[Mb-civic] Guarding the Guardians of Peace

[Michael Butler]

    Guarding the Guardians of Peace
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

     Friday 17 December 2004

     In 1945, the United Nations Conference in San Francisco gave birth to
the United Nations Organization. In the wake of two world wars that claimed
55 million lives, the U.N. Charter pledged to "save succeeding generations
from the scourge of war."

     The Charter allows a member state to use armed force in only two
instances: 1) in self-defense, or 2) when the Security Council determines
force is necessary to meet "any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or
act of aggression."

     President Harry Truman said, "No one nation, no regional group, can, or
should expect, any special privilege which harms any other nation."
Referring to World War II, Truman observed, "Out of this conflict have come
powerful military nations, now fully trained and equipped for war. But," he
proclaimed, "they have no right to dominate the world."

     Although heralded as a product of consensus of the nations of the
world, the Charter was conceived and drafted by the United States, and
ultimately, reflected the agenda of the victorious military powers after
World War II.

     Most significantly, they insisted on the veto power for themselves, the
five permanent members of the Security Council - Great Britain, the Soviet
Union, China, France and the United States, notwithstanding opposition from
the smaller nations. Without that veto power, they would not likely have
signed on to the U.N. Charter.

     The veto power reserved for Security Council members has hobbled the
U.N. for decades. At the behest of the veto-bearing United States, the U.N.
sat on the sidelines during the genocide in Rwanda, when 800,000 people were
slaughtered.

     Also at the urging of the U.S., the Security Council put its imprimatur
on the imposition of economic sanctions on Iraq, which were responsible for
the deaths of one million Iraqis, mostly children, during the 1990s. The
Council didn't condemn the "no-fly-zones" over Iraq, which it never
sanctioned, and which were used by the U.S. and U.K. to bombard Iraq on
nearly a daily basis in the years leading up to "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

     The Security Council never condoned the recent U.S.-U.K. wars on
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. But, because of pressure and the
threatened veto by the United States, the Council never condemned them
either. The attack on Yugoslavia was justified as "humanitarian
intervention," in spite of "ethnic cleansing" by both sides in that
conflict. And, the Bush administration rationalized the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq as self-defense, even though neither country ever posed
an imminent threat to the United States.

     In 1995, in a moment of candor, then Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine
Albright declared, "the U.N. is a tool of American foreign policy." Indeed,
before its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration frequently
threatened the United Nations with becoming "irrelevant" if it did not give
its blessing to the war.

     But even in the face of threats, the Security Council refused to
approve Bush's war on Iraq. Bush then cobbled together prior Council
resolutions, none of which, individually or collectively, authorized the use
of force in Iraq. Although he claimed to be enforcing Security Council
resolutions, the Charter empowers only the Council to enforce its
resolutions.

     After the invasion, however, the Security Council capitulated to
pressure from the United States, and authorized the U.S.-U.K. as the
occupying authority in Iraq, giving the occupiers an international mandate
to maintain troops in Iraq while a new government is established.

     Recently, the United Nations has found its backbone and challenged U.S.
policy. In September, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, somewhat belatedly,
called the war on Iraq "illegal." And he sent Bush a letter counseling
against the recent attack on Fallujah.

     This prompted some Republican members of the House of Representatives
to call for Annan's resignation. The ostensible reason: corruption in the
administration of Iraq's Oil for Food Programme from 1996 to 2003. "It's
payback time for the U.N.," a Bush administration official told the Los
Angeles Times, on condition of anonymity. "The bills are coming due for the
U.N.'s noncooperation on Iraq, and the oil-for-food scandal is red meat for
the U.N.'s critics."

     But the oil-for-food excuse was a red herring. The Oil for Food
Programme was created by a vote of the Security Council. Through it, Iraq
sold about $65 billion worth of oil to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi
people, to soften the harsh impact of the sanctions imposed to keep Saddam
Hussein from rearming after the 1991 Gulf War.

     The programme was micromanaged by the Council, particularly the United
States. The U.S. scrutinized every purchase, holding up contracts for
months, or even years. However, when overland oil was illegally smuggled to
Jordan and Turkey, two favored U.S. allies, the United States quietly closed
its eyes, according to the report of Charles Duelfer, the top U.S.
investigator in Iraq.

     ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil have been subpoenaed by the Securities and
Exchange Commission to determine whether they paid kickbacks or bribes to
unlawfully profit from Iraq's oil under the programme.

     Morever, earlier this week, an audit board set up by the Security
Council to monitor oil sales in Iraq during the 15 months the U.S.-led
occupation authority recently ran Iraq found widespread mismanagement,
faulty metering to keep track of how much oil was pumped from Iraq's oil
fields, and noncompetitive bidding procedures that awarded more than $10
billion in contracts to Halliburton's subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root.

     When Republicans began gunning for Annan's neck, former South African
president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the campaign
against Annan "reprehensible and unjust," saying it reflected American
arrogance. They wrote, in an open letter: "Those who call for his
resignation betray the objectivity his position as secretary general demands
and regard the United Nations as a mouthpiece to extol and exonerate the
policies of the United States of America, right or wrong."

     The same day, the Bush administration, mindful that it needs Kofi
Annan's cooperation to pull off the Iraqi elections slated for the end of
January, called off its dogs. "We are expressing confidence in the secretary
general and in his continuing in office," said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
John Danforth.

     One week earlier, a blue ribbon panel of international experts Annan
appointed a year ago to study the structure of the U.N. in the wake of the
war on Iraq, issued a 99-page report. The panel determined there is no
reason to amend the U.N. Charter's self-defense provision. Any arguments for
the use of force must be addressed to the Security Council, as required by
the Charter, the report says. In a rebuff to Bush's doctrine of preemptive
war, the panel wrote: "For those impatient with such a response, the answer
must be that, in a world full of perceived potential threats, the risk to
the global order and the norm of nonintervention on which it continues to be
based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action,
as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted. Allowing one
to so act is to allow all."

     The report also notably identified poverty, despair, humiliation,
political oppression, foreign occupation, extremism, and human rights abuse
as the breeding ground for terrorism. It advocated nuclear disarmament by
all countries, not simply the developing nations. And the report argued that
all U.N. member states should ratify the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court.

     Nevertheless, last week, Bush signed into law the Nethercutt Amendment,
which mandates withholding aid from countries that refuse to grant immunity
for U.S. citizens before the International Criminal Court. "As revelations
of abuses continue," said Richard Dicker, director of the International
Justice program of Human Rights Watch, "U.S. insistence on immunity strikes
a particularly raw nerve." Dicker maintained, "The United States is bullying
smaller, weaker countries because of an ideological obsession with an
illusory threat. It's putting its ill-conceived campaign ahead of other
interests the U.S. government claims are its highest priorities."

     George W. Bush has consistently challenged the legitimacy of the United
Nations, manipulating the Security Council when it suits his purpose,
attacking it when it doesn't. It remains to be seen how well the only
organization charged with the maintenance of international peace and
security, and the protection of human rights, will fare during Bush's second
term.

  

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