No one, to my knowledge, has ever leveled against this blog the charge that it is not diverse or multi-cultural – which is good. It is good because this entry will head off at the pass any possibility that such a charge will be leveled against this blog in the future. What you are about to read is the very picture of diversity and multi-culturalism, because its subject is that august, that austere, that venerable, that imposing institution that we call the United Nations, which itself is composed of many nations, ethnicities, languages, and cultures.
Today I am going to do a bit of translation. No, I am not going to pretend for a moment that I am fluent in any language but my own, and thus I am not going to pretend that I am about to take a job as a translator at the UN itself. However, I am going to perform a very valuable service to the common man – namely, the service of translating UN-speak into the vernacular.* So without further ado, let us begin – and I shall be sure to restrain myself, in my enthusiasm, from beating my shoe upon the podium, a la Nikita Kruschev.
We all know that the United Nations is the top dog of all watchdog groups, and as such it keeps a close, sharp, and constant eye on everything that is afoot in the world today. It usually does so amid a misty and imperturbable cloud of silence, so when it speaks, we all notice it and would do well to pay attention. However, sometimes it is unclear to us exactly what the United Nations actually means to say when it speaks. This is understandable and a phenomenon quite comparable to the disconnect between a college student and his professor. You see, the latter knows quite a bit more than the former, and such knowledge is often lost in translation. That is why I am here to translate.
There is a hierarchy of language which the UN employs constantly. That is, one phrase or set of phrases is necessarily of a higher and different order than another. So let us begin with a basic beginner’s phrase. Sometimes the UN will say that it is “closely monitoring” something in the world. This simply means that something has caught the attention of the watching eye of that world body – something that may (or may not) require their attention at some future moment.
Once a closely-monitored situation has become significant enough, the UN will say that it is “concerned” about it. This is no cause, necessarily, for any kind of alarm. It simply means that the UN is thinking about thinking about going into a mode more consistent with thinking about taking action on the matter. However, should the language suddenly shift to being “troubled” by a situation, that means that the UN is now actually thinking about going into a mode more consistent with thinking about taking action.
Adjectives, as we writers know well, are powerful little things. Any time that the UN attaches the adjective “deeply” to one of the previous two phrases – as in “deeply concerned” or “deeply troubled” – it is tipping us off to something we should not take lightly at all. It means that the UN has now officially gone into a mode consistent with thinking about taking action. This is a dangerous threshold to cross. But it pales in comparison with what I will translate next.
When the UN says that it “condemns” an action (whatever it happens to be), then it is a rare example of that robust and respected institution’s rousing itself out of its dignified calm and rolling up its proverbial sleeves. Whoever did something so horrific as to cause the UN to “condemn” the action had better sit up and take note – for the UN now has its eye closely pinned on you and even has a folder filed away with your name on it.
But I shudder to report that it can and sometimes does get even more alarming. In fact, I would caution that only readers above the age of 18 continue on from this point. There is a phrase that the UN reserves for the most urgent of emergencies. In these cases, when world peace is literally threatened, the UN (that guardian of democracy and liberty the world over) will say that it “condemns in the strongest terms” whatever action carried with it that threat. Every now and then, it will be necessary to add a word, turning the phrase into “condemns in the strongest possible terms” – at which point no one with a working brain sincerely believes that the hour of action is not imminent. And so it is, for this is the tip-off phrase. Shall we now boldly peek into the realm of what happens when the UN takes action? I believe we must in order to be fair and thorough. It is a realm that few have ever visited, but we must and shall address it now.
The UN is patient. It must be, for it never takes action lightly, and when it does, it does so deliberately (partly because its member nations deliberate among themselves before any action can be taken). When this point is reached (a point of profound tension for the world community), the UN will customarily take out a piece of paper and write. Upon that terrible document will be affixed the phrases we have just learned, along with other, more stern warnings. Often the UN will warn the object of its wrath that if it continues or repeats a certain warned-against action, then in that case the UN will warn that party again of its need to stop. Some parties are stubborn and very belligerent, in which rare cases the UN will indeed take action on such a warning and warn the party again that it will be warned a third time if it does not cease and desist at once. We shall not go into detail about what happens when the UN finds it necessary to take such robust action a fourth, fifth, sixth, or (heavens!) a seventh time.
So next time you watch the news and encounter these phrases, you will not be intimidated by them, for you will understand them. The only thing you would have cause to be intimidated by is the severe global trial that occasioned such stern and effective rhetoric. But now that we understand what the UN means when it speaks, we can better and more fully appreciate the fact that this impressively strong world body truly does have the world’s problems firmly in hand, if not quite yet solved.
*Author’s Note: Strangely enough, this entire article, with few exceptions, could also be applied very satisfactorily to the United States State Department. This is a happy coincidence, because instead of my having to write a totally separate article, the reader, if he wishes to gain proper enlightenment, may choose to replace “United Nations” with “U.S. State Department” wherever he feels such a replacement is necessary or desired.
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