A thick slice of Bubba pie

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My friend and international man of mystery Parag Khanna just published an essay which made the cover of Harper’s, Jan. 2006 (not online yet). Congrats, Parag! It’s a modest proposal for reforming the U.N. by putting Bill Clinton in charge:

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Indulge me for a moment as I fix the world. First, rich countries must raise their development budgets… underdeveloped societies must root out corruption and boost investment in social welfare… we must strengthen the capacity of international institutions to manage global collective security against the threats of terrorism… we must move rapidly toward free and fair global trade, and involve NGOs and the international business community in providing responsible and accountable delivery of public goods around the world…

… there is only one solution… Embed a super-American at the highest level. That man, at this moment, is Bill Clinton.

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p>But is Bubba the right plumber for these pipes?

Allegations of widespread sexual abuse came to light in a U.N. refugee camp in Bunia, Congo. Blue-helmets were paying girls as young as thirteen or fourteen with bread, milk, or a little cash…

U.N. personnel… have eased the burden they bear in lightening poverty with fermented marijuana cocktails along the banks of the Mekong River.

Parag tells of his first experience with the U.N.’s legendary inefficiency:

I first got involved with the United Nations just before its fiftieth birthday. In 1995, at age seventeen, I was likely the youngest intern wandering the corridors of the two glass towers… One week the Youth Unit had exceeded its quota of printing paper, so we simply were not allowed to make photocopies until our stock was replenished. I started to wonder: If the unit, or even the whole Division for Social Policy and Development, ceased to exist, would anyone miss it?..

… the posturing to frame and release studies is a routine so stale that one may quickly forget that people are dying… The Economist derided the sham of summitry by declaring: “Let them eat reports…” As Australia’s former foreign minister and High-Level Panel member Gareth Evans recently remarked, “It is still the piranha pool of diplomats enjoying tearing flesh off each other, to the total exclusion of any enthusiasm for high principle or effectiveness of the organisation.”

    Ennis points out that Clinton held the U.N. back from stopping the Rwanda genocide, so in the ungenerous hindsight of history, he can’t really hold his head high around the U.N. But Parag moves in for the hard sell:It is still the piranha pool of diplomats to the total exclusion of high principle

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    It may seem ironic to suggest Clinton as a manager, given that he ran one of the fastest and loosest White Houses in American history… Furthermore, it was under Clinton’s watch–and Kofi Annan’s as head of peacekeeping-that the United States balked in Somalia, waffled on the Balkans, and prevaricated on Rwanda. Yet not only has Clinton been forgiven; he continues to be seen as a source of hope.

    Simply watching any video clip of the man in action overseas will demonstrate that America today has not one single citizen even remotely approaching his ability to develop a rapport with foreign leaders–and there is no replacement in sight. The choice for President Bush, therefore, is not between any American and a non-American but between Bill Clinton and a non-American. Given Bush’s patriotic instincts, this should be no choice at all…

    Parag Khanna is the Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Second World, forthcoming from Random House

    I could see the paterfamilias, Bush père, burying the hatchet with Bubba, as they’ve done over the tsunami and the Bush library, but I don’t see a similarly redemptive streak among the younger.

    3 thoughts on “A thick slice of Bubba pie”

    1. Clinton running the UN would be the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse… This recent book U. N. Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Anti-Semitism, and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat is probably why Bubba is dying to be in charge… it is a perfect fit for his “talents”:

      FROM THE PUBLISHER “On the day Pedro Sanjuan moved into his new office at the UN Secretariat in 1984, he had the foresight to unscrew his telephone receiver. Out fell a little packet of high-grade cocaine. When he confronted the under-secretary to the chief Soviet diplomat – really a KGB colonel and the top Russian spy – the agent laughed good-naturedly and congratulated him on passing the test.” “That was the beginning of Sanjuan’s long, peculiar odyssey into the looking-glass world of the United Nations Secretariat.” “Pedro Sanjuan had been appointed by then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to a high-ranking UN post. His real mission: to keep an eye on Soviet espionage activities. Over the years, the Russians had managed to install nearly four hundred KGB and GRU agents In strategic positions throughout the Secretariat, and had turned it into a massive spy facility, operating openly and with absolute impunity on American soil.” “But this, It turned out, was the least of the problem. Sanjuan soon discovered that incompetence, corruption, anti-Semitism, and outright criminality were rife throughout the UN Secretariat. Among the shady activities that he personally observed or documented were rigged bidding for major service contracts; drug transactions conducted in the UN’s parking garage; sale of shotguns and beryllium directly out of the UN building; ties to global organized crime figures; use of UN Information Centers and other agencies to disseminate anti-US and pro-PLO propaganda; systematic theft and abuse of UN facilities and budgets in East Africa; graft and corruption in Vienna; widespread sexual harassment; use of the UN employee’s lounge to plan anti-Israel and anti-US activities by Muslim delegates; open celebration of 9/11 by said delegates in the halls of the UN; and inexplicable tolerance of all of the above on the part of the secretary general and the US government.”

    2. The Clinton administration’s incompetence in dealing with fundamentalism is one of the reasons for the failure of intelligence with regards to September 11. Then comes the debacle of Rwanda. However, I believe that the fact he tried in Mogadhishu to bring down Mohd Farrah Aidid and his role in making Sharif pull back his forces during Kargil ( even though they were anyhow close to anhillation) makes gives him some redeeming qualities. From the quotes above it seems clear that Clinton should not be top dog but is somewhat deserving of a post close to the upper echelons in the United Nations.

    3. This is largely an academic exercise – the Chinese and the Russians will never accept an American general secretary of the UN, and I imagine a number of Muslim nations will object as well. All of Clinton’s efforts are to serve two goals – one, to genuinely address address problems of AIDS and poverty, and two (no small matter) his wife will be running for president in 2008. While Hillary may have to get down and dirty in the campaign, he can show voters that he is above the fray, and if his wife is elected, he will be able to promote these issues with the official stamp of the White House.