The folly of equality

FIFA finally weighed in on the Zidane headbutt, suspending the retired French football star three games, but also suspending Italian defender Marco Materazzi two games for taunting Zidane.

A few minutes later the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan, addressing the UN security council, blamed both Hezbollah and Israel for the conflict in Lebanon.

What links these two stories is they are more examples of an international organization looking at a situation where there is conflict and controversy and trying their damnedest to dole out blame equally.

Since international institutions represent a cornucopia of interests and perspectives they have to do this to maintain their legitimacy among their members.

The price they pay for this legitimacy is a lack of authority.

It has been said diplomacy is "the art of letting someone have your way."

So how could it be anything but folly to turn an organization like the UN, which doesn't have a unified "way," for diplomacy?

I'm not stating anything earth-shaking here. The UN has lost authority as a geopolitical broker every year it has existed. I doubt many serious people still think it can serve that function at all.

But what has replaced the UN is the de facto mini-UN's we create when we excercise the instinct to bring in as many voices as possible into conflicts, whether it be Iraq, North Korea or Lebanon.

Diplomacy needs to be handled as unilaterally as possible -- or not at all.

The "equal" solutions large groups tend to come up with are anything but, and they only lead to more trouble down the road.