Interventions (46 page)

What became known as the war on terror had initially been launched in response to the attacks of 9/11 with broad international support. But as the United States increasingly went its own way—with Iraq and with the way it executed its operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere on a global hunt for al Qaeda cells—a global consensus began to fracture. Among the people of the Muslim world, reeling from the impact of these wars, nothing did more damage than the abuses and crimes that took place at detention centers such as Abu Ghraib. More broadly, many governments began to adopt the principle that a tradeoff between human rights and security was necessary, a deeply damaging regression for human rights and the rule of law. Many would point to the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay as a model for their own flouting of due process.

The wars following 9/11 also became about the very purpose of the United Nations—a clash between those who saw the UN and the multilateral principles it represents as an end in and of themselves and those for whom the UN and its resolutions are seen as a useful means toward ends that may or may not be legal and legitimate in the eyes of the world. In the clash between Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush, a tyrannical master of miscalculation met an ideologically driven leader shocked into unilateral vengeance against all perceived enemies. And for the United Nations, the question came down to two challenges that could not be met at the same time: the defiance by a predatory state of its obligations under the resolutions of the Council, and the decision of the world's sole superpower to ignore the considered judgment of a majority of the members of the Security Council and enter into a war that could not be justified under the Charter.

By behaving the way it did, the United States invited the perception among many in the world—including many long-time allies—that it was becoming a greater threat to global security than anything Saddam could muster. This was a self-inflicted wound of historic proportions—and one that did immense, and possibly lasting, damage to U.S. standing in the world. Abu Ghraib did not come out of a vacuum, and neither did Guantanamo. The way they both ran counter to the principles of the rule of law has done incalculable damage to the global struggle for human rights.

Of course, while the Council opponents of the United States and the United Kingdom claimed to be making a stand on principle, they were also driven by reasons of national interest. They were deeply motivated by a desire to prevent a world in which the United States would be given a license to act how and whenever it wished. It may be Iraq today, but where would it be tomorrow? they would ask.

For them, the urgent need to contain an aggressor state such as Iraq was replaced with the priority of containing the United States, a founding member of the United Nations, one of the permanent five members of the Council, and a pillar of global security. For Washington to allow this evolution in its global position was not only a historic failure of diplomacy but also a tragedy for the rule of law around the world.

Ultimately, there was a deep and irreconcilable tension at the heart of the UN's Iraq policy: Saddam clearly had no intention of ever coming into full and verifiable compliance, and neither the United States nor the UK were willing to bring him in from the cold even if he had. Both sides knew the realities about the other's position and the UN was caught in the middle. And then came 9/11 and a frightened, enraged, and deeply ideological Bush administration set about removing Saddam from power—something no basis in law could justify. The UN is not—and has never been—a pacifist organization. But on the question of war and peace, if it does not stand up for the principles of its Charter, it not only places itself outside the law but also loses its legitimacy around the world.

Epilogue

DREAMS OF A REALIST

A
Swahili proverb holds that “You cannot turn the wind, so turn the sail.” Turning the sail—from conflict prevention to economic development, peacekeeping, human rights, and climate change—is now more than ever in the hands of each and every one of us. The wind will follow its own unsettled course, but men and women in every society today have the ability to determine their destiny in ways unimaginable in past eras. Tyrants and bigots, warlords and criminals, the exploiters of human capital and destroyers of our natural resources, will always be with us, but their sails are not the only ones that can harness the wind.

Early in the year 2011, a storm of change began to blow across the Arab world. The Arab Awakening saw young people throughout the region step forward as one—desperate for dignity, and demanding the opportunity and the freedom to pursue their aspirations for a better life. This force was of a kind that cannot be resisted—at least not for long. We saw it play out in Africa, in Latin America, and in Asia, and now the Arab world's time had finally come. Nowhere did a regime resist this change more fiercely, or more doggedly, than in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Over the course of a bloody year that began in March 2011, the world witnessed the youth of Syria take to the streets week after week pleading for a better, more just, more accountable form of government. With the protests escalating, armed resistance growing, and security forces continuing with a crackdown that, as of this writing, is estimated to have cost some 10,000 civilian lives, Syria's spring has been transformed into a nascent civil war.

In February 2012, while I was reviewing the final drafts of this book at my home in Geneva, I received a call from my successor Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He wanted to know if I would accept a request, conveyed to him by a group of foreign ministers, to take on the role of the international community's envoy for the crisis in Syria. They needed a mediator who could engage with the internal, regional, and international divisions that accompanied the Syrian conflict, and who would seek to resolve them peacefully. I accepted, knowing how difficult it would be to bridge the hostilities and to create the context for a negotiated transition to a free and representative government in Syria. I also knew that the alternative, an armed civil conflict drawing in global and regional powers and spilling over into fragile neighboring countries, could have far wider—and more lasting—ramifications. This was a conflict as complex, and as virulent, as any that I had encountered in my fifty years of international diplomacy.

The crisis in Syria was not only one of street protest movements and rebel groups pitted against a decades-old regime, but a maelstrom in which also swirled the jealously guarded interests of dozens of regional players, including Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran. These divisions were compounded by the diverging interests of Russia, China, the United States, and the EU. Furthermore, Syria is as complex as any society one might care to name in the region. Its cleavages are rapidly becoming as deep and bitter as those of Lebanon and on a scale that threatens a clash of sectarian animosities that could dwarf even those that shook Iraq after 2003. It is a conflict that threatens the disintegration of a state at the crossroads of numerous regional and international forces, of religious and sectarian rivalries, and in a region stalked by extremism. Furthermore, Syria holds one of the world's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons.

In this light, it is perhaps understandable that, when I accepted the job, the dominant—indeed, it seemed, the only—message in the media was that this was “mission impossible.” How, in such a crisis, could there even be the possibility of a peaceful transformation of Syrian society? I knew this would be an intervention that would tread the most delicate of tightropes, woven in a dozen divided strands. I focused first on bridging the intense divisions in the Security Council, and after receiving support from all sides for my six-point plan, I began to engage with the regime with strong international support. Initially, in March 2012, the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition accepted the peace plan. At the time of this writing, in May 2012, the violence had resumed at a terrible cost to the civilian population of Syria. To the members of the Security Council and those countries with influence on Syria, my message was clear: if Syria was to see an end to the violence and a transition to a legitimate government, they had to exert the necessary joint pressure for diplomacy to succeed.

The period ahead for Syria is as fraught and uncertain as any facing the countries of the Arab world today. Change must come to Damascus—the regime knows this, the region knows this, and the world knows this. The question is whether it will be achieved through a bloody and immensely destructive civil war, or whether the people of Syria will see their aspirations for genuine freedom and individual rights realized through a transitional process to representative government.

Just as each of us can look to Syria and see the price its citizens are paying to achieve a measure of freedom and dignity, we as a global community should learn the hard-won lessons of the past, and seek to prevent injustices and inequities from taking root before they lead to crisis and conflict. A culture of prevention can be far more effective than a slogan. We know that the three pillars of security, development, rule of law and human rights are indispensable in and of themselves, and need each other to ensure that one is not threatened by the weakness of the other. The lesson of the crises of public trust and governance sweeping the world from the Arab Spring to Europe and Asia is that without the rule of law and human rights, unequal development or narrow forms of security are not sustainable. For governments, NGOs, corporations, and individuals alike, this is a lesson with the power to transform the lives of states as well as peoples.

The promise of agricultural development is one area where innovative science and investment, rightly applied, can make a difference to millions. I am now involved in an effort to transform food production in Africa—and create true food and nutrition security—through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Our mission is to empower smallholder farmers throughout the continent to create food security from the bottom up, farm by individual farm. With projects in more than a dozen countries in Africa, we aim to double the income of smallholders through the use of improved seeds, increased productivity, and adequate storage facilities, assisting the farmer all along the value chain.

AGRA aims to address one of the principal objectives of the Millennium Development Goals; namely, to reduce hunger and poverty by 50 percent. Agriculture will continue to play a critical role in the development of my continent of Africa, and if it is allowed to sustain broader social and economic progress, Africa can truly enter a new period of prosperity. As the crisis in Kenya demonstrated—and conflicts elsewhere in Africa continue to remind us—honest, accountable, and legitimate leadership remains the critical difference between a better future and a descent into new periods of crisis and underdevelopment. The Arab Awakening that has galvanized the politics of so many of the countries of North Africa is inspiring youth throughout the continent to ask for more, and better, from their leaders, and to take their rightful place in the global wave of economic integration that has transformed societies, from China to Brazil and India.

If the MDGs have succeeded in creating a universally accepted template for addressing the sources of social and economic development, R2P—the Responsibility to Protect—has changed the global understanding of sovereignty, such that no state should be allowed to violate the rights of its citizens with impunity—and allow no leader to imagine that his standing will be unaffected by the way he treats his people. In any such ambition, where the aim is to alter the balance of power between state and citizen, progress will be slow and fitful. None of us behind the development of this emerging international norm imagined that states everywhere suddenly would respect the rights of their peoples, or that the answer when they failed was necessarily military action in the name of human rights. What we sought—and still seek—is a consciousness on the part of leaders and governments everywhere that their integration into global society cannot progress without respect for human rights.

The MDGs and R2P each represent, in their own way, attempts to renew the structures of global governance for a purpose beyond the privilege of states, and to empower individuals to turn their sails toward realizing their potential. In a world undergoing dramatic shifts in the balance of power—between the West and the East; the state and the private sector; an economy designed for the benefit of a few and one reimagined toward sustainable inclusive growth—the United Nations can still play a vital, convening role and be an agent for progress.

The UN Charter was written in the name of “We the Peoples,” and if it renews itself for a new era of people power, the organization can aspire to making a far greater impact in the lives of those who need it most. From the farmer in Africa to the girl being educated in Afghanistan to the Chinese family buying their first home to the Sudanese village enjoying peace, security, and self-rule, new dreams are being realized in every part of the world.

A United Nations that serves not only states but also peoples—and becomes the forum where governments are held accountable for their behavior toward their own citizens—will earn its place in the twenty-first century.

I was educated on three continents, attending universities in Africa, North America, and Europe. My time at Macalester College in Minnesota, United States, was an eye-opening experience of another culture undergoing dramatic changes. In 1960, I joined the Ambassadors for Friendship program at the college, which sent small groups of international and American students out to explore the United States.
Macalester College Archives, DeWitt Wallace Library