Notes of an Indignant Diarist

...CBS News It is an old and useful journalistic practice to keep a diary on a running story for future publication Once the daily mayhem is over, the reporter then has a chance to retrace the course of events, note the dramatic ebb and flow, and give the sequence a logical order Alas, William F Buckley's story did not run The 28th United Nations General Assembly, to which he was appointed a public member of the U S delegation, crept along from September 18 to December 18, 1973 Its high point, and one not all that elevated, occurred right at the start, when the two German states were granted membership This had a certain historic quality A struggle that had occupied an entire generation was officially to be set aside Thereafter, the session dragged itself downhill Moreover, the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East broke out shortly after it opened, focusing the frantic action of last fall in the Security Council Still, Buckley was determined to keep a diary Assigned to human rights questions, he was, as he repeatedly says, intrigued by the paradox that he should be designated to champion this cause in an organization whose hypocritical, double-tongued approach to so fundamental a concern had often been the target of his pen He had little better than a dress extra's view of the performance, and other commitments kept him from attending too often, but he brought along his own researcher to sit in on committee meetings and collect documents and speeches These are liberally quoted in this "Delegate's Odyssey," actually a journey to nowhere and back, described on the dust jacket as "the most interesting, readable and informative book ever written about the United Nations a study of diplomacy and diplomats rivaling in fascination the great journals of our time" Someone should really do something about jacket blurbs For United Nations Journal is, in fact, nothing more than a chatty and, m its way, informative book about a few aspects of multilateral diplomacy as conducted by the United States in a UN General Assembly When the material is thin, Buckley pads it with outside experiences One learns, for instance, how Henry Kissinger made the transition from Nelson Rockefeller's foreign policy staff to Richard Nixon's White House It was through Buckley One also gets a kind of press summary of the Yom Kippur War in the Security Council Perhaps the best part of the book concerns Jamil Baroody, the aged and indefatigable Lebanese who represents Saudi Arabia He likes to see himself as the Scourge of God, moving from committee to committee, to Assembly meetings—and to the Security Council when it convenes—with essentially the same act Since there is no cloture m normal UN debate, any monomaniac unrestrained by his own government can pursue his petty or venomous pleasures at the microphone to excruciating length A Baroody marathon performance last October, stringing out discussion of a ceasefire resolution while the Israelis were cutting off the Egyptian Third Army, was said to have been worth two Israeli divisions Few things about the United Nations reflect its weaknesses and absurdities as vividly as the Saudi representative It was time someone did a pen-portrait of him and Buckley's is good Less good is Buckley's overall tone, seldom descending below high dudgeon In places this makes the diary rather staleas when the author bemoans the treatment Portugal received at the hands of states whose records tor colonialism and oppression were at least as bad, or when he scornfully describes how, "On September 24, something called 'Guinea-Bissau' declared its independence " All of this has now been overtaken by the revolution in Portugal and the admission of Guinea-Bissau to UN membership at the 29th Assembly The fact is that the world organization is a barometer, and that it had long given storm warmngs the Portuguese government chose not to heed How much better it would have been to have recognized the inevitable and helped to usher it in with less bloodshed Quite naturally, Buckley deals with human rights at great length Retelling the gloomy story of the effort to install a Human Rights Commissioner, who would serve as a focal point for practical measures, he registers sharp indignation and what appears to be surprise—which suggests, to anyone who has thought about the United Nations, that the author does not quite understand it Buckley is not alone Indeed, he is in good company He quotes the text of a (quite uncharacteristically shrill) cable from that other urbane Irishman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, tearing into the Cubans, the non-aligned, the flabby allies of the United States, and all those whose actions or inactions injure American honor and give the United Nations an antidemocratic bias There are many things wrong with the UN Some of them are congenital detects It was conceived, falsely as it turned out, on the assumption that the World War II alliance would manage the peace in harmony It was born of compromise between the hope tor new, better supranational standards and the reality ot national sovereignty And the ensuing years seem to have done nothing to correct popular misconceptions One of these is that the UN is an agency, the executive arm of the UN Charter, the guardian ot peace Small wonder, given its record, that those who labor under this misapprehension are bitterly disappointed In truth, the United Nations is not an agency It was created to do only one thing—to deal with whatever the five permanent members of the Security Council and three or four other Council members could agree was a threat The UN is more accurately seen in the passive mode, as an arena in which the forces moving the world act upon each other in the form of words Harry Truman did not see the world organization in those terms He thought the UN would develop the way the United States' constitutional system has developed—from case to case, through the practical adaptation of principle, to become more than the sum of its parts The Soviet Union soon shot down that notion, having as much political right as a sovereign member to destroy Truman's concept as the U S President had to make it fly What remained is a modest institution If it has had some staking successes in the past—Korea, the Congo, Cyprus, and the Middle East—the UN has never been able to solve problems At best, it has been a useful instrument for gaining time This continues to be true today, as indicated by the peace—keeping forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai Desert, not to mention the observers in Kashmir A public forum has genuine value It can advertise standards of decency and consideration despite the inability to impose them Take the matter of human rights The Universal Declaration, honored so much more in the breach than the observance, has nevertheless come to exercise an unexpected influence simply by existing, and has infiltrated even such closed societies as the Soviet Union An orderly forum can also help diplomacy, especially the private contact the Secretaries General have employed with interesting success In a disorderly world, a public forum will reflect disorder?but in microcosm, thus making comprehension possible Unflagging indignation at the UN's shortcomings may be good for the glands, it does not sharpen the mind Since no one seriously proposes disbanding the organization 01 pulling out the United States, we must work inside it with forbearance, helping to shape the consensus that occasionally forms and seeking to avert the worst As a sample of what a public delegate with demanding outside in-teiests might find as he wanders through an Assembly session, Buckley s journal has its moments It could do with less pomposity and careless misinformation Yet one wonders, while reading the book, what would George Plimpton have done with this chance...