Obama's Multilateral Approach to North Korea: Are You Kidding Me?

By Byard Duncan, AlterNet
Posted on June 17, 2009, Printed on December 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/140720/

Two guys walk into a bar … No wait. Two presidents (dressed identically, of course) walk into the White House Rose Garden. Both of them – that is, Barack Obama and South Korean leader Lee Myung bak – express concerns about North Korea’s nuclear capability. Lee thanks the United States for its “selfless sacrifice” in protecting his home country, but it’s Obama who gets to drop the punch line:

“On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that called for strong steps to block North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he said. “Now we must pursue a sustained and robust effort to implement this resolution together with our international partners.”

Never one to shy away from a witticism, Obama must understand how deliciously farcical it is for the U.S. to invoke any sort of compliance with international law in its policy announcements. He must know that we Americans don’t, in fact, “do” the whole multilateral cooperation thing.

We didn’t do it in September of 2007, when the U.S. voted against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the UN General Assembly. The declaration, which called on states to “provide redress through effective mechanisms” to marginalized native populations, passed with an overwhelming majority: 143 votes in favor, 4 against (the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia), and 11 abstentions.

Nor do we “do” the whole international consensus thing when addressing the question of Israel. In fact, we’ve used our veto power more than 30 times in the UN Security Council to save our “strategic ally” from otherwise universal condemnation. The last three resolutions we brought to a screeching halt dealt specifically with settlements in Gaza – an issue around which Obama has tirelessly tiptoed. But didn’t we just tell the Arab world a week ago that we “will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own”?

Then there’s the Afghanistan issue. Aside from picking known Geneva violator Stanley McChrystal to run his war there, Obama has approved a $740 million allotment to construct an enormous base in nearby Islamabad. Weird. If we really cared about international law, wouldn’t we be boycotting Pakistan, a known Al-Qaeda breeding ground that still refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Obama had to have been joking about taking a multilateral, UN-based approach to disarming North Korea. Because if he wasn’t, and all of a sudden the U.S. is willing to play nice with others, that would mean we only consider international opinion when it serves our preconceived ideological interests.

And that’s actually not so funny.

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