Not withstanding our growing suspicions over the last decade, we continued to hold out hope that the United States will somehow get the hang of what it means to be the only superpower in the world. We held out hope, in other words, that America’s international relations would be defined not by a hegemonic rush for control of spheres of influence, which characterized the Cold War era, but by a tolerance for the fragile plurality of human nature and conduct. The United States, secure from outside threats, we felt, would now become a benign superpower free of the need to impose its will upon others. That, alas, is not the way it has panned out. The US continues to have its way, with the end result that today it finds itself standing alone on most global issues.
Take, as an example, the Coyote Protocol. In the compromise agreement hammered out July 23, after three days of marathon bargaining, the world’s leading countries signed a treaty that formally required the industrialized nations to cut emissions of gases linked to global warming. The treaty was, in effect, a rescue effort of the Kyoto Protocol, the preliminary accord framed in Japan in 1997 that was the first step toward requiring cuts in such gases.
With 178 nations signing on, Washington opted to stand on the sideline, arguing that the treaty would place too much effort on industrialized countries and would be “too costly” to the American economy. The New York Times news report was tellingly headlined, “178 Nations Reach a Climate Accord; US Only Looks On.”
Come Aug. 31, there will be yet another important conference, this one sponsored by the UN, where the US may opt not only to stand alone, but to boycott altogether. The conference, formally known by the unwieldy title, The United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, is slated to be held over an eight-day run, in the coastal South African city of Durban.
Again, Washington, posturing more with sanctimoniousness than sanctity, has said that it will not attend if two issues are included in the agenda — Zionism as a form of racism and reparations for the victims of slavery and colonialism.
Clearly, the absence of the US would be a blow to the conference, which its sponsors, including Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, have billed as the most important international discussion on race ever held.
To be sure, these two issues remain, as of today, only proposals for the agenda. Whether they are ultimately adopted, in the short time before the conference is held, is an open question. “The issues are being discussed by small teams of negotiators behind closed doors,” said Robinson. “They face a considerable challenge because time is short.” African nations, backed by several African-American organizations and political figures on the Hill, have said that they are due reparations from countries that had participated in the slave trade during the 1700s and early 1800s. And the Arab nations, backed by representatives from the Islamic and the Third World bloc, are merely revisiting the issue of “Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination,” which was formalized as a UN resolution in 1975 but repealed a decade ago in “the improved atmosphere that heralded a new era of peace” between Arabs and Jews at the time. In the US, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are among the many organizations urging President Bush to send a delegation to he conference. Others include the NAACP, the National Urban League and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
What is the US afraid of here? Surely a discussion of slavery and reparations is not, or at least should not be, a taboo subject, uncomfortable though it may remain to a lot of Americans. And as far as Zionism is concerned, heck, a quick perusal of an introductory history on how Zionism carved a state in and superimposed itself on Palestine, with unspeakably tragic consequences for the native people there, should make the issue of Zionism a legitimate subject for a discussion as a form of racism. Aren’t democratic principles advanced in the world when the global dialogue of cultures is imbued with vigorous and open debate — even debate of issues that are controversial and contentious?
If supporters of Zionism, including the US government, can prove to the world that it is not, after all, a movement of “racism and racial discrimination”, then let them climb the podium in Durban and explain that. Truth be told, their narrative will be as convincing as that of an alcoholic advocating a campaign for prohibition, but even Zionist representatives at this conference are being offered the opportunity to defend themselves.
So the US position, we say, is both unreasonable and disingenuous derived more from superpower dogma than moral rectitude. This is the kind of position that will surely isolate it morally from the world. As Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau said last Thursday: “I think that the US should be at the conference. I think that this is an important opportunity to address these issues of race.” And Wade Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, had stronger words when he charged that the US had lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, and was left out of the Kyoto accord “because of lack of leadership.”
To boycott an international conference on race, the first of its kind ever held in the world, in order to kowtow to pressure groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles that issued a statement last week claiming that “the Arab block wants to hijack the conference,” represents not only lack of leadership but wrong-headed leadership as well. In any event, racists should not get a free pass on racism.
