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Essays |
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Time to Say Goodbye Kofi Annan
Since the "coalition of the willing" began its war against
Iraq without the approval of the United Nations, the headquarters of
the organisation in New York have sunk into deep apathy. Once again
the United Nations failed to avoid a conflict, but Kofi Annan now
tries to vindicate the legitimation of his organisation by
relaunching the "Oil for Food" program for Iraq. Despite
the fact that the Iraqi government refused to accept the restart of
the program, this new task for Kofi Annan shows clearly which role
the United Nations will play in the future: the United Nations will
serve as a pure charity organisation. It's clearly the Secretary
General's fault that the organisation is consequently led into
political insignificance.
If president George W. Bush now is accused of beginning that war
without the backing of the United Nations, he was able to do so
because the Secretary General acted as a diplomatic dud, who's little
more than the pathologist of his own organisation: always too late,
never pro-active. When the diplomatic crisis was foreseeable before
the war, Kofi Annan never managed to use the diplomatic equipment he
has available as Secretary General to slow down the United States'
rush to war. Of course, it would have been impossible for him to
avoid the outbreak of the attack against Iraq, but at least he could
have caused more political problems for the US and clearly had the
opportunity to aggravate the moral and diplomatic isolation of the
Bush Administration.
But nothing like that happened. Two days before the first bombs hit
Baghdad the Secretary General withdrew the weapons inspectors from
Iraq . following a "recommendation" by the White House. The
US started it pre-emptive war, Kofi Annan started his pre-emptive
withdrawal of the weapons inspectors, though he should have waited
for the formal approval of that step by the Security Council.
Furthermore, this could have been a violation of the UN Charter,
which clearly states in Article 100 that "in the performance of
their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or
receive instructions from any government".
If Kofi Annan had acted unilaterally in that case, it would have been
a strong signal to the US, that the United Nations are reluctant to
allow that war to happen. As Kofi Annan didn't decide so, he showed
the White House that he was willing to transfer the monopoly of force
to the White House.
But this episode was only the latter in a set of heavy political
miscalculations which were possible only with a diplomatic nonstarter
like Kofi Annan: when the USA kidnapped large parts of the
12,000-page-long Iraqi weapons report on December 8th 2002 and
decided, which parts of it should be delivered to the other members
of the Security Council, Kofi Annan suddenly disappeared and didn't
protest as strongly as he should have done. But that weapons report
was part of the demands of the UN resolution 1441, and therefore the
United Nations had the responsibility to decide what happens with it.
It was definitely not up to the United States or the Pentagon to
interpret the content of the report, but Kofi Annan let it happen.
Now Kofi Annan has admitted in an interview with the New York Times that
he didn't realize the inevitability of a war until four weeks ago and
explained that with his experience, from time to time a military
build-up has to be done to secure peace. That's ridiculous, and
nothing more than naive. Surrounding Iraq with approximately 250,000
soldiers of the little "coalition of the willing" had to
end in a war. Kofi Annan obviously managed to cultivate pure autism
and blindness as a tool to avoid any conflict with Washington. Nice
try.
When it was already foreseeable at least six weeks ago that there
would be a standoff over Iraq in the Security Council, the Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Annan simply wasn't able or willing to act in
the background and develop possible alternatives. "The Secretary
General doesn`t interfere in the agenda of the Security
Council," his office said. But sometimes it may be necessary for
the Secretary General to position himself. Otherwise the United
Nations will soon be seen as the new League of Nations and really
become "irrelevant", as President Bush said.
Now Kofi Annan should take the chance to position himself one last time
and step down in order to avoid the United Nations being another
collateral damage of the war. He couldn't take a better step to
strengthen his organisation.
This article is copyright 2003 Martin Schwarz, but permission is granted
for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media on the condition that this
credit text is included with the article. Any commercial use (e.g. republishing on any page which contains advertising) requires the specific permission of the author.
Martin writes in German. The original document including the German version is found here.
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