A Boost for Diplomacy

The selection of Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering as the permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations is a good one, reflecting a promising commitment of President-elect George Bush to serious and professional diplomacy--including multilateral diplomacy.

Bush said that the appointment was intended to symbolize the importance that he attaches tothe nation’s career Foreign Service--a group unfortunately sidelined during the Reagan Administration and a group that has through the years, from the time of the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) to the current operations of the radical right, been a favorite target of right-wing members of Congress.

More than that, however, the appointment symbolizes that the new Administration will take the United Nations seriously. That commitment, combined with the reiteration Wednesday of a commitment to multilateral diplomacy by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, holds substantial promise for new efforts to make better use of the United Nations and its specialized and affiliated agencies and organizations.

Bush himself was widely respected among diplomats from developing nations when he served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Pickering brings experience in areas critical to international issues before the world organization--including security issues in the Middle East, where he now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and development issues in Africa, where he served as the ambassador to Nigeria, the largest and most populous of the continent’s nations. His experience as the ambassador to El Salvador will enable him to play an unusually influential role within the new Administration as it devises new policies for Central America.

President Reagan made regular appearances before the United Nations, but he also harbored within his Administration many policy-makers who never concealed their antipathy toward the international body. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s first permanent representative, came to be a symbol of contempt rather than support for the organization, encouraging decisions within Congress that weakened the organization by withholding American funds. But time and again the Reagan Administration came to discover the utility of multilateral diplomacy embodied in the United Nations as it struggled not only with the problems of the Middle East but also with those of Afghanistan, Cambodia and the Iran-Iraq War. Now, it would seem, the Bush Administration intends to use the world organization as it was intended--an important place for doing international business, an institution as effective as the member states themselves make it.