Turkmenistan and How the UN Really Works

Casual observers might conclude this week that the United Nations is a body that has as its key funciton providing an audience for fiery dictators who make speeches — some of them seemingly as long as the UN has been in existence. But is that what the UN is really about and how it really works — and does all of its work take place in the UN building itself?

Daniel McGroarty, principal of Carmot Strategic Group, an international business advisory based in Washington, D.C., who served in senior positions at the White House and the Department of Defense, has a must read on RealClearWorld that looks at this issue. Here’s the beginning of it:

News from the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) session is dominated by sound bites from the green marble podium, bromides broken up only by the occasional tearing up of a UN Charter by a Libyan dictator or by the steady shuffle of diplomats departing the perfidies of an Iranian president. But the real work at the UN is more likely to take place in the hallways of the Waldorf Astoria – the storied New York hotel turned diplomatic frat-house during UNGA week. Case in point: This week’s Waldorf “bi-lat” between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, President of Turkmenistan, home to the world’s fourth largest natural gas reserves, and lately the most sought-after partner in Central Asia.

The post meeting de-brief captured the mood perfectly. Pressed by a reporter “Did the matter of human rights come up?” Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake replied: “It does come up. It’s just in these bilats, … we’ve only got a certain amount of time, and so we touch on the most important things.”

Call it resource-politik: The de-valuation of moral concerns ranging from human rights to fundamental political freedoms in the quest to secure resources critical to our own continued development.

It’s a game everyone can play, and these days almost anyone is. Witness Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who included Turkmenistan on his nine nation swing earlier this month. In his Ashgabat photo op, Chavez point-blanked the Turkmen leader with an invitation to become a founding member of a new “natural gas OPEC.” Reports indicate that Berdymukhammedov failed to respond. Undeterred, at his next stop in Belarus, Chavez enrolled Turkmenistan as a charter nation in what he jauntily termed his updated “Axis of Evil.” Blandishments of his Venezuelan visitor aside, Turkmenistan’s leader appears to be keeping his options open, and plenty of countries are interested.

There’s a lot more. Read it in its entirety.