UNreal World: A MOMENT Interview

...And what follows from that is that it is possible to pursue policies, even policies of force, at a kind of "sub-Armageddon" level...

...But the Algerians insisted that any resolution must include a condemnation of Israel...

...And if there is indeed any potential to the UN, it cannot be healthy that it has lost the support of a constituency that might have been expected to be among its most ardent supporters...

...Certainly none has been debated with such sustained intensity...

...You can nail it to the door, and it deals with the truly important point, with Israel's withdrawal...

...Yet even the Dutch have joined the other Europeans in their approach to the PLO, in their statements of policy on the Palestine question, in their severe criticism of Israel's policy on the West Bank...

...One aspect of the American debate on the UN was highlighted during Pat Moynihan's years as ambassador there...

...it hasn't solved that problem...

...Those policies cause some people to wonder to what extent the depiction of Israel as such a danger may actually be true...

...The United States thought of the UN as a way to prolong the peace which the wartime alliance had won...

...The UN becomes a place for people who are interested in such things to see the reality of the world in which they live...

...Is there any episode that sticks in your mind and can offer us an example of how the thing works...

...It cannot adopt and enforce laws...

...In the recent session, it was, of course, the Lebanese invasion that touched off the debate...

...The UN was oversold to start with...

...American foreign policy cannot simply be framed in a series of declarations...

...Why not have a year for everybody, so far as that goes...

...The first time that happened was Korea, but Korea was a kind of fluke...

...The UN force in Cyprus didn't solve the Cyprus problem...

...The Soviet Union and its hangers-on find it convenient to attack Israel, because there is very little else they can do to gain influence in the Middle East, and the Middle East, as a region, is as important to the Soviet Union as it is to the United States—entirely for the same reason...

...You have to understand that most foreign ministers speak to an empty Assembly Hall...

...flexibility is not a dirty word, even for people who are very much concerned about their principles...

...From the beginning, they saw the UN more nearly as a forum in which the continuing conflicts of interest and strategic frictions, which are inherent and inevitable in the co-existence of different systems, might be dealt with...

...And the UN hastily improvised a force and stuffed it between the two armies...

...It's not that you are compromising your principles...

...There are issues where Singapore may feel the same way as some of the other Third World countries, there are issues where they don't...

...Well, much as perhaps that is what should have happened, it really couldn't have happened that way...

...And these new members were much less concerned with the prevention of World War 111 than with other matters...

...A diplomat's work, after all, just seems to disappear...

...all they can do is to join in beating on the one extant punching bag, which is Israel...

...And there's really no other way for,the Russians to gain influence there...

...In 1960, when I came to the UN, the facts of its situation became evident...

...It rein-Yes, that's messy—but the world is a messy place, and it makes no sense at all to suppose that the UN will not reflect that mess...

...In what's come to be known as the Third World, Israel can be seen by those who want to as an example of Western colonialism, the implantation of a Western people in the Third World...

...The UN got together on Korea because at the time, the Soviets were boycotting the General Assembly because the Nationalist Chinese were there...

...And the result was that the Latin Americans withdrew their resolution, because the Arabs, under Algerian instigation, found it inadequate, and the Arabs advanced their technicolor resolution, and it was defeated...

...The Soviet Union never saw the thing the way we saw it...

...These different motives affect each other, encourage each other, animate each other...

...It wasn't until 1967 that the Israel issue really blew up, and, since then, no other issue can compare...

...Israel's existence is the one thing on which the Arab nations can get together, can outbid each other, can win points back home...

...The Third World is Singapore, which is one of the most prosperous, industrialized, well-organized countries around, with an enormous per capita GNP...

...The British empire went...

...I don't think I'm overstating if I suggest that for many of us, the UN no longer seems to be a very good place...

...Also, by chance, there was already a UN presence in Korea, a commission dealing with the reunification of Korea, and it was they who reported the North Korean attack, so the propaganda that this wasn't a North Korean attack at all was simply wiped off the table...

...And Gromyko recommended to the Algerians that they accept this approach...

...Or you can say, "This is garbage, and this is garbage, but this . . . this looks interesting, and let's see whether it can be developed...

...Look at the Dutch, who have taken in Jews since the time of the Inquisition, whom no one can conceivably accuse of anti-Semitism...

...We've had something like 140 wars since World War II, with something like 10 million dead as a result...

...So for the United States to say that it will confront these nations is self-defeating...

...there have been any number of cases over the past years where the non-aligned countries have split...

...you can turn it off if you want to...

...Because they wanted too much, they ended up with very much less than they might have had, for what happened that summer led to the adoption, in the fall, of Resolution 242, in which there was no suggestion that the withdrawal had to be from all the territories...

...UN forces in Lebanon and on the Golan haven't solved those problems...

...The Soviets back then depended on their veto, which they cast, in the first ten or twelve years, nearly a hundred times, an expression of their determination not to have the UN encroach on their prerogatives...

...And suddenly from a membership of something like 70 nations, it soared, until today, when you have 157 members...

...I don't think that bothers them too much...

...They pretty much take it for granted—rightly or wrongly—that there isn't going to be a World War III, that the Soviets have no more interest in incinerating themselves than does the United States...

...There's no way they might alter the reality, because it's beyond the power of any diplomat to alter the basic elements that contrive this pattern...

...Well worth talking to, every one of them...

...You confront when you have to confront, as for example when the United States informed people that if they pushed Israel out of the UN on an absolutely illegal and flimsy pretext, the United States would not want to continue its own participation...

...The UN is not a fairy godmother that can wave a wand and solve problems that cannot be solved elsewhere...

...And it offers a good illustration of the Arab instinct for self-destruction...

...The job is to see what the problem is, to define your interests, to make them known to your friends and your adversaries and the fence-sitters in between, and to try persuasion...

...You've seen quite a few Israeli ambassadors at work...

...I don't want to minimize the difficulties, but if it's a difficult UN, that's because it's a difficult world...

...But there is no monolithic non-aligned movement...

...And Gromyko said, "Look, we've really worked things over, we've counted noses, and you're not going to get the necessary support for the kind of extravagant resolution you want...

...There is still a sort of observer group in India and Pakistan, worrying about Kashmir...

...But you can't cut him off with nothing...

...So you'll do best to take this other one...

...Its forward policy has made the attacks easier...

...And be thankful that, here and there, the mess can be contained...

...Are we wrong to take our images from what we see...

...The General Assembly may look like a parliament, but it can't do anything, it wasn't set up to do anything...

...I recall that one of my colleagues described the organizational meeting in San Francisco as the most important meeting since the Last Supper...

...it's universally unpopular...

...At the UN, they come together for different things, and sometimes all those different things are going on at the same time...

...When your interests conflict with what someone else sees as his interests, you engage in diplomacy, which is a way of seeing how much each of you can salvage...

...Diplomacy is just a synonym for compromise...

...One of the few dependable phenomena in an otherwise often capricious world is the continuing attack on Israel in the General Assembly of the United Nations...

...And it's become quite obvious that the UN is not the answer to the world's problems, is not an agency that can impose decency and reason on the normal turmoil of human life...

...That didn't solve the problem—but nothing can solve that problem...

...Well, coming out of World War II, entering the Atomic Age, it was easy to come to such an exaggerated view...

...I think it's plain that Israeli policies have made it easier for those who want to paint Israel as a great thumping danger to the region and to the world...

...Last month, in an effort to cast some light on this murky behavior, moment interviewed Richard C. Hottelet, who has been the CBS correspondent at the UN since I960...

...Well, my favorite story is what happened back in the summer of 1967, when Gromyko brought Kosygin here for the General Assembly, the session that was called after the '67 war...

...By 1967 it had become apparent that the hopes that had been wrongly attached to the UN were not going to be fulfilled, that instead of being a Western club with Western norms, sledge-hammering would prevail...

...we were not about to have our policies dictated by random majorities in an international body...

...Don't look at it as a temple of justice or a font of truth, but as a kind of Madison Square Garden where people come together for a purpose...

...Not that those meetings produced very much, but the point is that Israel is not cut out of the forum, even if it is cut out of the public manifestations of the Assembly's work...

...Is it accurate to say that over the 22 years you've been at the UN, no single issue has been so debated...

...That's not real...

...Any comments on the UN's upcoming 'Palestinian year...

...And if you are persuasive and your case is better, then perhaps you'll come away with more than your opponent...

...And then in '73, when the Israeli and Egyptian forces were interlocked on both sides of the Suez Canal in a way that would have guaranteed a further explosion, there was an air of urgency, a generally perceived need to do something about it...

...The Portuguese empire held together a bit longer, but was in the process of going...

...Back then, there was no focus to the Israel problem...

...And, as we've seen, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty is in place...

...Well, I think that's nonsense...

...What is the Third World...

...But they represent Israel forcefully, all of them, even the soft-spoken ones— forcefully, and with dignity...

...If someone is disturbed by the rhetoric at the UN, that's largely his own fault...

...We, for our part, surely would not have joined if we hadn't had a veto in the Security Council...

...If the Israelis are a punching bag, then the Palestinians are a kind of fig leaf, especially among their Arab brothers, for motivations that have very little, if anything, to do with the immediate welfare and future condition of the Palestinians themselves...

...As pragmatic as the Algerians can be on matters of economic policy, when it comes to the political side, they have a kind of civil war mentality...

...People come to Madison Square Garden for different kinds of things, to hear a rock concert or to watch a basketball or hockey game...

...That is part of the arsenal of diplomacy...

...All this wasn't apparent at first...

...The Soviet perception went farther...

...The UN expanded, exploded with the beginning of decolonization...

...The Latin Americans proposed a draft, a working paper, in which they criticized Israel for occupying the territories they'd occupied and called for Israel's withdrawal from all the occupied territories...

...It probably would not have happened if there hadn't been a UN agency to install there as a buffer...

...But the slogan of Palestinian rights is something people can rally around, an offshoot of the opposition to Israel...

...It's not principles that you're negotiating, but means, behaviors, transient interests...

...It appeared that the human race had managed to survive this most terrible war, and might perhaps be persuaded at long last that war was no way of solving problems...

...Israel surely has contacts with the Latin Americans, with African and Asian countries...

...What happened was that the nations forming the Assembly were seeking some kind of resolution that would express the sense of the Assembly...

...Any wisdom, in closing, on whether we should confront, or do we compromise...

...If you're watching the UN for signals, if you're looking to it as a kind of barometer, the behavior of the Dutch ought to register...

...So a great many things come together here...

...Oh, yes—Gidon Rafael, and Tekoah, and Comay, and Herzog, and now Blum...

...And doing a rough job...

...Pat saw the world in terms of his famous 24 or 25 democracies, locked in battle against the forces of darkness...

...Israel is very discreet, and it's right for them to be...

...But to pick up your biggest gun right at the beginning is no way to do diplomatic business...

...Avery interesting, well-informed, thoughtful group of men...

...It is predicated on the fallacy that there is a monolithic third world out there waiting to sink its fangs into the West...

...But they've held quiet—not secret, but quiet—meetings here with Gromyko, for example...

...Certainly those of the smaller, less glamorous countries...

...And the Soviet Union is often the motor for anti-Israel action...

...The rhetoric is, after all, the least important part of the UN...

...It's not chiefly a question of oil, but of a critical geo-strategic asset...

...And you can allow yourself to be bewildered by it, to say that it's all garbage...

...The Russians looked around and came to the conclusion that no such resolution would work, that it was best to go with the Latin American proposal, which didn't get into the question of whether the war had been a war of aggression and questions like that, which simply called for withdrawal...

...Is there, then, a kind of subterranean reality here at the UN...

...Look, the Palestinians really do deserve some sympathy—along with many others...

...The need for a UN was manifest, and there seemed to be general agreement on what the UN should be and on what it should do...

...And, as I said earlier, Israeli policy hasn't helped here...

...And so the primary precept of the Charter, which is the resolution of inevitable differences between countries through peaceful means, is set aside, replaced by turmoil...

...And the fact is that many of the Arab governments are uncertainly based, so they can use the boost they get domestically...

...Its most important aspect is its functioning as a forum...

...Is the real stuff happening in the lounges, and is Israel perhaps not quite so fiercely isolated there...

...It seems, instead, both an unfair and an irrelevant place, busy passing absurdly excessive resolutions, busy ignoring major world conflicts...

...Well, that wasn't enough for the Algerians...

...it's not some poor, pathetic, non-viable little country off in the boondocks...

...In the beginning, there was a clear western majority, a majority that approached problems much as the United States did...

...And they've dealt with it as effectively, on the whole, as has been possible...

...So you can't say the UN is totally useless...

...The Dutch empire went...

...As disappointed as we are in the UN, it's not unimportant that there be a place where the reality is reflected...

...Israel is a natural focal point for a great many impulses...

...I should add that Israel has not helped...

...It can't be any fun to be articulate in front of an empty auditorium...

...So the disillusionment with the UN is just a recognition of the reality the UN confronts, a consequence of unrealistic initial expectations of what it might accomplish...

...But what the UN force in '73 did was to buy time, to avert what could have been a catastrophic collision, to create an opportunity for the governments involved to address the problem directly...

...So what they were left with, at the end of the day, was a balance between Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories and the right of all states in the region to live in peace within recognized boundaries...

...Now, no one ever suggested that the UN would evolve into a world government, but there certainly was a feeling in America that it might evolve along the lines of the US Constitution—that is, that the UN Charter would gradually be interpreted as meaning and authorizing actions that went beyond what was written on paper, just as the US Constitution's meaning had, over the years, been expanded...

...The Congo was a matter of profound drama and conflict...

...I'm glad you asked, because even though one thinks of the UN as a sort of cave of the winds, every once in a while it is possible for this body to get together and to decide that something ought to be done...

...Are you saying that we should appreciate the UN because it is a place where people can throw benign tantrums...

...But these are professionals, they know what the reality is, and they deal with it...

...it dominated the first couple of years I was at the UN...

...They can't help the Arabs economically, they can't solve their political problems...

...You can't walk out of a conflict with 100 percent of what you want...

...But one doesn't know about these things...

...Obviously, they'd rather have it otherwise...

...So now we see the UN not as a fairy godmother, not as a world government or court, but as a forum in which untidy spats, terrible conflicts, constant frictions, irrational fears and prejudices are all expressed—not because they exist in people's imaginations, but because they are the reality of our world...

...But that was not enough for some of the Arabs, especially for the Algerians, who, as they often do, took the lead in arguing for a drastic, radical policy...

...And they demanded that any resolution include a round denunciation of Israel...

...And where you can't persuade, if you feel that your interests are really being cut into, then you fall back into confrontation...

...The French empire went...

...Can you give us an example of a "this" which was interesting, and which was developed—that is, of a UN success story...