As the class sat in the historic Old Senate Chamber, I wondered if at some point a student would raise a hand and ask the teacher, “Mr. Helms, can I go to the bathroom?”
A few tugged at well-tailored cuffs but sat still, enduring a mildly patronizing lecture on American democracy from a chief nemesis. After all, they were diplomats of the highest rank.
In fact, they are the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council, engaged in an amusing pas de deux with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and other UN bashers who populate the U.S. Congress.
“I know it has been suggested to some of you that the president alone speaks for the United States in foreign affairs,” said Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and one of our most courtly Luddites. “In most nations of the world, even the great democracies, that is indeed the case. Not so in the United States.”
Many in Congress, like Helms, deem the UN an inept, fat, leftist threat to our sovereignty. They chafe at the mere notion of our citizens, civilian and military, operating under the aegis of those with names like Sven or Igor or Jacques.
Many at the UN see the U.S. as a nave bully who spends nowhere near as much as the richest country should in helping the poor. It has precious little right, they believe, to harangue the other 187 member nations, especially when it still owes about $1 billion in back dues despite its staggering wealth.
The day trip here, by representatives of nations as diverse as China (population: 1.3 billion) and Mali (10.4 million), was part of what’s known in sports as a home and home series, though these players wore wingtips rather than cleats.
The first game was played in January at the UN, where Helms was invited in a nervy move orchestrated by a North Carolina chum and our UN ambassador, Richard Holbrooke. True to form, Helms proceeded to rebuke the Security Council as an exemplar of silly, utopian visions that imposes UN authority on the U.S. He justified the U.S. picking and choosing its UN involvements and the circumstances under which it will pay dues.
The second game was Thursday, when our ambassador, the whirling dervish Holbrooke, brought his noted cunning and ego to the fore and shepherded the council to Helms’ home park. Just like 9th graders from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., they were put on a bus upon arrival to make the rounds of Capitol Hill and the White House.
At the Old Senate Chamber, modeled after a Greek amphitheater and where business was transacted from 1819 to 1859, Helms was followed by official historian Richard Baker. He gave the less-than-enthralled audience an overview, not forgetting to cite the Senate’s refusal to ratify the Versailles Treaty (inspiring two decades of American isolationism), and concluded by asking if there were questions.
His multilingual and scholarly assemblage, some of whom were quite well versed in our history, opted for lunch.
After food, they ambled into Helms’ lair, the Foreign Relations hearing room, where I was seated next to Dorothy Helms. She and her husband resemble his and her Boston terriers, so I was not surprised when she beckoned a committee aide and directed him to improve the sound system.
Though I was not wearing a neon sign declaring, “REPORTER WILLING TO QUOTE,” Holbrooke saw me and underscored the occasion’s singularity.
“This is not the sort of thing I would have believed would happen last year when my nomination was hanging by a thread,” he said, alluding to various Republicans who were distinctly petty in delaying the confirmation of the tough and vain fellow whose long rsum includes fashioning the Dayton peace accord for Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Of course, even a casual observer who recognized Helms and the panel’s senior Democrat, windy Joseph Biden of Delaware, at the head of the table figured this was not a normal session.
Yes, there was a guy with monogrammed cuffs, namely heart surgeon-turned-Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, who made sure an aide supplied him with a business card he could give the lady from Jamaica sitting next to him. But, hey, what about the six men and women of color (Jamaica, Mali, Namibia, Bangladesh, China and Malaysia) in this distinctly whites-only club?!
The two hours were divided between gentle debates on reforming the UN and the tough matter of peacekeeping. Early on, the initially tactful UN view was articulated by His Excellency Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (I find “Mr. Ambassador” easier when chatting him up).
“Your visit was an ice-breaking one,” said His Excellency, the Security Council’s president, to the Chairman, the best friend the tobacco industry ever had. “Reform is on the minds of all us.”
At this point, with Mrs. Helms and husband both smiling, I was nervous that courtesy would obscure underlying animus. After all, I had space to fill. Thank the lord for the Brits! Sir Jeremy Quentin Greenstock (one apparently uses middle names for many diplomats and all presidential assassins or mass murderers) of the United Kingdom declared that the U.S. “has muffled its voice and stained its reputation” by being a dues deadbeat.
“If the U.S. is to be uniquely excused, why should the rest of us buy into it?” said Greenstock.
In a show of David taking on Goliath, the Netherlands’ Ambassador Peter van Walsum noted that his tiny nation not only pays its dues diligently but the amount it gives to international humanitarian causes is nearly 1 percent of its gross domestic product, dwarfing the U.S., which is near the bottom when one so judges foreign aid.
His country gets precious little influence in return and, lest Helms think otherwise, its willingness to compromise with him is “not because we think your arguments are valid,” but more out of its own “enlightened self-interest” in placating the U.S. Way to go, Dutchie!
“In the UN, we have to try to defend the weaker states to have their interests well-presented and defended,” said Wang Ying Fan, China’s ambassador who resembles a 50-ish, chunky former linebacker. It’s a simple thought often lost on the bashers on the Hill, many of whom don’t even have a passport.
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Canada’s ambassador, Robert Fowler, mentioned the UN’s caricatured bloated bureaucracy. He noted that 8,000 worked out of its New York headquarters, while the Congress employs 30,000.
“We have duplication, ” he said. “So do you.” I scanned the room, with the cadres of 20-something congressional lackeys sitting like bumps on a log. I suspect that they were dreaming of cold Coronas after work, not peace in East Timor.
On peacekeeping, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who is the only Armed Services Committee chairman to have been married to Elizabeth Taylor, played the role of bloodless, tough-guy military realist.
“You have to show positive results in bringing some of these things to a conclusion,” he said, clearly suggesting it not get involved in Sierra Leone, the Congo or other simmering hot spots.
It’s the basic American refrain and has a certain logic, given untidy messes in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. But a one-two punch from the ambassadors of France and Malaysia provided a needed counterpoint to Warner, making clear how tragically short-sighted it can be to let conflicts fester and of the moral questions raised by choosing to help some needy populations, but not others.
It all concluded with Mali’s Moctar Ouane pleading for help for African lands, notably Sierra Leone and Congo, both consumed by bloody conflicts. “If you do your part, we will do ours.”
Helms ended by having his photo taken with the Security Council, a true Kodak moment. Ten minutes later, outside the Dirksen Senate Building and by their bus, I saw the Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors sharing a smoke.
I figured they were a tad nostalgic for the days when the old Soviet Union could tell a Jesse Helms to take a hike–rather than their now puffing away on a Washington street corner, perhaps fearing that the next stop was the Air and Space Museum or maybe FBI headquarters.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.