During the last US presidential election campaign, the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, used to say in almost every speech he made, referring to the controversy over the use of American soldiers in UN operations: "I will be in charge of making that decision not Boooutros Booooutros Ghali."
The school boy effort to ridicule the UN Secretary-General always raised a laugh and helped charge US President Bill Clinton's campaign to have the able Egyptian diplomat stand down.
Xenophobia was regarded by both contestants as an electoral asset.
Set against the campaign of four years ago, the tenor of the current one seems to be on another plane.
The cheap shot at the UN is out. In its place, if not enthusiasm, there is at least a passive recognition of its value.
It would, perhaps, be going too far to surmise the candidates realize that for all America's almighty economic strength and the political and military power that is its corollary, it simply cannot be sure of getting its way when it chooses to act.
Often enough it can, but there are many occasions when it needs at least to give the impression it is prepared to work with others, if it is to demonstrate the moral conviction essential to political, even military, success.
A civilized note
This is part of it. But another part is that, of late, the UN appears to be having some success. Not least, it has won the attention and engagement of important US politicians who, in recent years, have ignored it when they weren't spurning it.
First, Vice President Al Gore decided to personally launch a US- sponsored month of Security Council concentration on Africa.
Then he handed the baton to Richard Holbrooke, the high profile, former Bosnia trouble-shooter, and now the current US Ambassador to the UN, who makes little secret of his desire to be Secretary of State should Gore win the election.
Holbrooke in turn invited Congress' arch-enemy-in-chief of the UN, Jesse Helms, to address the Security Council.
Although it had a predictable tone to it -- "No UN institutions, not the Security Council, nor the Yugoslavia [War Crimes] tribunal, not a future International Criminal Court, is competent to judge the foreign policy and national security decisions of the US" - -- the meeting at least ended on a civilized note, promising to continue the dialogue.
Gore and Holbrooke's single-mindedness has breathed life into last year's moribund attempt to deploy 500 UN ceasefire monitors, supported and protected by 5,000 armed UN soldiers, into the war-ridden Congo.
It may well be too small a contingent to do the job, yet it is large enough to be a scapegoat for what has a good chance of going wrong. Nevertheless, it marks (along with a decision on intervention in East Timor late last year) a 180-degree turn around in US policy.
The US has stood apart from peacekeeping operations ever since Clinton's decision to cut and run from the US participation in a UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia in 1993.
His reaction to the death of 18 American Rangers in what in fact was a US authorized and commanded operation was to put the whole blame publicly on the UN, who had not even been forewarned of what was intended and who were reduced to trying to save the besieged American soldiers.
It always helps to change an attitude if the last experience has been a success.
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