a League of Democracies. The support for this institution, which would replace the United Nations, rests on the assumption that the UN in ineffective because the non-democratic countries interfere with our ability to do good. The problem is that this assumption just doesn't ring true.

At a reading for her latest book, Samantha Power made a profound but obvious statement. She said the UN will only be as effective as its strongest member - the US - wants it to be. The fact is that many times, we have used the UN to avoid doing the right thing and has rarely stood in our way of acting when we truly wanted to. In Rwanda, we manipulated the UN to prevent us from acting (by preventing the UN from acting). And of course in Iraq we acted without UN approval.

Granted, on the margins, there are times when our desires are frustrated. Our ability to bring sanctions against countries like Iran and Sudan has been hampered. In the case of Iran, other democracies were standing in our way. And with Sudan, there are much more effective efforts we could undertake without the UN if we really wanted to.

On the other side though, a League of Democracies is unlikely to be more favorable towards Israel than the UN is, considering that although Israel is a democracy, the situation with the occupied territories doesn't exactly live up to democratic standards.

What conservatives like McCain actually want is a new institution that is better at doing what we want it to. We want an institution that will levy sanctions when we say to, let us invade when we want to, help avoid military efforts when we want to, and pretend that the situation in Israel is fine as it is and deserves no rebuke. A world body like this is a pipe dream. Our only hope is to actually live up to our standards, not our self interest. Maybe then other countries would be more willing to follow suit.

United Nations: What is it Good For?

Someone told me this weekend that they thought the United Nations is worthless and ineffective. I don’t necessarily disagree, but it made me wonder if he, or even if I, know what we want the United Nations to do. Like any legislative body, it is extremely slow to act and its members often make decisions in their own interests and not necessarily based on morality. But if there was some consensus on what we do want it to do, we could move it in a better direction and help it to become more effective. I think the biggest thing hindering the UN right now is that we don’t know what we really want from it.

Based on what I know, the UN most often defers to a state’s sovereignty. The internal affairs of a state are its own business. This might have been a good policy immediately following World War II (although even that is debatable), but it doesn’t fit now. In my opinion, the biggest problem facing our world is the treatment of groups within states. Genocide continues to be a problem that is ignored despite the commitment of states to take reasonable measures to stop it. There are also far too many people displaced from wars or famine, with governments that are incapable or unwilling to support them. In those situations, we need an international body that is willing to act to protect and defend these people.

The reality is that this change will not happen overnight. It is too easy for member states to turn away from these terrible situations and pretend that they are incapable of doing anything about it. As I read A Problem From Hell, I get depressed at how the world continues to fail in its moral obligation to protect those who cannot protect themselves. We are great at showing regret long after the fact, but we never learn the lesson that true self-reflection leads to. The famous saying is, “Never again, again and again.”

We didn’t learn enough from the Holocaust to stop Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosivic, the Hutu’s in Rwanda or even the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed. We have never learned the lesson, and so our regret comes off as extremely hypocritical.

But I don’t want to focus entirely on genocide. Millions die or are displaced from civil wars every year. We should care about this. War torn regions in Africa or Southeast Asia should not be ignored because they are hard problems. President Kennedy once said, “We choose to do this and the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

I have been told during my rants that my position will never get me elected. Let me make something clear. My goal is not to get elected, but to change people’s minds. I want to make people think about their beliefs and understand the moral consequences of their positions. When we ignore major international problems, hundreds of thousands of people die. This should be just as enraging when it is Africans as it would be if it were Americans.

I did start this blog hoping there would be dialogue and debate. I want to know what other people think the United Nation’s role should be. I am calling for an end to what is now complete respect for state sovereignty. To me, this seems like an obvious solution to what ails the UN. To the others who think the UN isn’t useful, feel free to tell me what it should be doing.