American Brickbats Ignore U.N.’s Efforts at Reform

Pavlov could not have trained them better. In American political circles the instinct to froth at just the mention of the United Nations is now so ingrained that even when it fulfills American goals, congressional critics rush to attack it.

The United States has insisted on stricter control over the U.N. budget process, even withholding much of its dues in an effort to force the United Nations to act--and it has won fundamental budget reforms. Congress reacts by repeating last year’s deep cuts in dues payments, and the Reagan Administration, while publicly enthusiastic about the reforms, still has not submitted a request for full funding.

The United States pushed the United Nations to place a “peace-keeping” force in southern Lebanon after the 1978 Israeli invasion. Yet for the past two years the United States has withheld 60% of the its share of the peace-keeping force’s funds, jeopardizing the force’s existence.

Now, after the United Nations has accepted American suggestions for an information-gathering unit in the secretary general’s office, several senators are threatening to block it.

In 1985 and 1986 the United Nations Assn. of the U.S.A. called on the world body to establish an information office to handle research and evaluate reports on conflict-prone regions. The association’s blue-ribbon commission on U.N. management reform, with distinguished representatives of current and past U.S. Administrations, such as former Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, repeated the call for an “early warning” system last December.

The proposal had a clear purpose: better peace-keeping. It would have the U.N. Secretariat gather information before a festering situation exploded, not after, so that the secretary general would have more than the morning’s news to guide him. With such an “early warning and prevention” capability he could help defuse crises before they erupt into hostilities--which might, for example, have averted Iraq’s invasion of Iran.

Meanwhile, the United States and other Western democracies have been pressing for years to bring the United Nation’s Political Information News Service under the secretary general’s control. Administered under a department directed by a Soviet national, the service’s news summaries showed a persistent anti-Western bias that the democracies demanded stopped.

In one stroke Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has accommodated all these U.S. proposals by creating an Office of Research and Information Collection. He has assigned to it precisely the early warning role recommended by the American United Nations Assn. He has yanked the Political Information News Service out of its Soviet-led department and made it part of the new office, under an assistant secretary general who reports directly to him. He has even added yet another responsibility sought for years by Western countries--the monitoring of conditions that spawn refugee flows.

The secretary general has appointed James Jonah of Sierra Leone, a respected international civil servant whose credentials should encourage Western democrats, to head the office. A champion of the independence of international civil service, Jonah is nobody’s stooge. And because news agency personnel will be drawn from the reorganization of other offices, it will not require any increase in costs.

On every count the secretary general should expect Americans’ applause. Instead he has gotten brickbats.

Anonymous Administration officials have leaked charges that the secretary general’s initiative was prompted by Soviet “manipulation and illegal penetration.” Senators intone that the new office will “facilitate the operations of foreign intelligence agencies.” Ultraconservative foundations warn that the new office is a plot for “consolidation of Soviet control.”

No wonder that the secretary general is frustrated.

The querulous response to positive U.N. reform bespeaks American confusion about what we expect the organization to accomplish. Certainly the vast majority of Americans, judging by the polls, want to see international institutions succeed. And in the two decades since Vietnam, the timing for a fresh approach has never been more favorable. The harsh, polarizing rhetoric from the developing countries has abated; we have forced management reform. Now what do we want it to do? Are there American goals, hopes and ideals that the organization can advance?

When we finally have the world saying “yes” to us, it’s time for America to assert real leadership--not backbite from paranoia. An opportunity for leadership is within our grasp. Let’s take it.