George McGovern, US ambassador to the UN food and agricultural agencies, discussed the United Nations and related issues during an interview with UN Wire's Steve Hirsch. McGovern was the Democratic nominee for US president in 1972. He has served as a delegate to the 31st session of the UN General Assembly and was a delegate to the UN in 1978 for the Special Session on Disarmament.
     
     UN WIRE: You are the source of "McGovern liberalism" and you've been the ambassador to UN organizations for a couple of years. What do you see from your vantage point right now as being the foreign policy challenges facing the United States as we enter the 21st century?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think one is that we have to find a better way of dealing with the conflicts that develop in the world, the ethnic and religious and nationalistic conflicts. Nobody wants the job of having to handle that alone and I think what we have to do is beef up the United Nations peacekeeping and peacemaking capabilities. I'd like to see, first of all, a stronger World Court to settle disputes -- legally if we can, border disputes and matters of that kind -- and where they can't be settled except by force, I think then there ought to be a UN peacekeeping group that's ready to go that can step in to fill that breach.
     UN WIRE: What kind of changes -- are you thinking of the Brahimi report, or are you thinking of different sorts of changes?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think that anything that will move us to an international peacekeeping force under the jurisdiction of the United Nations is what I have in mind. I don't care who gets credit for it or what specific plan it is, as long as it's a practical way of mobilizing a collective military force to deal with these problems that we know are going to occur at fairly frequent intervals.
     UN WIRE: Do you think there have been specific problems with the current UN peacekeeping machinery?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Yes I do. I think that there's too much argument about whether we're going to intervene and sometimes we've let the opportune time go by before a decision is made, and one of the reasons for that is that nobody wants to carry that responsibility. But if we agreed in advance on an international peacekeeping capability, then they could make a judgement on each of these instances of what is required in the way of an appropriate response. It's the same way we deal with domestic quarrels -- we have a trained police force that's in being and ready to respond to violations of the law or disturbances of the peace and we need the same thing internationally.
     UN WIRE: Are you talking about a standing UN force?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Yes.
     UN WIRE: So it would be a UN army?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: That's correct. It wouldn't have to be huge, but it would have to be well-trained and well-equipped and with the authority to move.
     UN WIRE: How big a force would you see?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, most of these conflicts that have developed in recent years haven't been the kind of thing that required large armies to intervene, you know, many of them could be handled with a few hundred men, some would require a few thousand, but I'm not thinking in terms of a huge standing army.
     UN WIRE: But you are talking about a standing force?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Yes.
     UN WIRE: Do you think that US support for such a force would be possible?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: I think so. I think if it were explained that the alternative falls on the US unilaterally, I think a lot of people would rally to the support of this effort. What I don't think there's support for is sending in American troops repeatedly to conflicts that are sometimes murky in origin and difficult of solution. I think that that's the kind of thing where American patience wears thin in a hurry, but I think the American public would support an international force of this kind if it were explained to them how it would work and why it's better than us trying to carry this burden alone.
     UN WIRE: What would you see the US role in such a force being?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think that we'd have to respond with an appropriate contribution. With most UN operations, the US carries about a fourth of the cost, somewhere between 22 and 25%, and I would think that would carry over into this operation too.
     UN WIRE: OK, what about in terms of troops and command?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, that would be decided by the United Nations as an entity, they would have to decide what command forces are needed and where they'd be selected from. Probably some cases it would be under US command, in other cases it might be Sweden or somebody else.
     UN WIRE: What do you see the US role in world affairs now, especially as the Cold War is over and things have shifted massively in the last 10 years?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think that most of the problems, the really serious problems that face us now that the Cold War is over, are ones that also require a multinational approach. For example, the global environment is a matter that Americans are interested in and rightfully so, and I think that we need to commit ourselves to a global approach to that problem. There again, I'd place it primarily under the UN -- it doesn't do any good for one nation to deal with global warming -- we have to have agreed-upon standards that all countries abide by and that's why I think a multinational approach is the way to deal with it. I think the same is true with AIDS. This is a problem of massive proportions that is going to require the cooperation of the whole international community and that's a second challenge to us.
      Still a third one is the problem of world hunger. I noticed in a poll here a while back that when the American people were asked what problem worldwide they regarded as number one, they mentioned hunger as the most urgent problem. I'm glad to hear that because that fits my own bias. We've got about 800 million hungry people in the world according to the Food and Agriculture Organization here in Rome and that's just unacceptable. We have enough food in the world right now to end hunger in the world and what is needed is the political will and the understanding of the nature of the problem to put an end to it.
      I'm coming out with a new book in January [The Third Freedom, Ending Hunger In Our Time, to be published by Simon & Schuster] that argues that we can cut world hunger in half, as the United Nations has said, in 15 years and we should be able to end hunger among the remaining half in the next 15 years, so that by the year 2030, hunger should be history.
     UN WIRE: You are enthusiastic about the UN and I know that you were instrumental in forming the World Food Program. How do you see the United States' role in the UN now and how would you like to see it?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I'm embarrassed about the long years when we were in arrears on our dues. We've pretty well corrected that now, I think. I don't know just what the current balance is, but the UN is of enormous value to the United States. I must say, the UN was pretty well paralyzed during the Cold War because you had the two major superpowers at loggerheads and what one wanted to do the other one would veto and vice versa, but now that the Cold War is over and more often than not the Russians and the Americans vote together in New York, I think we ought to increasingly work with the UN. We certainly ought to pay our dues and I think we ought to give support and understanding to the organization. We shouldn't let the right wing define what the UN does.
     UN WIRE: Let me use that to segue into American politics a little bit. You represent a kind of a postwar American liberalism which sees itself as a product of enlightened self-interest. You've always pushed for food programs both because they help people and they help us get rid of our surplus, they help keep the peace. Is that sort of liberalism dead?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: I don't think so. It's been in trouble in recent years, but I think basically its built on decency and fairness and a sense of social justice and those are all impulses that have been pretty strong in American life. They come out of the churches and the synagogues and the mosques and all the ethical and religious traditions and I think they're still very much alive.
     UN WIRE: Are they alive in American political fora?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: They were struggling this year, I think, but, yes, I think they're alive. I've heard many many Americans express the desire to see those values pushed higher up on the scale than they are, so I think the potential is there.
     UN WIRE: In your book you wrote rather glowingly about the bipartisanship that you saw when you and [former Republican US Senator] Bob Dole ran the Nutrition Committee [the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, created in 1968 and merged into the Agriculture Committee in 1977]. Do you see much of that sort of bipartisanship now?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: I don't, and it makes me sad because I don't think our system works very well without a good mixture of bipartisanship. You know, we had that for many years in American foreign policy after World War II, and at times we've had it in domestic policy, although it's more difficult there, but it is a fact that Bob Dole and I worked hand in glove for about 10 years in the Senate when we were rewriting the food assistance laws and the agricultural laws and we're doing it again -- he has publicly endorsed this global school feeding initiative that I've launched here, and is doing everything he can to help it. So I think the potential is there. Of course, I think highly of Bob Dole, I think he's a decent man, he's an old crusty conservative on some things, but he and I get along just fine, because we see certain common things that we are for.
     UN WIRE: I'll give you the opportunity, if you'd like, to put a plug in for your proposal with him.
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: OK. I think that this current global school feeding initiative that I'm pushing here in Rome and with the US government and which has the strong support of my friend and former colleague Bob Dole, if we can pull this off, it'll be the most important thing I've ever achieved in my public life, even more important than running for president, because if we have our way, the United Nations, with the US in the lead, is going to provide a good nutritious school lunch every day for every child in the world, and if we do that, I think it'll literally transform life on this planet for the better.
     UN WIRE: That's the proposal you and Dole and [US Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Richard] Lugar, I think, has ...
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: That's correct. Senator Lugar's chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and he conducted hearings on it and spoke very favorably about it, as did every member of the committee. I think we're going to carry the day on this.
     UN WIRE: Has that actually been introduced?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Yes it has, it has, and of course, you know, we've got the first [$]300 million from [US] President [Bill] Clinton's orders.
     UN WIRE: In a more general sense, how has this lack of bipartisanship affected US foreign policy do you think?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, it makes it difficult to get anything done, everything is stalled, everything is slowed down. Even presidential appointments that ordinarily would go through as a routine matter held up for months and it just slows down the whole governing process because it's awful hard on most of these proposals to pass them without some bipartisan support. You're not likely to get 100% of the Republicans on one thing and 100% of the Democrats on another, so that if they don't have some trading there, then neither side has enough political clout to pass legislation. And that's why I would argue for bipartisanship. Fortunately, when I was in the Senate, we had a lot of that -- I don't take any credit for it, but on almost all farm bills or anything that had to do with things like housing and health care and so on, we would get some votes from both parties and that's the way we got things passed.
     UN WIRE: Whoever becomes president, [Texas Governor George W.] Bush or [US Vice President Al] Gore, is going to face a deeply divided Congress. Is that going to prevent either one of them from being able to forge a bipartisan foreign policy?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think it has that potential, but what I'm hoping is that whether it's Bush or Gore, they will name three or four prominent members of the other party to their Cabinet. I think if they do that and hold out a hand of reconciliation to both parties, they'll be able to carry this off even though we've had the hard fight over who's won the Electoral College.
     UN WIRE: Do you have any names in mind?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: No, I don't, but if I'd think for five or 10 minutes, I could come up with some good ones on the Republican side. Bob Dole would be one, I'd think about, but there are others; General [Colin] Powell is another that comes to mind. I think we could come up with three or four really outstanding Republicans on our side and I think the Republicans could find Democrats that would be willing to serve.
     UN WIRE: You talked a little bit at the beginning about US foreign policy; is there anything else you'd like to say about the general goals that you think it ought to strive for? I know you talk in your book about less repressive governments and elimination of conflicts ...
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: You know, one of the problems we don't hear much about and yet I think in the back of their minds most people know is going to be a big problem and that's water. And I talk about that in my book at some length, because we can't have either agriculture or industry or human life on this planet if we run out of water. So I think that here again this is a global problem that we need to get more attention to. We can perhaps resolve a major part of it with desalinization plants of the kind that have been operating in Israel for some time and in some other areas, but that's a big problem. I'd say water, hunger, the AIDS epidemic, the environment, those are the big four as I see it on the global scale that are all important American foreign policy questions.
     UN AIDS: You talk fairly glowingly in your book about the potential role of organizations like the WTO [World Trade Organization] and the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. How do you see them being able to contribute, especially with disillusion with them, particularly among what could be called their natural constituencies, the left, people one would think would be behind them?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: They've got to do a better job explaining what it is they're trying to do. I'm an old free trader and I always will be, but I know that I've lost a good many of my friends on this who feel differently about it, they think that this is inviting the corporations just to move to wherever they can get cheap labor and no environmental costs and that we're going to suffer a lot, but I think that's where we have to bolster the hand of the WTO and IMF and the World Bank. They have to be pushed by their clients, by their member states, to face up to those questions, and I think if we explain to the people that were out there in the streets in Seattle and Washington, DC, that we're aware of the necessity of protecting labor standards, that we're aware of the importance of the environment, and that we're going to insist that those cooperating with the WTO meet certain standards in those two fields, particularly, you know, the WTO has laid down some regulations, there's no reason why they can't lay down certain minimum standards on work conditions, especially on child labor and things like that and also on the environment.
     UN WIRE: You called for WTO setting a sort of a minimum wage?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Yes, I did.
     UN WIRE: How would that work?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, it would have to be adjusted according to living costs. You can't have the same minimum wage in Bangladesh that you have in Belgium, so it would have to be adjusted to the cost of living, but that's not impossible to work out. You can figure out what it costs to support a family of four in Bangladesh the same way you can do it in Belgium. The conditions would be different, but you could arrive at a minimum that's required to sustain a family and then if that were done for each country, I don't say this would be easy, but I don't think you're going to be able to sell this to working people either in Detroit or in the rest of the world if you don't set up some minimum work standards -- job safety as well as minimum wages and maximum hours. There has to be some agreement on that before you can expect countries to give their support to the world trading system.
     UN WIRE: Even with the minimum wage, if it were adjusted to local economies, if the problem is that wages in, say Thailand, are much cheaper than they are in Michigan ... is setting up a minimum wage going to really do anything to blunt criticism of companies which will still be able to move overseas because it will still be cheaper to go overseas?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I know that's a good argument but I still think that if you make a serious effort to elevate environmental standards and elevate work standards to the point where people aren't living in poverty, that will help some in discouraging corporations from paying the cost of moving there and training a new workforce and so on. You don't want to make it impossible for corporations to move because these countries need investment and they need jobs, they need factories and so on, so if we're going to live in a global economy, we don't want a situation where there is no movement at all of investment from the developed countries.
      I know this is an easier thing for me to do sitting here in an easy chair and spelling out how this can be done than to actually set up a workable system, but I'm still convinced it can be done and I think there will continue to be some protest against a global economy, but at bottom, countries that have signed onto it, like China, have cut their hunger rate in half, so, basically, belonging to the world trading system helps countries rather than hurting them.
     UN WIRE: Let me ask you about Bill Clinton's foreign policy. What kind of job do you think he's done as president in foreign policy?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, I think pretty good. He's operated within the political framework that he thought was as far as he could push things, he's tried not to overstep what the domestic political situation would permit, and as a consequence, he's maintained public support for his foreign policy initiatives, including the intervention in Haiti and in Kosovo and other things that he has done. There's no question this trip to Vietnam is going to be a 10-strike for him . ... I thought that was a very useful thing for him to do during his last six weeks in office -- I wish he'd go to Cuba and do the same thing there, but I guess that's asking too much now that we're counting the Florida votes every day.
     UN WIRE: How would you look at a prospective Bush or Gore foreign policy?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: I don't think there's going to be a lot of changes. I think they'll pretty much pursue the kind of course that Clinton has, which I would call a moderate course, a pragmatic course. I'd be surprised if there were any big changes in that.
     UN WIRE: What about your own plans for the immediate future? You've been in this spot since 1998.
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: Well, technically speaking, I could be through on January 20. I guess it depends on whether Bush or Gore wants me to stay on, but like other ambassadors, I'll be expected to submit my resignation, then it's up to whoever's president to decide whether I stay on. The only reason I might want to stay on for another year is to make sure that this global child feeding initiative is in high gear when I leave. I think it's going to go, but if I thought that by staying here for another 10 months or a year that I could really ensure its success, I would stay on if I were asked to.
     UN WIRE: Assuming you were to leave, you have no concrete plans elsewhere?
     AMBASSADOR McGOVERN: I don't right now. I love to write and if I'm not here or even if I am, I may launch on something else. I don't know just what it will be, but there are three or four different things I'm thinking about. I'm not going to lobby to stay here, but if I'm asked to stay I would if I could continue to make a contribution on this child feeding initiative.
     UN WIRE: Thank you.