Syria takes over Security Council rotating presidency

June 1, 2002 3:30 PM

Syria takes over Security Council rotating presidency Now at long last we can get some good moral leadership. This is the same international organization of Truth, Peace, Justice that does not allow Israel a chance to join the rotating chair. Go ahead, flail me with posts, but kind of an organization is this?
posted by Postroad (11 comments total)

Israel has received more than adequate representation in the UN through the unflinching Veto of the U.S. regardless of whether the resolution was reasonable or not (Nyet Nyet United States?). Besides, everyone knows you only need the U.N. when you want to invade and not appear to be 'maverick' or 'unilateralist' country.

Neither the current American administration or Sharon's coalition seem to have any qualms about appearing to be unilateralist. In fact it seems to play quite well domestically.
posted by srboisvert at 4:31 PM on June 1, 2002

flail! flail! flail!
posted by brucec at 5:12 PM on June 1, 2002

I dunno. The same one that created Israel?
posted by laz-e-boy at 5:31 PM on June 1, 2002

but kind of an organization is this?

One that most people with sense stopped taking seriously a long time ago.
posted by ljromanoff at 5:37 PM on June 1, 2002

The UN is like Usenet. Huge noise:signal ratio, and a lot of mischief by bad actors that there's no good way to get rid of. Focused, invitation-only organizations, like Nato, are more like MeFi, where Matt can toss you out if you're acting exploitative.

Speaking of which, the fact that Russia is now essentially part of Nato seems to have slipped completely under the radar screen. I know, this probably doesn't rattle the shutters of the 20-somethings, for whom the Fall of Communism was half a lifetime ago, but for those of us who grew up during the Cold War, this is like Pat Buchanan declaring that he's gay.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 6:39 PM on June 1, 2002

Isn't Pat Buchanan gay?
posted by donkeyschlong at 6:41 PM on June 1, 2002

Pat Buchanan, who's gay lover is an illegal immigrant from mexico.
posted by Apoch at 9:25 PM on June 1, 2002

Hmm... one of the traditional sponsors of terrorism taking the role of Chair of the UN Security Council. I wonder why people think that the UN is completely irrelevant to the real world nowadays.

Wonder if the next big attack on NYC will come courtesy of some UN 'attache' with a powder-blue passport.
posted by clevershark at 10:44 AM on June 2, 2002

Slithy, I don't think it passed unnoticed -- unless you count the front page of the NYT as unnoticed. True, we didn't discuss it here. I think it was more that for most people this was simply a perfunctory acknowledgement of truths that had already been accepted, to wit, Russia hardly matters anymore, at least by the scale of the Cold War. I've been saying for a while now that Putin, especially, recognizes Russia is no longer really a superpower -- militarily, they're barely at the level of just one of the major European countries. Note that the usual speeches trotted out about 'the end of the Cold War' really, really peeved the Russians, who claim that it really ended in 1985 when Gorbachev declared an end to the philosophy of international socialist revolution. They're like, get over it already. If anything, the junior partnership is just an expression of the dictum to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. We're still not quite ready to put them in the first category.

I think the really interesting thing is what this means for China. Far from eliminating NATO as an alliance with a purpose, the Russian accession may have re-energized it as a security framework for the post-Cold-War world, because some Chinese are now wondering whether they should themselves bid for the same junior-partner deal. Suddenly, they're a major power without a table to sit at; their nascent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (China, Russia, central Asian states) looks like a lemonade stand by comparison.

The UN, of course, has always been this way -- remember that Unca Joe got three seats in the general assembly for Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus. And what's with the totalitarian commies on the security council in the first place? And thirty years later, swapping out a democracy for a billion-resident prison? The UN has always represented the most utilitarian forms of realpolitik, the idea that it doesn't matter who's running your country -- because your country will largely act in pursuit of its abiding interests. Anyone who imbued it with moral authority for human rights or democracy was either cynical in the extreme, or fooling themselves.
posted by dhartung at 10:56 AM on June 2, 2002

Dude, I read on MeFi that Pat Buchanan's gay. And now he's like President of Assyria or something.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:57 PM on June 2, 2002

dhartung, Taiwan was not a democracy untill the late 1990s, way after they lost their seat on the security counsole (and, indeed their status as a nation)
posted by delmoi at 8:35 PM on June 2, 2002