By Arthur I. Cyr
In a major address at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Barack Obama emphasized challenges of violence, especially but not exclusively in the Islamic world. Equally important, he reconfirmed the durable importance of the U.N.
With characteristic rhetorical skill, Obama laid out the case for the rule of law. After criticism of television interview comments where he described violence accompanying the Arab Spring as "bumps in the road," the president began by praising U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three colleagues murdered in Libya.
Obama noted help from governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen as well as Libya in strengthening security and pursuing the killers, and condemned the now-notorious, hateful anti-Islam film produced in the United States. He also emphasized the vital importance of freedom of speech.
The address is the latest important evidence for enduring commitment of the U.S. to the U.N. This began with the declaration of the Atlantic Charter by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, capping their successful shipboard summit meeting off Newfoundland in August 1941 ― four months before the U.S. entered World War II as a declared combatant.
The commitment to the United Nations was confirmed and reconfirmed by successor Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In December 2006, when Kofi Annan stepped down as U.N. secretary-general ― to be succeeded by Ban Ki-moon ― he chose the Truman Library in Missouri for his formal farewell address.
That venue was selected to highlight contrasts between Presidents Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush, especially the collective security approach of the former and the go-it-alone preferences of the latter. Truman took the U.S. to war, but as part of a U.N. coalition opposing North Korea aggression. Truman secretaries of state Dean Acheson and George Marshall constructed the Marshall Plan and the NATO alliance.
Frustration with the United Nations is understandable. The global gabfest goes on seemingly endlessly, with diplomats whose self-importance seems inversely related to the power of their nations. There was far-reaching financial corruption associated with U.N. supervision of the Iraq oil-for-food exchange. For these reasons and others, Bush's tough talk had considerable resonance within parts of the American public.
Yet realism requires working with ― not against ― the United Nations, as Bush himself eventually recognized. He made major policy statements from the U.N. podium. As U.S. problems mounted in Iraq, the Bush administration turned to the U.N. for assistance.
When North Korea exploded a nuclear device, the Bush White House's initial sentence of its initial public statement highlighted the U.N. Despite Bush's political base on the Republican right, there was never a suggestion of getting the U.S. out of the U.N., a slogan for decades among isolationist conservatives.
Part of the reason is the inherent economic importance of the United Nations to the world at large. U.N. institutions include the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. In total, these agencies and associated treaties, understandings and practices underpin the relatively open and stable global economic system.
Ban, of South Korea, personifies the end of earlier division between developed nations and developing nations, which often sided with the Soviet Union and China.
For the first time since Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in the 1950s, the U.N. has a chief executive committed to freedom, unrestricted by Cold War ideologies.
Obama appropriately emphasized the spread of the rule of law.
Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College. E-mail him at acyr@carthage.edu.
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