SMALL STEPS AT THE U.N.

The measurable part of the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration – known as the Monterrey Consensus – says the central challenge facing the world’s poor is globalization and its unequal distribution of wealth. For five years since that declaration, member countries have shared broad agreement about solutions to this problem and broad inaction to match. In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Bush advanced the United States’ position but it too will disappear into the bottomless well of good intentions without public support.

Unequal access to food, shelter, education, health care have been staples of U.N. concern for decades. If global trade is their solution, then only policies that specifically enhance poor nation’s ability to participate fairly in the world market are worth pursuing. This has not, of course, been the pattern, where the impulse to seek national advantage means the poorest nations will always lose and the next poorest will provide the low-cost labor. Some economists point out that this is the first step on the path to prosperity, but that path can be generations long.

Speaking last week, President Bush declared, “The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same. This is key to overcoming poverty in the world’s poorest nations.” He is right if he couples this with development aid that will make the poorest nations able to create competitive industries. But at least as important is that he endorsed the range of anti-poverty goals in the Millennium Development program after his administration had proposed eliminating any reference to them, which include eliminating extreme poverty, providing universal primary education, fighting AIDS, promoting gender equality and environmental sustainability. The internal battle over these goals represent competing visions of the U.S. role at the United Nations within the administration. This time the voices calling for cooperation internationally – made louder by the international aid to the United States after Hurricane Katrina – were heard more clearly than those of the isolationists.

Elsewhere in Mr. Bush’s speech last week were the beginnings of compromise between his administration and the United Nations on such issues as a strengthened condemnation of terrorism and substantial reform of the United Nations. The first is considerably easier than the second, though thanks to a year-long investigation into the U.N.’s $64 billion oil-for-food program for Iraq, that too may change. The investigation, headed by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, concluded the program produced “illicit, unethical and corrupt behavior” suggesting the United Nations was unequipped to run another program of that scale “or even programs of a lesser scope.”

The Bush administration’s foreign policy has improved noticeably over the last five years; the president’s decision to stick with the Millennium Development goals was another sign of progress, which could help his cause in arguing for U.N. reform as well.