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The Authority of the U.N.United Nations Security Council Resolutions 678, 687, 1154, and 1441 give any member state the authority to use military action to disarm Iraq. 678 “authorizes Member States...to use all necessary means to uphold and implement...all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area,” and 687 acknowledges “the importance of achieving [disarmament] using all available means.” The more recent resolutions are no less clear. 1154 “stresses that compliance by the Government of Iraq with its obligations...is necessary for the implementation of resolution 687 (1991), but that any violation would have severest consequences for Iraq.” The much touted 1441 does not explicitly call for anything besides “serious consequences,” but it does recall all of the Council’s “previous relevant resolutions,” including 687, which it recalls “declared that a ceasefire would be based on acceptance by Iraq of the provisions of that resolution, including the obligations on Iraq contained therein.” 1441 also remains “seized of the matter” in terms of the “threat to international peace and security” posed by Iraq and the necessity of her disarmament. [1]Currently, there is no U.N. resolution making military action in Iraq illegal, even though France considered drafting one such resolution and then decided against it. In a March 5 declaration, Russia, Germany, and France announced that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorise [sic] the use of force.” [2] However, the “second” resolution offered by the United States, Great Britain, and Spain was designed to make it abundantly clear that Iraq “has failed to take the final opportunity afforded it in resolution 1441 (2002)” [3]. This draft resolution was never voted on, due to the active opposition of Germany, Russia, China, and especially France. If France had truly wanted to hinder the U.S. effort, she would have said nothing until a vote was called for and then vetoed the proposal. In that scenario, the U.S. would have had to break international law in order to launch an invasion on Iraq. However, by announcing very publicly that she would veto the draft resolution, France gave the U.S. the opportunity to withdrawal the draft resolution without incurring any legal problem over an invasion. In addition to that, by saying, “no matter what the circumstances, France will vote ‘no’,” Jacques Chirac effectively forced the United States into a diplomatic endgame [4]. In other words, he helped to create what he claimed to be avoiding. The threat of force was an integral component of Iraq’s cooperation, so, by announcing that France would take that threat away if the U.S. wanted to live up to it, he effectively halted the progress of UNMOVIC and the IAEA and destroyed any chance of continued Iraqi cooperation with the U.N. At that point, the United States had two choices: (1) live up to her promise to use force, or (2) fail to do so and prove to the world that the threats of the United States are not always genuine. Naturally, the United States chose to invade Iraq, claiming that it was not acting in defiance of the United Nations, and she was correct in that claim, because, according to passed U.N. resolutions, an invasion of Iraq is not only permitted but appropriate. Nobody who signed Resolution 1441 believed that “severe consequences” meant endless inspections. The United States is not defying the will of the United Nations by invading Iraq. It is, in fact, doing precisely what is called for under U.N. mandate. By claiming that this action is illegal, despite the failure of any resolution to make it so, by passage or lack of passage, certain nations against this war, such as Turkey [5], are the ones opposing the will of the Security Council. However, even if he is acting within the mandates of the U.N., the President of the United States answers to the people of his country first. We do not place the U.N. so high that it has authority over our own sovereignty. In a world where you are the lone superpower, it is unwise to hand over your legal rights to a collection of nations that do not live by the same principles that you do. This invites a diplomatic knife in the back, especially from a body that chooses Najat Al-Hajjaji of Libya to chair its Commission on Human Rights and Iraq to lead its Disarmament Committee [6, 7]. Even without the active support of this country, though, the U.N. is not illegitimate, but it is pretty damned close to becoming so. Unless it actively does something to enforce its mandates against countries that defy its will (such as Israel, North Korea, Iran, etc.), it will have no real power. History has taught us that no nation or body can have the kind of political power to affect great change without serious might to back it up; no conflict has ever been solved without, at the very least, the real threat of military action. For example, does anybody honestly believe that Iraq would have allowed weapons inspectors back into her country without the U.S. threatening the use of force if her leaders declined? The U.N. had over twelve years to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the situation in Iraq, and, as clearly evidenced by the billowing towers of smoke currently hanging over oil fields, battlefields, and cities, failed to find one. Hans Blix’s written report of March 6, 2003, makes it abundantly clear that, while eight total years of inspections have accomplished effective disarmament on different fronts, there are over 29 detailed “clusters” of prohibited munitions, biological and chemical weapons, and instruments for their creation that inspections have been unable to account for or disarm. The report also acknowledges the wealth of intelligence that “several governments have provided” regarding underground and mobile facilities that would be nearly impossible for inspections to find without additional dynamic and intrusive authority. [8] Indeed, it is hard to argue that any amount of information gathered by U.N. inspections regarding disarmament would alleviate every fear that prohibited weapons remain in a country that has been as historically evasive and deceptive as Iraq. Also, the alleged use of these inspections for espionage has given them an air of illegitimacy. Inspections are, inherently and in practice, ineffective and unreliable. The U.N.’s other solution to the Iraqi conflict, broad economic sanctioning, has done nothing to bankrupt the leadership of the country or cause an effective backlash of Iraqi citizens seeking a new government. All sanctions have done is harm the people they are supposed to help and proven that, in oppressive regimes where dictators do not care about the plight of their civilians, sanctions can be a great excuse for hatred directed towards the West. [9] After twelve years, the U.N. remains impotent and incompetent when it comes to following through with its repeatedly stated determination to disarm Saddam Hussein. In addition, the allegations of corruption and selfish motives directed at all of the member states are hard to deny. It is still shocking to me how many people, from protestors in the street to diplomats and statesmen like Nelson Mandela, are willing to entertain the theory that the United States is engaging in this effort because of a vested interest in Iraqi oil. America, however, is not the only country with her reputation being smeared by international politics. It is a fact that the two countries that buy the most Iraqi oil under the oil-for-food program (and thus have the most to lose economically from a war on Iraq, aside from the U.S. and Iraq) are France and Russia. Now, according to the accusations of USA In Review, France sold $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq last year and Russia, since 1996, has sales exceeding $4 billion. USA in Review also notes that French oil firms hold contracts with Iraq’s government at over $60 billion for oil exploration and development, and that all of these contracts become null and void in the event of a power shift in Iraq; the nations holding such contracts stand to lose billions of dollars. [10] In addition, there are accusations that China, while lobbying to lift economic sanctions on Iraq, was selling certain munitions to the Baath party, through illegal transactions with slippery export companies in France [12]. Therefore, the U.N. is unable to prevent corruption--or, at least, accusations of corruption--within its ranks and does nothing to stop countries from exerting their will, for the better or for the worse, upon other nations. The U.N., in the final analysis, does nothing to change the brutal dynamics of international politics. The Iraq situation is no different. By failing to take effective action to prevent Iraq from continuing illegal activity and brutal crimes against humanity and by failing to give either clear-cut support or legal opposition for a military strike against the Baath party, the U.N. has accomplished exactly nothing for twelve and a half years except, of course, for twelve and a half years of continued and meaningless civilian suffering inside of Iraq. (This list does not represent the sum total of my research on this subject) -e. magill, 03/22/2003 |
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