CAGING THE WORLD'S 700 POUND GORILLA

BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

 

            The news that the United States will not sit on the United Nations Committee on Human Rights was alarming to many in this country, especially as countries like China and the Sudan claimed seats.  All it takes, though, is a trip out of the United States to fully understand how complex the world's feelings are toward us.  I was not surprised that even our allies have ambiguous feelings about our world dominance, and that they would act these feelings out by abstaining in a critical United Nations vote.

 

            Let's start with the big stuff. WE don't play by the rules.   WE still haven't paid our long-overdue United Nations dues, and we keep attaching strings to our payment. If some small country, the Sudan perhaps, failed to pay its dues, how would we respond?  But we've held our payment up in a series of procedural objections so absurd that private citizens like billionaire Ted Turner have offered to pay our dues for us.

 

            We also fail to abide by United Nations treaties on things like the rights of women or the rights of children.  Oh, we mouth the principles easily enough, and we participate in the conferences and meetings.  But when it comes time to put our signature, our policies, where our rhetoric is, we aren't willing to do so.  Our unwillingness to abide by the Kyoto accord, that shapes world environmental issues, is a case in point.  We are the world's 700-pound gorilla, a dominant force, especially militarily.  We don't have to flex our muscles, but we keep doing so, and then we seem surprised when others are offended by our preening.  The wolf tickets that President Bush sold to China after our plane landed on their soil were both unfortunate and an unnecessary show of strength, bound to alienate not only the Chinese but the rest of the world.  Fairly or unfairly, we are also seen as the dominant force in international monetary bodies like the IMF and the World Bank.  Thus, in the developing world, where interest payments make it impossible for countries to invest in education, health, or other human development projects, it is the US, not the world bodies that are resented.  The World Bank's structural adjustment policies, now modified, are a source of resentment, and our unwillingness to forgive the debt of developing nations is also an issue.  We miss being on a human rights panel, but eating is a human right that millions do not enjoy, partly because of policies we are perceived to have directed.  

 

            The United States is perceived to be a hypocritical country that never hesitates to lecture the world on human rights issues, but often fails to adhere to basic human rights principles within our own borders.  That's why our November 2000 elections were so amusing to those who have chafed when international bodies, led by the United States, came to watch their polls.  I participated in a panel discussion that was broadcast internationally and was mortified when a Rwandan man called in to suggest international poll watchers in the United States.  Of course, his comment was mostly tongue in cheek.    With Rwandans now being tried in world courts, there is a gulf of difference between the human rights violations in that country and this.  Still, how dare we speak of human rights and democracy when we seem to have only a limited commitment to such principles in our own borders?  We simply cannot offer rhetorical leadership for a set of principles we are unwilling to ahere to without making ourselves the laughingstocks of the world.  

 

            Petulant nationalists will say that the world can't do without the United States, our military might, our technological innovations, our educational access, our power.  They may be right, but if we know that we are the big kid on the block, whey don't we act like it.  We could pay our United Nations dues, be more gracious about the difference between our power and that of the rest of the world.  We could court our allies instead of ordering them to respond to us.  

 

            When we behave like hypocrites and bullies, the rest of the world can't resist an opportunity to try to cage a 700-pound gorilla.  Rejecting the United States from a UN human rights panel was a slap on the wrist, a bid for attention, a signal we should pay attention to.  Instead of talking about retaliating or further withholding our UN dues, we ought to talk about ways we can "make nice" with the rest of the world.