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Issue date: 5/11/06 Section: Opinion

Last week I was privileged to accompany two GCCC debaters, Bryce Friesen (Great Bend) and Andrew Moorman (Garden City), to New York for a debate at the United Nations. Selected by nomination, their vita, and an essay, Bryce and Andrew competed during a week-long symposium with over 400 fellow undergraduate and graduate students from over 80 countries. The event was hosted by the Alliance toward Harnessing Global Opportunities or ATHGO. A nonprofit NGO (non-governmental organization) with consultative status on the UN's Economic and Social Council, ATHGO is dedicated to inspiring future generations of international professionals to become decision-makers and diplomats. 

The symposium's specific purpose was to produce a document regarding the steps necessary for the UN to adapt to the challenges of the 21st century; to determine, in other words, the proposals requisite for the UN's achievement of its so-called Millennium Development Goals. Many Americans might believe such a task to be incredulous. The UN, such critics would contend, is at best an inept, and at worst, a defunct organization. 

Today I'm among the most faithful of the UN's charter; one convinced of the imperative for power-projection capable of effectively protecting human life and dignity against the potential ravages of a Milosevic.

But not long ago I would have been counted among the UN's antagonists. As a neo-con in a Wolfowitzian vein, I believed while serving in Europe during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath that the U.S. military hegemony was sufficient to fill this charge. I shared Madeleine Albright's perspective, albeit a view voiced later, that America was the indispensable nation.

But the size of the coalition thought necessary, by General Schwarzkopf and then Chief of Staff Colin Powell, to effectively dislodge Saddam Hussein from Kuwait began to dissuade me of this view. I became further convinced of my error as an undergraduate studying America's apparent paralysis in the face of the Hutua's horrific genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda; as I watched America withdraw from Somalia after CNN aired pictures of Somalis dragging the corpse of a downed American Blackhawk pilot through the streets of Mogadishu. 

The real-world exigencies made transparent by Al-Qaeda's 9-11 attack, along with my concerns over pre-emption doctrine and the rising threat of a nuclearized Iran, hammered the final nails into the coffin of my former belief. I now find it clear that a paradigm shift was imposed upon me by the pervasive threat of non-state sponsored terrorism, by America's lack of political will to intervene in egregious cases of human rights violations occurring in nation-states outside the boundary of our national interests, and by the incredible costs of American unilateralism in blood, treasure, and political capital.

Reason dictates that America cannot isolate itself from its global responsibilities. But this is no cause for us to unilaterally assume the role of the world's policeman. A compromise position exists. America can assert with force and good-faith, arguments and options necessary for effective United Nations reform. Forged in the fires and pogroms of World War II, the UN encompasses the potential for the collective strength and wisdom of all nations. America must simply lead the way for the UN to achieve that goal. It is only right that the young Americans of tomorrow, men like Bryce and Andrew, should accept the burden of assuming this charge. I was proud to watch them do so.

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