The UN

08/19/09

Wednesday the 19^th was our scheduled trip to the United Nations office building in Vienna, one of the four main offices of the UN in the world. The primary functions of the United Nations in Vienna are focused on security and safety services, as well as a close working relationship with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is also based within the International Complex in Vienna. I was particularly interested in this affiliate office, as the broad scope does not afford the office many opportunities to make direct contributions or differences in the drug and criminal affairs of member countries. Of course it is not their task to rid the world of drugs and crime, but rather to help guide nations toward the most beneficial stance on the issues possible.

The first room that we were brought into was the conference room, which was immediately familiar from any UN proceeding that we had witnessed on television. The most interesting part of the proceedings in this room is the necessity to have many interpreters that translate into the five official languages of the UN. This job immediately strikes me as being incredibly difficult and stressful, not only because of the need to know multiple languages but for the amount of pressure and importance put upon giving a quick and accurate translation. A great example of when that can go wrong was not long ago in Nairobi, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked what “Mr. Clinton’s opinion would be, coming from Mrs. Clinton”. She was understandably very upset by the question, and responded angrily with “I am secretary of State, not my husband. He does not speak for me and I do not speak for him.” Unfortunately the question had been mistranslated, as the intention had been to ask what Mr. Obama thought; a much more valid question considering that the Secretary of State is essentially an envoy of the President. The translator, in her understandable hurry, confused the former president with the current president in a way that completely distorted the intended question.

Our first speaker spoke about the work of the IAEA, or the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was an interesting speaker, but not necessarily because he was full of information that would answer the questions that we had for him. Rather it was illuminating because one could see exactly the sort of fine line that the United Nations has to tow in terms of public relations, and it was very difficult to get a straight and candid answer. He did explain the reason for this quite well though, as he reminded our group that the United Nations is not a separate political entity, but rather a representation of all of the countries that participate. There would be no United Nations without the participating countries, and the function of the UN is to espouse the official line that has been decided by these Nations. While this certainly made for some frustratingly bland answers, it was revealing of the sort of policies that dictate the UN’s activities.

Probably the most frustrating of the answers given by the IAEA spokesman was in response to the question posed about nuclear weapons that have gone missing following the collapse of the USSR in the late 1980s. He stuck to the official position that there are no nuclear warheads that are unaccounted for, and categorically refused to discuss the possibility that this might not be the case. I suppose it is better for the UN to espouse this line of thinking rather than a candid admission along the lines of, “yes there are warheads that are unaccounted for and we have absolutely no idea where they might be, if they’re storage facilities are secure and up to code, or whether or not they might have been sold on the black market to foreign dictators.” He did admit that there is a large amount of nuclear material that has gone missing, which was refreshing to hear because of his previous refusals to talk about actual warheads, and stressed the importance of the danger of what we know as “dirty bombs”. Dirty bombs are regular explosive devices that have nuclear material attached, not with the intention of creating a nuclear reaction but rather to spread the material over the landscape and contaminate everything within its radius. While not quite as terrifying as an actual nuclear explosion, a dirty bomb being detonated anywhere in the world would have disastrous consequences on any living thing that came into contact with it.

On further reflection I suppose it makes sense that the Un could not really speculate as to the possible existence of renegade nuclear warheads. Firstly, if an authoritarian regime that was unfriendly toward the USA came into possession of one of these weapons they would undoubtedly use this as leverage in any negotiations that were taking place. He said that the main focuses of the IAEA at this point was to prevent the spread of nuclear proliferation, with particular regard to the governments of North Korea and Iran. He gave a semi-detailed explanation of what the process for allowing certain countries to possess nuclear weapons is, and emphasized the governments that exist in these states do not come close to meeting those standards. The most abstract of these ideas was the necessity for the prospective country to have a certain level of stability over a long period of time, which of course is almost impossible to quantify and is left to the discretion of the UN Security Council. It is no surprise that under any definition neither of the aforementioned states could be considered stable.

The most interesting thing that I thought our IAEA representative had to say was in regards to the continued use of civil nuclear technology, which has vast application toward the development of third world countries. He warned against the view of nuclear technology as some sort of savior or catalyst to propel previously destitute countries into the 21^st century, because in some parts of the world the knowledge of nuclear secrets is almost indistinguishable from being considered a player on the world stage. He emphasized the fact that although it can go a long way toward providing the populace with electrical power and the ability to maintain their infrastructure, other methods of civic improvement need to be focused on first before the practical application of this technology can be realized.