"MORAL AUTHORITY" RE-CONSIDERED

Imagine no United Nations. It's easy if you try, writes David Frum:

The helicopters are taking off and landing now in the tsunami-shattered villages and towns. The sick are being taken for treatment. Clean water is being delivered. Food is arriving. Soon the work of reconstruction will begin.

The countries doing this good work have politely agreed to acknowledge the "coordinating" role of the United Nations. But it is hard to see how precisely the rescue work would be affected if the UN's officials all stayed in New York - or indeed if the UN did not exist at all.

Good question. I suppose a few children might avoid becoming prostitutes. Frum continues:

The UN's authority is instead one of those ineffable mystical mysteries. The authority's existence cannot be perceived by the senses and exerts no influence on the events of this world. Even the authority's most devout hierophants retain the right to disavow that authority at whim, as Ms Short herself disavowed its resolutions on Iraq. And yet at other times those same hierophants praise this same imperceptible, inconsequential, and intermittently binding authority as the best hope for a just and peaceful world. An early church father is supposed to have said of the story of the resurrection: "I believe it because it is absurd." The same could much more justly be said of the doctrine of the UN's moral authority.

Read the whole thing. And here's Mark Steyn:

Kofi Annan has decided that the Aussie-American coalition of the willing is, in fact, a UN operation whether they know it or not. "The core group will support the United Nations effort," he said. "That group will be in support of the efforts that the United Nations is leading."

So American personnel in American planes and American ships will deliver American food and American medicine and implement an American relief plan, but it's still a "UN-led effort."

That seems to be enough for Kofi. His "moral authority" is intact, and the European media can still bash the Yanks for their stinginess. Everybody's happy.

It should be noted that Australia was handily ahead of the curve on UN uselessness, as Jules Crittenden observed in a June 2003 Boston Herald editorial (no link available):

[Australian Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer, in his remarks last Thursday to the Australian National Press Club, took a few well-aimed swipes at the so-called need for multilateralism.

"Increasingly multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator," Downer said.

"Multilateral institutions need to become more results-oriented if they are to serve the interests of the international community, including Australia.

"We are prepared to join coalitions of the willing that can bring focus and purpose to addressing the urgent security and other challenges we face ... our choice is whether we want to help lead rather than follow the international community in responding to a new and rapidly changing international environment."

Yet again, Australia has demonstrated that it is not necessary to be a military superpower to take a moral position and back it up. The example of a relatively small, remote nation should serve to shame greater powers that continue to hide behind the niceties of "internationalism of the lowest common denominator."

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