YESTERDAY WAS the best of times and the worst of times for the United Nations. A young, energetic and idealistic American president firmly re-engaged with the world body, foretelling a new era of international co-operation and exhorting the UN: “This institution will be what we make of it.”
It was the worst of times because once the applause for Barack Obama’s stellar speech died down, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy, whose country holds the revolving presidency of the General Assembly, virtually hijacked the podium for more than an hour, haranguing the audience with an incoherent rant on the injustice of the Security Council.
The United Nations is only the sum of its parts, and Messrs Obama and Gadafy seemed to epitomise its potential for good and its tendency to wallow in grievances and recrimination.
“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” Mr Obama said.
“We have sought – in word and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility . . .”
In his praise of multilateralism, Mr Obama quoted Franklin D Roosevelt, who died before his dream of the UN became a reality: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation . . . It cannot be a peace of large nations – or of small nations. It must be a peace which rests on the co-operative effort of the whole world.”
Mr Obama reiterated the words “the co-operative effort of the whole world” and said that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation”.
It was a wide-ranging speech, probably the most complete expression of Mr Obama’s foreign policy to date. His world vision constantly seeks to escape the shackles of the past, and persistently looks to the future with optimism.
“The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world,” Mr Obama said. “Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War.”
Mr Obama defined non-proliferation and disarmament, the promotion of peace and security, preserving the planet and reforming the world’s economy as the four pillars of the future. “The most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the hope of human beings,” he said. And despite the difficulties, he promised not to waver in the pursuit of peace between Israel and Palestinians.
The UN’s imperfections were “not a reason to walk away” from it, Mr Obama said.
The ebb and flow of political fortunes is one of the organisation’s eccentricities: Yasser Arafat was first a “terrorist”, became a Nobel Peace Prize winner, then died a hounded and humiliated man. The Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was initially regarded as a dangerous radical, but was yesterday received as a sage, delivering a fine speech on the world economic crisis.
Yet somehow the rehabilitation of Col Gadafy never really took hold. George W Bush hailed the Libyan dictator for renouncing weapons of mass destruction, and sent Condoleeza Rice to Tripoli as a reward. Yet Col Gadafy remained an embarrassment to the world community, recently celebrating the liberation of the only convicted Lockerbie bomber.
“Congratulations to our son Obama,” Col Gadafy started his long peroration. Mr Obama had left the room, but he must have cringed if he heard it. The Libyan leader waved a copy of the UN charter, saying he subscribed to the preamble, which recognised big and small states as equals. But he rejected the veto power of the five permanent Security Council members as unjust, demanded that it be renamed the “Terror Council” and compared its “terrorism” to the terrorism of al-Qaeda.
There was little chance that Ali Treki, the Libyan diplomat who was elected president of the General Assembly in June, would tell his former boss to shut up. So Mr Gadafy rambled on, delaying speeches by other world leaders, including his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A few blocks away, outside Libya House on the corner of 2nd and 48th, hundreds of members of the black American Nation of Islam were coralled behind police barricades, holding placards saying “Long Live Gadhafi” and “America Welcomes Gadhafi”. One man’s nutcase is another man’s hero.
A new era of engagement: extracts from the speech
Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone.
We have sought – in word and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges. If we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we are not living up to that responsibility.
In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero sum game.
No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world. Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War.
We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, and failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for.
Or, we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings, and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations.
The United States does Israel no favours when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians.
And nations within this body do the Palestinians no favours when they choose vitriolic attacks over a constructive willingness to recognise Israel’s legitimacy, and its right to exist in peace and security.
We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the night. It is paid by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God’s children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security.
As an African-American, I will never forget that I would not be here today without the steady pursuit of a more perfect union in my country. That guides my belief that no matter how dark the day may seem, transformative change can be forged by those who choose the side of justice.
And I pledge that America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights – for the student who seeks to learn; the voter who demands to be heard; the innocent who longs to be free; and the oppressed who yearns to be equal.