A little over a year ago, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies sent me to Israel to study the way they fought terrorism. During this time, I had a chance to view the United Nations-monitored demilitarized zone between Israel and Lebanon, and gain a greater understanding of Israeli opinion toward the U.N.
"U.N., Schmoo-N," they would say, "The U.N. cannot protect us." And in light of recent events, it appears they were right. Of course the U.N. is not responsible for the recent war in the region -- that honor can be shared by Hezbollah and Israel, as well as Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Hamas. Had the U.N. acted responsibly and appropriately, however, the incident could have been avoided.
U.N. Resolution 1559, passed in 2004, called for the complete disarmament of Hezbollah. And if 1559 had been fully implemented, in the view of many, we probably wouldn't be here today.
But not surprisingly, the U.N. refused to back up its resolution with action. Not only was there no support of or pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, but the U.N. allowed Hamas to hide in Lebanon's backyard. U.N. outposts in the demilitarized zone, designed to protect both sides from war, are exclusively oriented toward (and therefore watch over) Israel. And, as I witnessed during my trip to Israel, Hezbollah militants use these outposts as shields, hiding behind them and pointing their guns at tourists and Israeli soldiers alike.
Yet despite a resolution demanding for the disarmament, the U.N. has done nothing to stop these guerillas, even as they were only feet away from U.N. "monitors."
Even when three Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah in 2000, the U.N. refused to share with the Israelis two video tapes it had taken of the actual kidnapping (though it released parts of the tapes to Syrian and Lebanese television networks). The U.N. is at least partially responsible for the death of those three soldiers. And given this background, it is difficult to blame Israel for their mistrust of the U.N.
This mistrust has been confirmed by U.N. actions during the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah. UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon, posted precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, the placement of their structures and the nature of their weaponry and war materiel. This was information that would not have otherwise been publicly available. This information made it easier for Hezbollah to evade the Israelis and put Israeli troops in serious danger.
U.N. organizations did not publish comparable postings about Hezbollah troops. And considering the U.N. officially supports the disarming of Hezbollah, giving them Israeli troop locations seems rather counter-productive.
Some of the U.N.'s problems can be chalked up to good old-fashioned anti-Semitism (or at least, anti-Israel sentiment). After all, they recognized Zionism as racism until 1991, but practically refused to even mention the word "anti-Semitism" until 1998.
But it seems that its problems are much more systemic than that. Since the end of the cold war, when the U.N. was finally in a position to do some good in the world, it has had nothing but problems.
Since the first Gulf War, it has rarely been able to agree on anything. When the Rwandan genocide resulted in a million deaths, the U.N. did nothing. When similar genocides began occurring in the former Yugoslavia, the U.N. opposed President Clinton's efforts to intervene with NATO. The U.N.'s failure to enforce resolutions against Saddam Hussein was a main reason for the adoption of the U.S. policy of regime change under Clinton, and the eventual invasion in 2003. Their continued inaction in the Darfur region of Sudan, where yet another genocide is occurring, is despicable.
The U.N. has failed in its job. It has failed on the Israeli-Lebanese border, it has failed in the Middle East, and it has failed in the rest of the world.
But despite this failure, I do not believe the United States should share Israel's attitude toward the U.N. Unlike Israel, the U.S. has the power to change things. United States ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has done a good job beginning to lay the groundwork for reform. And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in an attempt to redeem his soiled legacy, has become one of the strongest proponents of reform.
The U.S. and its allies need to continue to push for positive change in the United Nations. Perhaps someday it will find its proper role in the world and will finally become the positive global influence it was envisioned to be.
--Marc Goldwein is a senior political science and economics major from Merion, Pa.
