Is Mark Malloch Brown really a diplomat?

Yesterday Kofi Annan's deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, gave a speech in which he asserted the following: [A]s someone who has spent most of his adult life in this country, only a part of it at the UN, I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is meant: as a sincere and constructive critique of US policy towards the UN by a friend and admirer. Because the fact is that the prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another.... Americans complain about the UN?s bureaucracy, weak decision-making, the lack of accountable modern management structures and the political divisions of the General Assembly here in New York. And my response is, ?guilty on all counts?. But why? In significant part because the US has not stuck with its project -- its professed wish to have a strong, effective United Nations -- in a systematic way. Secretary Albright and others here today have played extraordinary leadership roles in US-UN relations, for which I salute them. But in the eyes of the rest of the world, US commitment tends to ebb much more than it flows. And in recent years, the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage. As someone who deals with Washington almost daily, I know this is unfair to the very real effort all three Secretaries of State I have worked with ?- Secretary Albright, Secretary Powell and Secretary Rice -? put into UN issues. And today, on a very wide number of areas, from Lebanon and Afghanistan to Syria, Iran and the Palestinian issue, the US is constructively engaged with the UN. But that is not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. That is what I mean by ?stealth? diplomacy: the UN?s role is in effect a secret in Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many US allies, that the US tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding middle ground. Democracy Arsenal's Suzanne Nossel was at the conference where Brown gave his speech, and it even made her cringe a little: He argues that the UN's role is a secret in middle America because of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's disinformation campaigns. That's true, but its been true for years despite efforts by organizations like the UN Foundation and UN Association to address the ignorance and publicize the UN's important contributions. What we need is creative and new ideas for how to turn this around, not more ranting about why American perceptions of the UN aren't what they should be. He's acknowledging that the Group of 77 developing countries have opposed vital reforms to, for example, give the SYG the authority to properly manage the UN, for example by being able to hire and fire and shift around posts to meet priorities. I hope he doesn't attribute their recalcitrance wholly to resentment toward the U.S. . . . yup, he just did. He argues they oppose reasonable proposals just because we back them. But there's more to it. Those obsolete posts are filled by country-nationals who often have their home missions in thrall. He's calling for no more take-it-or-leave-it demands by the US. Yet often take-it-or-leave-it is all that works. It was Holbrooke's approach to getting an agreement on US dues to the UN paid. So, if Nossel thinks the speech was overblown, how do you think John Bolton is going to react? Let's go to the AP and find out!!: It was a rare instance of a senior U.N. official directly and openly criticizing a member state. An unwritten U.N. rule says high-ranking officials don't name names or shame nations. Yet Malloch Brown and even Annan have done so in the past. Last year, with the U.N. under intense criticism over the Iraq oil for food program, Annan said opponents of the U.N. had been "relentless," and the world body wasn't fighting back enough. U.S. officials, including Bolton, said they were especially upset that Malloch Brown, a Briton, mentioned "Middle America." Bolton said Malloch Brown's "condescending, patronizing tone about the American people" was the worst part about the speech. "Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government, by an international civil servant," Bolton said. "It's just illegitimate.".... Bolton warned that Malloch Brown's comments could undermine the reforms that Annan wants and that the United States supports. "To have the deputy secretary-general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations," Bolton said. "Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations." I wager to say that Bolton is hopping mad about this. How do I know? Because I, a lowly blogger, was e-mailed this story by Bolton's deputy press secretary. And I'm guessing others were as well. Bolton might be mad, but he's also right -- the speech will hurt the UN more than it will help it in this country. Brown's speech will do for U.S. attitudes towards the UN what Mearsheimer and Walt's "Israel Lobby" article did towards elite attitudes towards U.S. policy towards the Middle East -- it will roil everyone up, but the kernels of insight contained in the speech (Brown makes a good point about the merits of UN peacekeeping) will be safely ignored because of the rhetorical and conceptual overkill. There is one big difference, however -- Mearsheimer and Walt were academics trying to be provocative -- Brown is ostensibly a UN diplomat. He says his speech was meant as, "a sincere and constructive critique of US policy towards the UN by a friend and admirer," but in characterizing Middle America as moronic xenophobes, he's creating the very attitude he seeks to change. UPDATE: Kyle Spector at FP's Passport points out that Bolton's reaction might be equally overdramatic: Brown's speech, including the criticism that the US uses "the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics" was, for Bolton, the "worst mistake" in 17 years by a UN official. Right. Never mind the now scandalous oil-for-food program or the failure to prevent a genocide in Rwanda.