Kofi Annan, that veteran poster boy for kumbaya one-world-ism, asked the UN Security Council yesterday to extend the mandate of his ever-expanding Syria mission. His ideas on solving the Mideast’s most deadly crisis are closer to Russia’s and Iran’s than to ours, but Washington will likely go along anyway.
Why? On Syria, as on too many foreign-policy fronts, the Obama administration too often resembles Kofi Annan: It wants all the world’s kids to play nice together in the global sandbox.
But since many kids aren’t nice, that overly internationalized approach can get awkward.
On Tuesday, Annan declared in Tehran that Iran can be part of the solution in Syria. Fine, Annan has a long history of cozying up to dictators — but this statement was a direct challenge to Washington: Our UN ambassador, Susan Rice, told reporters last month, “Iran is part of the problem in Syria.”
Yet Rice will soon end up voting to OK a three-month mandate extension for 300 hapless “observers” who shuffle papers in their Damascus offices under Annan’s supervision.
Awkward.
Then there’s the question Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) posed to Rice yesterday: How did we fail to bar Iran from sitting on a 15-state UN panel charged with writing a new international treaty on arms transfers?
In a conference at Turtle Bay this week, UN members are trying to write a new Arms Trade Treaty to limit the flow of conventional arms — especially to countries where human rights are constantly violated.
The usual suspects (Oxfam, Amnesty, etc.) are running around Turtle Bay, selling the new treaty as a panacea for world peace. NRA-types, opposed to even US government gun control, retort: The UN? You kiddin’ me?
More important, how can anyone put faith in a would-be arms-control treaty that’s hashed out with the help of the mullahs who supply Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with arms, drones, training and advice on how to kill his own citizens?
Awkward.
But business as usual at Turtle Bay: Assad, after all, is likely to soon win a seat on the 49-member UN Human Rights Council, the Geneva-based organization charged with assuring that rights aren’t violated by tyrants.
Awkward.
Yet Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s spokeswoman, tweeted last week that America is “pleased by the accomplishments of the Human Rights Council’s 20th session.” She also failed to mention that Israel, a top US Mideast ally, severed its ties with the famously biased council during that session, after it formed its umpteenth body to investigate the Jewish state.
Awkward.
As is a recent revelation that the United Nations’ intellectual-property agency, WIPO, is sending banned “dual use” technology (that is, tech with military as well as civil uses) to Iran and North Korea — in violation of the UN’s own resolutions.
Awkward.
But perhaps not so for Washington, so enamored these days with UN-style conferences and multinational forums.
Take the Global Counterterrorism Forum, created by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a year ago. Last month, Israel wasn’t invited to an Istanbul gathering of that 29-member group. At a similar parley in Madrid this week, the US representative, Undersecretary of State Maria Otero, listed countries where citizens were victimized by terror — but failed to mention Israel.
To please Turkey and other Muslim members, Israel remains unwelcome at the forum, despite Jerusalem’s direct pleas to join it.
So Israelis can’t share some of the vast expertise they have acquired in fighting terrorists (for whom the Jewish state is a top target). And so, the US-led group increasingly looks like an empty gesture rather than a serious anti-terror tool.
Awkward.
The United Nations was created in America’s image. Imitating the constitution, the UN charter begins with “We the Peoples.” The idea in the 1950s was that the world organization will one day become just like the exemplary democracy we have in the US of A: United Countries of the World.
Instead, America’s foreign policy now begins to look a bit like the United Nations: at best ineffectual, at worst bad for us, our values and our allies.
Twitter: @bennyavni