The U.N. under threat
October 8th, 2002
Despite United States claims that in the event of an attack on Iraq the use of its most advanced war technology will destroy only military targets as well as Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces suspected of concealing weapons of mass destruction, some collateral damage—civilian deaths—is certain. No intelligence and no bomb are ever infallible or smart enough to pinpoint and destroy only military targets all the time while humanely sparing noncombatants.
Such deaths and injuries will be bad enough, if only because they’re likely to include women and children, or even those who secretly oppose Saddam Hussein. What’s worse, however, is that among the sure casualties of an American attack on Iraq will be the United Nations and everything that it’s supposed to stand for. A US attack on Iraq will mean the beginning of the end for the world body, and the US’s unilaterally deciding issues of war and peace for the entire planet.
Since its formal founding after the Second World War (the most devastating in human history and to prevent the repetition of which the Allies established the world body), and in its more than 50 years of existence, the United Nations has been guided by three basic principles.
The first is the renunciation of force or the threat of the use of force as a means of settling disputes between states. The second is collective action—military if need be—against erring states once negotiations fail. The third is the use of force only in self-defense by individual states or by UN member states.
The United States is going through the motions of seeking a UN mandate in the form of a Security Council resolution that would make “regime change” in Iraq via military action automatic if Saddam Hussein fails to satisfy certain conditions. But it has also made it clear that it will attack Iraq with or without a Security Council mandate.
If the US does attack Iraq without that mandate—and there is every indication that it will—the UN will be doomed to irrelevance. On the other hand, Security Council approval of the US resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq on the basis of the flimsiest reasons will be regarded by most UN member-nations as unacceptable.
The Security Council has 15 member-countries now under US pressure to adopt the US-drafted resolution that would give it a blank check to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Three out of the five permanent members of the council with veto power—France, China and Russia—oppose the US resolution. Two of the other permanent members are the US and Britain.
Nine out of the 10 nonpermanent members—Bulgaria, Colombia, Ireland, Singapore, Mexico, Mauritius, Cameroon, Syria and Guinea—are likely to cave in to US pressure, but the resolution, in accordance with Security Council procedures, needs only one veto to be rejected.
Among the general membership of 191 countries, on the other hand, there is overwhelming resistance to a war on Iraq. The US therefore does not want a General Assembly vote on the issue, and has chosen to cajole, bribe and threaten the nonpermanent members of the Security Council.
The integrity of the UN is in fact being challenged by the American efforts, which if successful would strengthen the view, already rampant among many countries, that the US can manipulate the council at will.
There is of course the veto power of the three permanent council members—Russia, China and France. In anticipation of that possibility, however, the US has made it clear that it is prepared to attack Iraq, possibly with the token support of Britain, but basically on its own.
Such a preemptive attack would only be consistent with the (George W.) Bush doctrine, however, although, by setting a precedent, it may not be the last. The American scholar Richard Falk (in “The New Bush Doctrine,” The Nation, July 15, 2002) describes this doctrine, first enunciated in June during Bush’s address to graduating cadets of the US military academy at West Point, as “the new [US] strategic doctrine of preemption.”
“[Under this doctrine] the United States has the right to use military force against any state that is seen as hostile or makes moves to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
“What is scary,” continues Falk, “is the new approach to the use of international force beneath the banner of counterterrorism and the domestic climate of fervent nationalism [in the US] that has existed since September 11.
“This new approach repudiates the core idea of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits any use of international force that is not undertaken in self-defense after . . . an armed attack across an international boundary or pursuant to a decision by the UN Security Council.”
Falk notes that in 1956 the United States itself opposed the Suez Canal war of Britain, France and Israel because it was a nondefensive use of force against Egypt, which had seized control of the Canal Zone.
In contrast, the doctrine of preemption—which extends to the US’s reserving the right to strike first even with the use of nuclear weapons—sanctions nondefensive, anticipatory military action. The bases for the planned attack on Iraq, says Falk, are Iraq’s supposedly “shadowy intentions, alleged potential links to terrorist groups, supposed plans and projects to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and anticipations of possible future dangers.” A US attack on Iraq would in short be based on anticipated and not actual developments.
The Bush doctrine, continues Falk, “is a doctrine without limits, without accountability to the UN or to international law, without any dependence on a collective judgment of responsible governments and, what is worse, without any convincing demonstration of practical necessity.”
Falk argues that “postmodern geopolitics” needs a different structure of security, and that the “mega terrorism” for which no particular state can be pinpointed stretches across national boundaries—in some 60 countries, says the Bush administration. In this new situation, Falk continues, international law has indeed been bent in the past to accommodate “the reasonable security needs of sovereign states,” as when military reaction to transnational terrorist acts are tolerated by the UN and international public opinion because those responses seemed necessary, proportional to the threat, and “reactive, not anticipatory.”
On the other hand, “the Bush doctrine of preemption goes much further . . . it claims a right to abandon rules of restraint and of law patiently developed over . . . centuries.” These rules the use of force against states, says Falk, not networks such as al-Qaeda.
Iraq, says Falk, is not al-Qaeda, but a state that acts and responds as a state. If it does pose a threat to world security, “containment and deterrence” under UN mandate are likely to remain effective against it, even as, in the days of the defunct Soviet Union, any act perceived by the world community as a form of Soviet expansion or as a threat to peace was contained and deterred.
By dismissing a UN mandate as welcome but not necessary, the US is saying that it cannot be deterred by anyone and anything.
The idea that one state has the right to decide the fate of other peoples with the use of nuclear weapons if necessary, and on the basis of its interests and its view of what’s right and wrong—is frightening enough.
Combined with the Bush administration’s moralizing zeal (“we are in a conflict between good and evil . . . and we will lead the world in opposing it”), the Bush doctrine also repudiates dialogue and negotiations.
As Falk puts it: If [in Bush and company’s world view] “there can be no acceptable compromise with evil (e.g., with the ‘axis of evil’), there can be no reasonable restraint on the forces of good (i.e., the United States).” From the perspective of the Bush doctrine, neither the will of any country nor that of the entire United Nations membership would constitute “reasonable restraint.”
(TODAY/ABS-CBNNEWS.COM, October 8, 2002)