War, peace and the UN fig leaf

War, peace and the UN fig leaf

By Tariq Ali

The million people who protested at the European Social Forum last year 
against the planned Anglo-American war in Iraq were not merely asserting 
the presence of a Europe that refuses to bow before banker, speculator 
or arms merchant. Their size and presence marked an important turning 
point in European politics.

The emergence of a mass anti-war movement shows a complete distrust of 
official politics, even though in Germany the overwhelming opposition to 
the war (opinion polls suggest 70 per cent of the population) forced the 
Social Democrats to come out against the war in order to win the general 
election. After 11 September, The Financial Times crowed that the terror 
attacks on New York would finish off the anti-capitalist movement. No 
such luck, gents. The opposite has happened.

The anti-capitalist movement has become the largest stream to swell the 
tide of protest against the planned war. A new generation has realised 
that the politicians who preach neo-liberal economics at home are the 
same people who make wars abroad, and for the same interests. How could 
it be otherwise? In Britain, too, a small majority is opposed to the 
war. It is the first war situation since Suez in 1956 in which there 
have been more UK doves than hawks. Then the Labour Party and its leader 
Hugh Gaitskell came out against the invasion of Egypt. This time the 
anti-war movement confronts a virtually uniform House of Commons. Both 
front benches are united.

Unlike its German and Italian counterparts, however, the British peace 
movement has a soft underbelly. A war that is unjustifiable if waged by 
Bush and Blair alone becomes totally acceptable to a large majority 
(over 60 per cent) if sanctioned by the 'international community' - i.e. 
the UN Security Council.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Clare Short, for example, are opposed 
to unilateralist destruction of cities and civilian deaths, but if 
carried out multilaterally then all is well. Is it? This level of 
confusion raises a number of questions about the UN today. Who does it 
represent? Does it matter any more? Do its resolutions carry any weight 
if opposed by the US, as has repeatedly been the case with Palestine and 
Kashmir? And does membership of the Security Council reflect the 
realities of today's world? In the absence of a countervailing power 
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has been able to impose 
its model of economics, politics and culture on the world at large.

International organisations such as the UN and its ill-fated 
predecessor, the League of Nations, were created to institutionalise a 
new status quo, one arrived at after two bloody conflicts - the First 
and Second World Wars. Both organisations were founded on the basis of 
defending the right of nations to self-determination. In both cases 
their charters outlawed pre-emptive strikes and big-power attempts to 
occupy countries or change regimes. Both stressed that the nation state 
had replaced empires. The League of Nations was unable to resist 
Mussolini's imperial ambitions. The institution collapsed soon after the 
Italian fascists occupied Ethiopia.

The UN was created after the defeat of fascism. Its structures reflected 
the new order. Its charter expressly prohibits the violation of national 
sovereignty except in the case of 'self-defence'. However, despite the 
presence of the Soviet Union, the UN was unable to defend the newly 
independent Congo against Belgian and US intrigue in the 1960s or to 
save the life of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. And in 1950 the 
Security Council took advantage of a temporary Soviet boycott to 
authorise a US war in Korea.

Under the UN banner the Western armies deliberately destroyed dams, 
power stations and the infrastructure of social life in North Korea, 
plainly in breach of international law. The UN was also unable to stop 
the war in Vietnam. Its paralysis over the occupation of Palestine has 
been visible for over two decades.

This masterly inactivity was not restricted to Western abuses. The UN 
was unable to act against the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956) or the 
Warsaw Pact's entry into Czechoslovakia (1968). Both Big Powers were, in 
other words, allowed to get on with their business in clear breach of 
the UN charter.

But then there was one. In the uni-polar world of today, with the US as 
the dominant military-imperial state, the Security Council has become a 
venue for trading, not insults, but a share of the loot. The Italian 
theorist most feared by the fascists of the last century predicted this 
turn of events with amazing prescience. 'The "normal" exercise of 
hegemony,' wrote Antonio Gramsci, 'is characterised by the combination 
of force and consent, in variable equilibrium, without force 
predominating too much over consent'. There were, Gramsci elaborated, 
occasions when it was more appropriate to resort to a third variant of 
hegemony, because 'between consent and force stands corruption-fraud, 
that is the enervation and paralysing of the antagonist or antagonists'.

Here we have an exact description of the process used to buy French and 
Russian support at the UN as made clear by a remarkably straightforward 
front-page headline in The Financial Times (4 October, 2002): 'Putin 
drives hard bargain with US over Iraq's oil: Moscow wants high 
commercial price for its support'.

European allies shuffle their feet at excessive US 'unilateralism' - 
essentially, discomfiting failures to consult, which serve as a cover 
for European subordination. China and Russia bargain weakly in return 
for their favours in the Security Council. If these are not forthcoming, 
action is taken anyway. The UN offers no shelter to the weak against the 
soldiers of infinite justice or the bombs of enduring freedom. There are 
189 member states of the UN. There is, according to US Defense 
Department figures, a US military presence in 120 countries today. The 
United Nations of America? The UN has, in the past, created 
organisations such as Unesco and the World Health Organisation, the 
affects of which have benefited the world. But in these days of 
neo-liberal governance, it is an ethos of consumption, rather than 
well-meaning social-welfare organisations, that rules the roost.

The world has changed so much over the last two decades that the UN has 
become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures. 
The last secretary-general to be elected with only one vote against 
(from the US) was removed after he insisted that the Rwandan genocide 
needed intervention (US interests required a presence in the Balkans 
instead). Madeleine Albright, the US's then secretary of state, demanded 
and obtained the removal of the man who had dared challenge the imperial 
will - Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He was replaced by the current incumbent - 
Kofi Annan, a weak and pathetic placeman, whose sanctimonious speeches 
may sometimes deceive an innocent British public, but not himself. He 
knows who calls the shots. He knows who provides the song-sheet.

The League of Nations collapsed after the 'pre-emptive' strikes carried 
out by Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler used to argue that his invasions 
were provoked by the threatening attitudes of nations like Poland, 
Czechoslovakia, Norway, etc. Mussolini defended his invasion of Albania 
by arguing that he was removing the 'corrupt', feudal and oppressive 
regime of King Zog and newsreels showed grateful Albanians applauding 
the entry of Italian troops.

The actors have changed, but the script remains the same. And if the 
Security Council green lights the invasion and occupation of Iraq (as it 
is bound to do), then the UN, too, will die a long overdue death. In the 
meantime the anti-war movement must explain patiently why a UN-backed 
war would be as immoral and unjust as the one being plotted in the 
Pentagon. That is because it will be the same war, give or take a few of 
Chirac's mercenaries.