An Interesting analysis from Progressive magazine: <A HREF="www.progressive">www.progressive</A>.org
April 2003
Bush Trashes the United Nations
by Matthew Rothschild
On June 26, 1945, in San Francisco, the United Nations was born, and former
Secretary of State Cordell Hull won the Nobel Prize for his efforts in
creating the institution. He called the U.N. Charter "one of the great
milestones in man's upward climb toward a truly civilized existence." Almost
six decades later, George W. Bush has done more to reverse this upward climb
than anyone in the postwar period. The audacity of Bush's Iraq war maneuvers
and his crude bullying threatens not only the United Nations but the dream of
world governance and world peace. This dream animated Woodrow Wilson and
Franklin D. Roosevelt and hundreds of millions of people across the globe who
saw the world torn asunder by the hideous wars of the twentieth century.
Roosevelt called the United Nations a "world organization for permanent
peace." Now in the early hours of the twenty-first century, Bush returns
international relations to the raw power politics of the nineteenth century
and abandons international law for the law of the jungle. The sign was clear
back on September 12, 2002, when Bush first addressed the United Nations on
the subject of Iraq. So relieved were member nations that the President
deigned to appear before the international body that they seemed deaf to the
insulting words he was hurling at them. "Will the United Nations serve the
purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?" Bush asked.At the time,
even the French were praising Bush. He has resisted "the temptation of
unilateral action," said France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin.
Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, said "the turn President
Bush has taken in asking the United Nations to take up its responsibility is
a good one." They apparently did not realize that Bush was engaging in a mere
charade and that he was fully prepared to render the United Nations
irrelevant himself.Bush tarred the Security Council with the brush of
irrelevance for not enforcing previous resolutions Iraq had flouted. He
repeated the charge at his March 6 press conference: "The fundamental
question facing the Security Council is, will its words mean anything? When
the Security Council speaks, will the words have merit and weight?"But Bush's
insistence that the Security Council back up its resolutions is selective in
the extreme. Iraq is not the only country to violate Security Council
resolutions. In fact, it is not the country that violates the most
resolutions. That distinction belongs to Israel, which has violated
thirty-two Security Council resolutions. Turkey has violated twenty-four, and
Morocco sixteen, according to Stephen Zunes, associate professor of politics
at the University of San Francisco and chair of its peace and justice studies
program. By comparison, Iraq has violated seventeen resolutions.Since Israel,
Turkey, and Morocco are U.S. allies, Bush has not been browbeating the
Security Council to make good on its word by threatening force against these
countries. And you don't hear Bush talking about gathering a "coalition of
the willing" to impose regime change in Jerusalem, Ankara, and Rabat. To see
how outrageous Bush's action is, consider how Washington would have felt if
Russia had told the U.N. Security Council that it was going to gather a
"coalition of the willing" to impose regime change on those three countries.
Bush, Congress, and the pundits would be condemning Russia as a reckless and
renegade country. Today, the United States is that reckless and renegade
country.Bush's essential message is, the United Nations is irrelevant if it
doesn't do exactly what Washington demands. And Bush has chided the United
Nations not to become another failure like the League of Nations, though the
League of Nations collapsed, in part, because the U.S. Senate never ratified
U.S. entry into the organization."Bush has made it abundantly clear that he
feels the United Nations is just a nuisance," says John Anderson, head of the
World Federalist Association, who ran for President as an independent in
1980. "It's a very specious and hypocritical attitude to sigh and wonder
whether the U.N. is going the way of the League of Nations when Bush himself
has done everything in his power to see that this happens."A mere glance back
at the U.N. Charter reveals how far from its letter and spirit Bush has now
traveled. Article 2, Section 3, states that "all members shall settle their
international disputes by peaceful means." And Article 2, Section 4, says,
"All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence
of any state." Bush's entire discussion of "regime change," his mobilizing of
more than 200,000 troops, and his constant threats of force since September
are in clear violation of this article. And if he goes on and wages
aggressive war, which is "the ultimate crime" in international law, according
to Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he could be tried
in an international court. (In any event, Bush has been shirking his
constitutional duty to enforce the laws, since treaties signed and ratified
by the United States are supposed to be inviolable.)"If the U.N. Security
Council had been behaving in the way it ought to, it should have been saying
all along that the United States was carrying out illegal acts by threatening
force," says Stephen Shalom, professor of political science at William
Paterson University in New Jersey. "The U.S. was in violation of the charter,
and the council should have said so."Bush's contempt for the United Nations
may have many victims, especially those Iraqi civilians who would lose their
lives in any U.S. assault. But one other victim is the entire edifice of the
United Nations, which cannot long stand while Goliath keeps stomping his feet
on its foundation."We're seeing the end of the international system as we've
known it since the Second World War," says Ratner."This is the most dangerous
and depressing moment in my life," says Richard Falk, a professor of
international law and practice at Princeton. "The United States is undeterred
and undeterrable in the current situation. It repudiates any willingness to
allow the United Nations to act independently, and it refuses to accept a set
of restraints derived from international law. This is a free-fall
situation."In late February and early March, Bush put the United Nations in
an impossible bind. "He clearly has confronted the U.N. with an untenable
dilemma of either being a rubber stamp for U.S. geopolitics or finding itself
bypassed on a major threat to peace and security by the most important member
of the institution," says Falk.Using Corleone-style tactics, Bush pulled out
all the stops to gain support of the council. "What's unique is the scale and
the audacity of the bribing," says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute
for Policy Studies and co-author of the group's report "Coalition of the
Willing or Coalition of the Coerced?" Almost every country faced "coercion,
bullying, bribery, or the implied threat of U.S. action that would directly
damage the interests of the country," the report says. Many nations may
remember what the United States did to Yemen prior to the Gulf War in 1991.
"When Yemen, the sole Arab country on the council, voted against the
resolution authorizing war, a U.S. diplomat told the Yemeni ambassador, 'That
will be the most expensive no vote you ever cast.' Three days later, the U.S.
cut its entire aid budget to Yemen," the report notes.Still, the resistance
many countries put up was remarkable. From Turkey to Chile to Mexico,
governments that Washington could usually rely on bucked the pressure, at
least for a while. That was because of the astonishing, unprecedented global
peace movement that demanded, in country after country, that leaders not give
in to Washington."The 'coalition of the coerced' stands in direct conflict
with democracy," the report adds. "In most nations, including those most
closely allied to the United States, over 70 percent of the public opposes
U.S. military action against Iraq."Washington further sullied its image by
spying on Security Council members, according to a story the London Observer
broke. That paper obtained a copy of a National Security Agency memo
outlining its snooping to obtain "the whole gamut of information that could
give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals
to head off surprises."At press time, the vote of the Security Council had
not yet taken place, and the outcome was in doubt. If it succeeded at this
strong-arming, Washington would demonstrate that the Security Council has no
effective power to stand up to the bullyboy on the block. "If the United
Nations caves to the point of authorizing this war, Bush will have undermined
it, and the U.N. will have abandoned its role of keeping the peace," says Jan
Knippers Black, professor at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies.And if Bush failed to win Security Council approval (if a majority
voted against Washington, or if one nation exercised its veto, or if the
United States withdrew the resolution), and the United States launched a war
anyway, it would show, in a different way, that the Security Council is
powerless to restrain the mighty.Bush was positively cocksure when asked at
his March 6 press conference whether the United States had the right to
attack Iraq without Security Council approval. "If we need to act, we will
act, and we really don't need United Nations approval to do so," he said. "We
really don't need anybody's permission." As a matter of fact, the U.N.
Charter says the only time a country can act alone is "if an armed attack
occurs against" it."Assuming Bush is going to war anyway, it's better to have
the U.N. not give Bush the endorsement," says Shalom. "That will help
galvanize opposition, and it will make it impossible for Bush to claim he's
acting in conformity with international law or the will of the international
community."The Security Council was set up to reflect the global power
arrangements at the end of World War II, and those arrangements no longer
exist. Roosevelt "viewed the Security Council as a direct extension of the
Big Three wartime alliance," Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley write in
FDR and the Creation of the U.N. (Yale, 1997). "In his view, Big Power
cooperation was imperative for settling or suppressing conflicts between and
among the lesser nations. . . . At the same time, he understood that there
was no mechanistic remedy for unresolved conflict between Big Powers."But now
the other "Big Powers" are not so big anymore. The Soviet Union has vanished.
Britain and France are nowhere near as strong as they were at the time of the
founding. China is not yet a full rival to the United States. And so
Washington thinks it can have its way.The old system was not perfect, by any
means. The very establishment of these five permanent voting members on the
Security Council was undemocratic. If the world body really wanted to be
fair, it would have no permanent members and simply would rotate members
through the council. But the establishment of the Security Council with the
so-called Big Five each having veto power was a realistic bow to the
powerful. "The main lesson he [Roosevelt] drew from the League failure was
that responsibility for world peace depended exclusively on the few nations
that possessed real power and that they must 'run the world' for an
indefinite transitional period," Hoopes and Brinkley write.As the permanent
members of the Security Council divided into Cold War blocs, they didn't run
the world very well. Only by luck and icy nerves during the Cuban Missile
Crisis did the two superpowers spare the world from nuclear annihilation. And
many regional conflicts raged, most notably in the Middle East, Southern
Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.Nor is
Bush by any means the first President to flout the United Nations. The United
States was able to gain U.N. approval for the Korean War only by a fluke: The
Soviet representative was boycotting the Security Council at the time. And
Truman acknowledged that he was ready to bypass the United Nations if need
be. "No doubt about it," he said years later when asked if he would have gone
to war against Korea without U.N. approval, according to Hoopes and
Brinkley.The United States waged war against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos
without formal approval of the Security Council. It also attacked, among
others, Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, and Libya, and it
destabilized many more countries without such approval. "Bush's unilateralism
has plenty of precedents," says Noam Chomsky. But it has taken "a long step
beyond" where previous Administrations have gone. "Its forthright declaration
that it intends to rule the world by force" amounts to a kind of
"fanaticism," Chomsky says.Even Presidents who were flouting the United
Nations tried to bow to international norms, Falk says. No one up to George
W. Bush has been so reckless in disregarding the institution. "What worries
me most is the absence of limits on Washington," Falk says. "We live in a
unipolar world, you have the United States intent on pursuing a global
dominance project, and there is no countervailing power. The Cold War, at
least, had the international benefit of a countervailing force. You were not
as dependent on the law. There is a greater dependence on international law
in a unipolar world." But Bush acts as though he is not bound by that
law.Franklin Roosevelt warned: "We shall have to take the responsibility for
world collaboration, or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another
world conflict." But Bush has disdained, and dispensed with, "world
collaboration," and so world conflict is on the horizon.What are the
consequences of Bush's trashing the United Nations? "The unilateral path is
horribly destructive, and almost certain to be self-destructive," says Falk.
"As a precedent, it's horrible: An endless number of countries could invoke
this kind of preemptive logic. China could use it against Taiwan, and it
could lead to a nuclear war between India and Pakistan."William Hartung of
the World Policy Institute shares this fear. "Every regional tyrant will feel
free to do to its enemies--internal and external--what Bush and his clique
are doing to Iraq," he says.It also gives other nations a clear indication
that their own self-interest lies not in taking issues to the United Nations
but in establishing facts on the ground. North Korea's game of nuclear
chicken may not be the aberrant action of a crazy ruler but a rational
response to Washington's aggressiveness. Such actions may increasingly be the
norm in a lawless future.Even for U.S. security, the approach is
counterproductive. "It will cause an international backlash, generate more
suicide bombings, lead to more religious and political extremism, and
possibly cause a fundamentalist takeover in Pakistan or Egypt," says Falk.
"It could be a geopolitical disaster."Such a disaster is what impelled the
career foreign service officer John Brady Kiesling, who was serving in the
U.S. embassy in Greece, to resign from the State Department on January 27.
"The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with
American values but also with American interests," he wrote in his
resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Our fervent pursuit
of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that
has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the
days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most
effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our
current course will bring instability and danger, not security."The flexing
of sheer brute force that so typifies the Bush policy gives terrorists and
other nonstate actors the message that the superpower cannot be restrained by
traditional, legal channels but only by "asymmetrical" and extralegal means.
Ratner at the Center for Constitutional Rights says the Bush approach, "in
terms of our security and safety, is fatal." He worries the United States
will alienate its allies in the war on terrorism, and that "by not using
international law and peaceful methods, it will bring about a huge
radicalization in parts of the world that are going to terrorize us further."
Ratner says the United Nations may never be the same again. "Like F. Scott
Fitzgerald after his nervous breakdown, who said he was like a plate that was
glued back together and was no good for serving dinner on but useful only for
snacks, the U.N. will be used for noncontroversial issues, but when it comes
to the use of force, it will be a cracked plate," Ratner says.The final cost
of this policy is internal. "It could destroy democracy at home," Falk
argues. "The rising tide of opposition here and abroad will play into
fearmongering and an expansion of government control over citizen rights.
There is a kind of proto-fascist dimension to the current set of
circumstances." Falk says he usually is loath to throw the term "fascism"
around. "But you have this crackdown, coupled with a consolidation of
military power and a messianic view that the United States is the bearer of a
benevolent future that justifies exterminating those who stand in the way,"
he explains. "You have the convergence of religious evangelicals in the White
House with geopolitical fundamentalists like Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz. We have never had this mixture of religious and secular extremists
so close to the core of governmental power."Given the U.S. manipulation of
the United Nations, there may be some progressive people who wonder why we
should even bother with it. But not bothering would be a mistake."We should
support the U.N. and international law for the same reasons we support
democracy and other values," says Chomsky. "The fact that they are trampled
to dust and treated with contempt by power centers does not mean that these
values and institutions should be tossed into the ashcan of history."Chomsky
and other observers take note of the one hopeful sign in recent months: the
rise of the massive international peace movement. "We should never rest hopes
in institutions," says Chomsky. "I have to admit that the basic truth of the
matter appeared in the lead paragraphs of a front-page story in my favorite
newspaper, The New York Times, a couple of days after the demos: The Times
reported that there are now two superpowers on the planet, the U.S. and world
opinion. Our hopes should rest in the second superpower."Bennis of the
Institute for Policy Studies says this second superpower can find a home at
the United Nations. "People throughout the world are looking at the U.N. as
part of this global anti-war movement." More hopeful than most, she believes
Bush already may ironically be pushing the United Nations to assume a new,
more powerful role. "He's trying to do enormous damage," she says. "But the
ferocity of his attack has had exactly the opposite result. Right now, the
United Nations is not only more relevant but is gaining more backbone because
of Bush's blatant actions. The United Nations has a somewhat new identity as
the centerpiece of the global movement against the U.S. empire. It's exactly
where the U.N. belongs: organizing the defiance of the world against the
superpower."There will come a day when the United States is no longer king of
the hill, when other powers arise to challenge Washington for dominance. The
Roman Empire lasted 500 years. The British Empire lasted almost 400 years.
The Soviet Empire vanished within seventy-five years. The 1,000 Year Reich
lasted barely more than a single decade. The American Empire will fade, as
well. At such a time, it would be in the interest of the United States to
have still standing an institution that can act as a buffer against war.But
Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld can't imagine that day, and so they can't
imagine that need. They foresee, explicitly in their new strategic doctrine,
indefinite U.S. military preeminence, and they are eager to go to war
"preemptively" whenever another nation attempts to vie for power against the
United States. The founders of the United Nations, in the words of the
charter, created an institution to save succeeding generations from "the
scourge of war." But Bush does not consider war a "scourge." He uses it as a
favorite tool to ensure the predominance of the United States, and thus he
denies the basic purpose of the United Nations.Matthew Rothschild is Editor
of The Progressive.
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear
the government, you have tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
- Edmund Burke
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