Mereja.Forum

Very interesting

John Bolton Is Right About the U.N.

By Bret Stephens
The New York Times

The U.N. is a never-ending scandal disguised as an everlasting hope. The hope is that dialogue can overcome distrust and collective security can be made to work in the interests of humanity. Reality says otherwise. Trust is established by deeds, not words. Collective security is a recipe for international paralysis or worse. Just ask the people of Aleppo.

As for the scandals — where to start? U.N. peacekeepers caused a cholera epidemic in Haiti that so far has taken 10,000 lives. Yet it took U.N. headquarters six years to acknowledge responsibility. An Associated Press investigation found “nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world” over a 12-year period, including 300 allegations involving children. “But only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.”

In Rwanda in 1994, U.N. peacekeepers all-but abandoned the country at the outset of genocide that took at least 500,000 lives. In Bosnia in 1995, U.N. peacekeepers stepped aside in Srebrenica and allowed more than 7,000 men and boys to be killed and countless women raped. It’s a similar story in Sri Lanka in 2009 and South Sudan in 2016.

It is, of course, possible to dismiss all this as trivial — who cares who the WHO names as its good-will ambassador? If so, it attests to the truth of Bolton’s quip about the U.N. losing 10 floors. Fifteen might be better.

Except it isn’t trivial. “Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children and bringing cholera,” Mario Joseph, a Haitian lawyer seeking compensation for the U.N.’s victims, told the A.P. “Human rights aren’t just for rich white people.” That point ought to resonate with the U.N.’s usual defenders, whose idealism rarely seems dented, and only occasionally informed, by experience.

I agree with Bolton about some things and disagree about others. But on the U.N. he’s been right all along.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opin ... tions.html