By Niall Ferguson
It is funny that the acronym for the United Nations is UN. It always makes me think of negatives. Unhelpful. Unrealistic. Unproductive. Unhappy. This has been an especially unhappy summer for the United Nations. I am not only talking about its month-long paralysis while war between Israel and Hezbollah has devastated Lebanese and Israeli cities, or the manifest impotence of its peacekeeping force in Lebanon, four members of which were killed on July 25 by Israeli forces.
And which over the couse of 30 years or so have studiously avoided actually keeping any peace... | Despite all this, most people still tend to assume that the UN is the best place to look for a solution to this latest crisis in the Middle East. Indeed, on Friday, members of the UN Security Council finally approved a resolution calling for a ceasefire. But who seriously expects the United Nations to prevent al-Qaeda (or its latest imitator) from trying to blow up passenger planes in midair? Those who dreamt up the "Lockerbie-meets-9/11" bomb plot clearly did intend "mass murder on an unimaginable scale". All the UN has to offer in response is (as they say in New York) yada yada yada on an unimaginable scale.
I had a look at the UN website on Friday to see how the "international community" was reacting to the transatlantic horror that might have been. It didn't take me long to locate a promising page entitled "UN Action against Terrorism". Clicking on "Latest Developments" took me to Kofi Annan's "Recommendations for Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy". |