World Cup makes the UN green with envy

Kofi Annan recently penned a newspaper column outlining how much the FIFA World Cup has to teach the UN. The Secretary General's piece was replete with noble platitudes about the importance of free trade, human migration and "level playing fields".

"The World Cup makes us at the UN green with envy," Annan opined. And well it should. For a start, people actually care about the World Cup. It is relevant, important to billions, run accountably and does not cower to players who cheat and bully.

It is gladdening that the UN apparently wishes to learn from the World Cup and not vice versa. One can only imagine what the World Cup would look like if it followed the UN's lead.

First, each player would be entitled to 11 strongly worded warnings about "serious consequences" before receiving a card, at which stage teams of international lawyers would write conflicting opinion pieces about whether the rules require the player to be sent off. (The game would be over before a decision is made.)

Each game would involve 15 officials, who would provide their non-binding views from the sidelines. There would be five on-field referees with the power to award spot kicks for infractions, but any such decisions would usually be vetoed by the Russian and Chinese referees.

Teams that persistently engaged in deliberate diving and aggressive leg-chopping would be rewarded by a place on the FIFA Rules Committee.

FIFA would set up a ticketing system, supposedly to ration tickets independently and ensure that all fans had an opportunity to attend. Somehow though, Kojo Annan (Kofi's son who was implicated in the Oil for Food scandal) and George Galloway would wind up with enormous allocations that they would scalp for triple the face value.

On the security front, at the first sign of fan violence in the stands, the police would immediately evacuate, or else remain as neutral "observers" only. Three days later, FIFA would issue a statement condemning the violence and urging rioting fans to "show continuing restraint".

Finally, when trying to defend a free kick in front of goal, the Israeli team would be prohibited from using a wall.

It is clear that, across the full spectrum of its bloated operations, the UN has a long way to go to match the international respect and enthusiasm that the World Cup generates.

However, if Kofi Annan is genuinely searching for a tangible lesson, he should study the history of the World Cup finals since he became Secretary General (France 1998, South Korea/Japan 2002 and Germany 2006). The moral for the UN could not be more stark.

During Annan's reign, not one despotic or theocratic state has qualified for the second round of the World Cup finals. The final 16 of the World Cup is an utterly exclusive domain of democratic nations.

This 100 per cent strike-rate is remarkable given that only 46 per cent of nations are "free" (according to the 2006 survey from Freedom House). Further, this phenomenon cannot be dismissed as a Developed World-versus-Developing World anomaly. Senegal and Ghana have both proven that democratic, developing nations can succeed in the World Cup finals. Similarly, long-suffering nations in turmoil that have recently emerged from periods of tyranny, civil war or political chaos, such as Nigeria (post-General Abacha) and Yugoslavia (post-Dayton Accord) in 1998 and Ukraine (post-Orange Revolution) in 2006, have advanced to the second round.

During the Annan era, without exception, every single totalitarian, communist and Islamist World Cup finalist has yielded to their free and democratic rivals. Saudi Arabia (1998, 2002, 2006), Tunisia (1998, 2002, 2006), Iran (1998, 2006), Morocco (1998, when it still enforced strict Islamic Shariah laws), communist China (2002), Angola (2006), Togo (2006) and Ivory Coast (2006) all went home after the group phase.

Does the underlying political repression in a despotic nation prevent its players from fulfilling their potential? Or do democracies simply play a freer-flowing and better-coached version of the beautiful game? It is unclear whether this is the Bush Doctrine, or the Guus Doctrine, at work.

Regardless, recent World Cup history provides some interesting, albeit anecdotal, evidence of the strength and superiority of democratic systems. The UN seems to need constant reminding of this fact.

While the World Cup dispatches tyranny with brutal shrift, the UN's history is one of mollycoddling those elements that imperil democracy's survival - from its inability to show real strength against the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran, to its passive observation of genocide in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Sudan, to its corrupt Oil-for Food dealings with Iraq, to its promotion of egregious human rights violators such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Zimbabwe to its Human Rights Commission. The direct result of the UN's feebleness has been increased sectarian violence, impunity for gross human rights breaches and unchecked threats to regional and global security.

The UN, charged under its Charter with taking effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, should heed the ancient truth of history that this is only achieved by the vigorous promotion of the superiority of democracy and freedom, rather than by the insipid appeasement of despotism.

As the World Cup enters its final stages and the free nations of the world once more triumph over tyranny in Germany, let us hope that this is the lesson that Kofi Annan takes to heart.