|
CounterPunch
February
15, 2003
Irrelevance and Credibility
The
Bush Administration, the United Nations, and NATO
By Col. DAN SMITH
(US Army, Retired)
Relevance--or rather its opposite, irrelevance--seems
to be one of the many mantras of the Bush administration with
respect to the United Nations.
President Bush declaimed on the subject
in his September 12, 2002 address to the UN General Assembly:
"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority
of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered
a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance. The entire
world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and
defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored
and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United
Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"
Most recently, on February 9, 2003, at
a congressional Republican Party policy forum, he reiterated
the theme: "It's a moment of truth for the United Nations.
The United Nations gets to decide shortly whether or not it is
going to be relevant in terms of keeping the peace, whether or
not its words mean anything."
As part of these rhetorical assaults
on the UN, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (among others)
has tried to draw a parallel between the League of Nations and
the United Nations. Rumsfeld's comparison, however, is faulty.
He notes, accurately, that the League's irrelevancy was exposed--and
its demise assured--when it failed to respond meaningfully to
Emperor Haile Selassie's plea for help when Italy invaded Abyssinia
(Ethiopia) in 1935.
But Rumsfeld misses the mark by equating
the League of 1935 with the UN of 2003. A more apt comparison
is the UN in 1990, just after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then the UN,
through the Security Council (for which no equivalent existed
in the League) did act by endorsing the <U.S.-led> coalition
of 35 countries that reversed Iraq's aggression in 43 days. And
he misses the mark this time by assuming that military force
is the only (or only remaining) option open to the UN.
But the UN is not the only organization
incurring U.S. wrath for not toeing Washington's line. It seems
that the venerable North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
also is on the road to irrelevancy. At a high-level meeting the
weekend of February 8-9, three "old Europe" countries
blocked NATO approval to initiate planning to help Turkey defend
itself from attack should a <U.S.-led> war against Iraq
begin. The essential argument reportedly made by the three--Belgium,
France, and Germany--is that approval of the U.S. proposal would
signal that the alliance had given up on peaceful means of resolving
the Iraq question before all options had been tried and exhausted.
Even this refusal to go along with the
U.S. is nuanced by a willingness to send Turkey, "unofficially,"
Patriot air defense missiles to counter possible Iraqi Scuds.
The distinction being drawn is that an "unofficial"
move would not put the alliance "on record" as having
taken what opponents see as the first political step on the road
to war.
The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Nicolas
Burns, responded to "old Europe" for the administration:
"This is a most unfortunate decision. Because of their actions,
NATO is now facing a crisis of credibility" (Washington
Post, February 10).
A crisis there is, but it is one whose
origin lies in the intense U.S. war rhetoric and massive war
preparations. Unlike 1991, Iraq has not invaded or threatened
any foreign country. The northern part of Iraq, which abuts Turkey
along a 250-mile border, is not controlled by Baghdad but by
two <U.S.-backed> Kurdish factions. Yes, if Turkey were
to be attacked or determined that an attack were imminent, NATO
nations would be obliged to consult on coming to Turkey's defense.
But as events are now unfolding, it is not Turkey that is in
imminent danger of being attacked first, but Iraq. And Washington's
pressure on Ankara to allow from 20,000 to 80,000 U.S. troops
to move through Turkish territory to establish a second military
front against Iraq's army only exacerbates the situation. Undoubtedly,
Iraq will try counter-military action against these troops--and
therefore Turkey will be involved.
Considering recent events, the credibility
and relevance of the U.S. position, not the UN's or NATO's, seems
more questionable. For example, during his February 5th presentation
to the Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell made
three statements that bear out this assessment.
"[W]e are providing all relevant
information we can to the inspection teams for them to do their
work." Why did the U.S. wait so long, considering the inspections
resumed in November 2002? "I would call my colleagues' attention
to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday,
which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."
That document has been discredited as a current intelligence
picture of Iraq's activities. In fact the purported "authors"
of the document, itself a clumsy compilation of three publicly
available articles, work in the <U.S.-UK> "Coalition
Information Office," which is little more than a "spin
the news" operation. "Iraq has now placed itself in
danger of the serious consequences called for in UN Resolution
1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if
it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding
effectively and immediately." Yes, the UN must respond effectively
and immediately, and it ought to do so by creative measures such
as those recently proposed by Germany and France--move ahead
with U-2 and other reconnaissance flights, triple the number
of inspectors, open more field offices, etc.
And then there is a question about the
credibility of a <U.S.-led> "coalition of the willing."
Why are so many countries in the region unwilling to throw their
support behind the White House? Why are so many outside the area
so willing to join? Instead of a coalition convinced of the truth
of its principles, there is a lingering suspicion that what is
emerging is a coalition of energy-dependent countries who need
cheap petroleum, countries (new members and candidate members
of NATO) that feel they must prove their bona fides, and even
a few countries who exacted a quid pro quo from Washington for
signing on.
Can such an amalgamation, based largely
on narrow national interests rather than principle, be credible
and relevant in the longer-term for world peace and the mitigation
of human suffering?
Dan Smith
is a military affairs analyst for Foreign
Policy In Focus is a retired U.S. army colonel and Senior
Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National
Legislation. He can be reached at: dan@fcnl.org
Yesterday's
Features
CounterPunch News Service
Slow
Lerner: It May Not Help Kids in Iraq, But It Sure Got Michael
Lerner Airtime
Andrew Murray
Tony
Blair Versus the British People
Ben Tripp
President
A**hole
Peggy Thomson
My
Close Encounter with Saddam
Gary Leupp
Meet Mr. Blowback:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, CIA Op and Homicidal Thug
Saul Landau
Bush and Corporate Fraud
Adam Engel
A Civilian Occupation:
The Politics of Israeli Architecture
Anthony Gancarski
Jacksonville in Crisis
Rick Giombetti
Specific Threats to Democracy
Jean-David Levitte
A Warning on Iraq from France:
Make War the Last Option
Ian Gurney
Whose Side is Bush On?
Maria Engqvist
Did
the FARC Shoot Down a US Military Plane in Colombia?
Ron Jacobs
This Madness Must Cease
Josh Frank
Call to Washington:
Stonewall Bush
Website of the Day
Rock
Out Against War
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
February 8
/ 9, 2003
Bill Christison
The
US Gameplan for Iraq
Intelligence Officers for
Sanity
Memo to Bush on Iraq
Olive Lowell
Homeland Insecurity
Champaign-Urbana Shaken by New INS Rules
Michael Neumann
Nonviolence: Its Histories and
Myths
Alison Weir
A Thousand Professors
David Krieger
On the Brink of War
Muqtedar Khan
The Logic of the Hawks
Anthony Gancarski
Pakistan on the Brink?
Jason Leopold
GAO Surrenders to Cheney
Anis Shivani
A Post-Liberal Theory of Consciousness for the Starbucks Habitué
David Vest
Dive Bomber
Norman Madarasz
The New Brazilian Cinema
Poets' Basement
Handleman, Smith, Engel
Website of the Weekend
Cities for Peace
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|