In the weeks leading up to the election, a rumor was spread across that former President Bill Clinton, continuing his desperate quest for a positive historical legacy, had expressed an interest in becoming the next Secretary-General of the United Nations once incumbent Kofi Annan’s term expires in 2006.  The fact that it is Asia’s turn in the Secretary-General rotation makes no difference to Clinton at all –   when has his narcissistic personality ever cared about anything but himself, anyway?  He believes he has a decent shot at being in charge of the embattled organization.

And as surprising as this is, I’m inclined to agree: the United Nations really needs someone like Bill Clinton.

The United Nations is a joke.  It is an organization replete with corruption and made irrelevant by it.  President Bush’s pressure regarding Iraq only displayed the uselessness of the organization for the whole world to see more clearly.  He did not cause its impotence.  The UN’s inefficacy has allowed North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons; allowed genocides in Somalia and Rwanda; and continues to permit dictators an unfettered capacity to oppress their people.  The organization’s claims to be on the side of peace and human rights rings hollow when one scrutinizes its actions, or inaction.

These days, the United Nations is little more than a tremendous, lumbering bureaucracy designed for hand-wringing without the will to create any demonstrable results.  Diplomats sit in the UN building arguing back and forth, but they refuse to do anything about the terrorists and despots in their membership.  In the end, their sole contribution ends is little more than expunged carbon dioxide; their only tangible result an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

For better or for worse, President Clinton might be capable of changing that.  As president, he was wildly popular among the leaders of other countries.  To this day, many of the world leaders bemoan the presence of Bush in the Oval Office and not Clinton, or someone with his mindset.  The support by many Americans for the beleaguered ex-president might be enough to restore some credibility to the General Assembly, if only in the short term, and that may not necessarily be a bad thing.  For all of his incompetence as president, Clinton has skills few other candidates for positions of authority have: excellent speaking skills and a demeanor that convinces people he is truly sympathetic towards their plight.  When coupled with his natural ability to compromise, it might be worth the risk to America’s national security.

Clinton primarily regarded the world as the idealistic utopia he hoped it would be rather than the hate-filled, dangerous, and deadly place it is.  His problem as president was an incapacity to understand that the President is not supposed to defend the world against evil, but rather to defend our country against it.  For all his faults, Bush at least understands that simple distinction.  He knows that evil lurks in fundamentalist Islamic countries and countries without true representative democracy, and his decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq were difficult, but they are part of the broader war on terror.  Part of the President’s mission to protect America from evil.  Bringing democracy and freedom is a positive side effect to that primary goal, but they are not the goals themselves.  We are confronting terrorists where they are created.  People can argue whether or not the terrorists were in Iraq prior to our invading it, but it doesn’t change two facts: they are there now, and terrorists sympathetic to the cause of the Iraqi terrorists seek to cause destruction in the United States.  Clinton would have never been capable of bringing the war to the borders of Afghanistan or Iraq because at the end of the day Clinton refused to let go of his idealistic world-view.  It is that ideal that befits a Secretary-General of the UN – completely out of touch with reality.

As Secretary-General, Clinton would give Americans a real glimpse of the UN and what the organization actually does – which is effectively nothing – and then decide whether or not they believe the UN will ever again be capable of positively contributing to the world.

Clinton is well-liked by most of modern Europe and many other leaders around the globe.  He would immediately grant the UN a reinvigorated capacity to do something, anything.  He very well might use it to accomplish something positive for the world – and if nothing else, when the UN finally succumbs to its lumbering irrelevance, we can only hope that Clinton goes with it.

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