The General Assembly workaround
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The General Assembly workaround is a proposed reform of United Nations procedure that John Kiriakou says was described to him by a Russian diplomat, and which he endorses.

His view of the institution

Kiriakou approaches the question from personal experience: his last tour at the CIA was at the United Nations, and he says he was appalled at how literally nothing ever got done there, a lot of people speaking into the wind while nobody paid attention.

His structural verdict is that at the end of the day the United Nations is a Western-dominated tool by which the United States, along with the British and the French, can control international foreign policy. For that reason he does not expect the organisation to be replaced: he thinks it would be easier for its dominant members to maintain the status quo than to start something new from scratch.

The proposal

Against that, Kiriakou reports a conversation with a Russian diplomat who told him the Russians are exploring ways to allow the General Assembly to make implementable decisions, so that member states would not have to go to the Security Council for permission to act.

He gives a worked example. Under the current rules, if Indonesia wants to do something to help the Palestinians it must go to the Security Council, where the United States votes no and the veto simply kills it. Under the Russian plan, Indonesia could instead go to the General Assembly, and if ninety per cent of countries voted yes they would override the Security Council and be able to help the Palestinians.

His endorsement

Kiriakou says he actually thinks that is a good idea, and puts the argument as a question: why should the United States be the one to veto everything? It does not make any sense to him, and the result, he says, is that people are dying, these are lives on the line.

He is separately sceptical that the present disorder will produce any new international body at all, noting that the earlier sequence from the Concert of Europe to the League of Nations to the United Nations is unlikely to repeat while Washington still controls the existing institution.

See also

- National Security Council
- Ireland recognizes Palestine
