The Exceptional Gringo

The United Nations General Assembly began its annual session in New York. It is an autumn ritual that has been celebrated continuously for nearly seven decades. The assembly discharges its broad agenda in six committees and in plenary.

Its session begins with a general discussion involving dozens of heads of state or heads of government and hundreds of ministers. The two weeks of this general debate is an occasion that many leaders take advantage of to meet with colleagues from other countries. Some also seek interviews in the media.

Some decades ago the U.N. reduced the time devoted to the general debate. Today, each speaker is allotted about 15 minutes; almost all engaged addressed their message to the public in their countries. Brazil traditionally is the first speaker in the debate. President Dilma Rousseff used her speech to chastise Washington for the National Security Agency’s telephone espionage and cyber hacking. Her message was well received in Brazil, but the international press did not pay much attention.

The speakers who aroused more interest inside and outside the U.N. were the presidents of the United States and Iran. The new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, used his speech at the General Assembly to send a conciliatory message to the Western powers in general and U.S. President Barack Obama in particular. He repeated that message in various interviews he gave to the media.

President Obama also sent a moderate message to the new Iranian government; for several days, there was speculation about the possibility of a meeting between the two presidents. At the end, the contact, the first since 1979, was reduced to a brief phone call. This caused a stir within the Israeli leadership. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to travel to Washington to discourage a rapprochement with Tehran.

Besides this major shift in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran, last week the U.N. Security Council was finally able to unanimously decide on Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. The adopted resolution states the procedure to be followed in dismantling the arsenal, but does not refer to what may happen if Syria does not comply. The U.S. unsuccessfully sought the inclusion of the use of military force, but Russia did not accept the proposition.

In his speech, President Obama reported how difficult it was for him to decide when and how to resort to the use of military force. He spoke for over 40 minutes (the 15-minute rule has its exceptions) and focused on the role of Washington in the Middle East. He also referred to his country’s place in the world and the idea that America is an exceptional case in the concert of nations.

Obama said, “Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional in part because we have shown a willingness … to defend not only our own narrow interests, but the interests of all.”

How can you measure this so-called exceptionalism of Washington? The truth is that it is not the same thing to act in defense of the interests of all and to act selflessly. What are those interests of all and who identified them?

Let’s think, for a moment, about what the U.N. has achieved since 1945. Its goals could be considered as the interests of all and can be summarized in four areas: disarmament and international security, economic development, human rights and decolonization. As for the first two, it is possible to conclude that very little has been achieved. The world is still very violent and weapons abound, from pistols to nuclear devices. Economic disparities between countries remain huge, these disparities are also observed within countries, rich or poor.

On the other two rubrics (human rights and decolonization), significant progress has been made in the past seven decades. The various human rights issues have been examined and many have already been encoded in separate treaties and conventions drawn up by the U.N. The process of decolonization began in earnest in 1945, is nearly complete; many of today’s 193 U.N. members are proof of that. In both cases, the U.S. was one of the main promoters.

Even in the field of disarmament and economic development, there are those who defend the role of Washington. Some will say that the capitalist model advocated by the United States has been accepted by almost all U.N. members. And what of multilateral disarmament agreements concluded since 1945?

We say that the conclusion of treaties that eliminate biological and chemical weapons was possible because the U.S. drove them. But what is not said is that in both cases, Washington first had unilaterally renounced possession of such weapons and then looked for a way that no other country should have them. Why not do the same in the case of nuclear weapons? It is obvious that a world free of such weapons would be in the interest of all. Why oppose the convention banning land mines? What about illicit trade in conventional weapons?*

In the area of international security, there are those who will remind us that the U.S. certainly has not behaved in a manner consistent with the goals of the U.N. and international law. Think of Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Granada and Panama, and more recently in Iraq. The list is longer.

Perhaps the United States is not an exceptional nation, and there are only exceptional Americans who believe in and preach [exceptionalism].

*Translator’s Note: The U.S. did sign the Arms Trade Treaty.