The U.n Under Threat By Bush

[Dil_he_Pakistani]

*The integrity of the U.N. is being challenged by U.S. efforts, which if successful would strengthen the view that the U.S. can manipulate the Security Council at will. *

The U.N. under threat by Bush VANTAGE POINT By LUIS TEODORO

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Opinion&OID=5240 Part A

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.

[Dil_he_Pakistani]

Part B The U.N. under threat by Bush VANTAGE POINT By LUIS TEODORO

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 basis 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.”

[5Abi]

After yesterday's speech by Bush, the new doctrine for US is "Wage first-strike war to achieve peace".

He has previously unleashed the phrase "axis of evil," referring not to Al Qaeda or the Taliban but to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Then came his speech at West Point to future GI Joes in June in which he called for "preemptive action" against potential enemies.

The stock market goes down when Bush talks about war, even as oil prices rise. The Russians have been making noises that they wish to apply the doctrine to neighboring Georgia. And speculation abounds that others--China, India, Israel--will use the Bush precedent to settle their own scores.

What else is new?

[5Abi]

More on hypocricy.

**(U.N. Resolutions Frequently Violated) **

Iraq is not alone in its breaches. Israel and Turkey, among other countries, have failed to comply with the world body’s stipulations

By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer

UNITED NATIONS – When President Bush chastises the U.N. for letting Iraq violate 16 Security Council resolutions, what he doesn’t mention is that Iraq is not alone. Nearly 100 U.N. resolutions are being violated by other countries, and in many cases, a recent study notes, enforcement is being blocked by the United States or its allies.

The consistent breaches highlight the essential conundrum of the United Nations: The world body has the power to pass resolutions but not always the power to enforce them – creating sometimes catastrophic situations and, as Bush has charged, eroding its own relevance.

In a review of five decades of U.N. resolutions, University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes identifies at least 91 resolutions that clearly are being violated in addition to the Iraq violations. His analysis suggests that the degree of compliance depends on the influence of each state and its backers.

Israel, by Zunes’ count, is in violation of 31 resolutions. The violations stem from its refusal to accept the U.N.'s land-for-peace formula put forward in 1967 and its defiance of a dozen later resolutions demanding that it cease violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention for Occupying Powers, such as deportations, demolitions of homes and seizure of property.

**Resolution 487, passed in 1981, has particular resonance in the debate over Iraq’s disarmament because it calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency.

The discrepancy is not lost on Iraq. In a speech Wednesday to the Security Council, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammed Douri pointed out that by Iraq’s reckoning, Israel has refused to implement 28 resolutions, but the U.S. is not talking about invading Israel.

The U.S., one of five veto-holding members of the Security Council – along with Britain, France, China and Russia – has used its veto more than 40 times to block additional resolutions on Israel.

In second place is Turkey, with 23 breaches following a resolution in 1974 calling for it to withdraw its troops from Cyprus. When Turkey – a member of NATO and key U.S. ally – did not comply, the Security Council reiterated its demand 11 more times over a decade.

In 1996, the Security Council demanded that Turkey at least reduce its troops and military spending in Cyprus, and repeated that demand eight more times through 2001.**

Morocco has 18 violations, following demands in 1975 that it withdraw its occupation forces from Western Sahara and in 1991 that it allow a referendum for Western Saharans on self-determination.

While some resolutions create legally binding obligations under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which allows military enforcement, others function more like formal recommendations that have no teeth but carry political weight.

“Despite the failures to follow them, the Security Council’s decisions do matter,” said Robert Rosenstock, former legal counsel for the U.S. mission at the U.N. “Even if the resolution is not legally binding, there is a political price to be paid for violating it.”

But the fact that, in most cases, all the U.N. can do is repeat itself shows the inherent weakness of the world organization: There is often not enough resolve behind its resolutions.

“This has been the dilemma for the U.N.: It has the legal authority, but not always the means to follow up its decisions,” said Edward Luck, director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University. “It’s a rare case that they do.”

Although the U.N. Charter authorizes military action for enforcement of Chapter 7 resolutions, there is no formal agreement about how force should be used. Each time the Security Council deems military action necessary, its member states must decide the details among themselves – an often time-consuming process, with varying degrees of commitment.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a 1995 resolution creating U.N.-protected “safe havens” for Bosnian Muslims turned into a catastrophe. A safe haven at Srebrenica became a death trap when Bosnian Serbs overcame the understaffed Dutch U.N. peacekeepers and massacred thousands of Bosnian Muslims seeking asylum there.

Despite periodic attempts to guarantee strong enforcement with a quick-reaction force made up from member nations’ troops, the U.S. has been quick to squelch such efforts.

“Neither the U.S. nor other countries have been willing to allow international command of their forces,” Luck said. “The last thing the U.S. wants is an independent U.N. throwing its weight around.”

Although Bush has castigated the U.N. for its apparent weakness, historically the United States has not wanted the U.N. to become too powerful.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the 1970s, wrote in his memoirs: “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success.”

**In the current debate over passing another resolution on Iraq, the U.S. is asking the U.N. to “prove its relevance” and back a possible military strike to ensure Iraq’s disarmament, an effort Luck calls “a la carte multilateralism.” In other words, he says, the U.S. wants the U.N. to be effective, as long as it is serving the U.S. agenda.

“They aren’t going to allow the organization to dictate things inconsistent with the objectives of U.S. leadership,” Luck said. **