Editorial

Can the United Nations Survive?

The United States has been escalating the pressure on the United Nations Security Council to adopt its resolution on Iraq, threatening to cut off access by Russia and France to Iraqi oil if they do not endorse it. The Americans have also implied that the $8 billion debt owed to Russia by Iraq will not be honoured by a post-Saddam government unless Russia capitulates. The Bush regime has also threatened that the UN will be reduced to irrelevancy if it does not endorse a U.S. war against Iraq. Given the U.S. record of withholding its dues to pressure the UN into line, this cannot be considered an idle threat. Moreover, the Bush Doctrine sets the U.S. on a course to become the imperial master of the entire globe; it neither needs nor wants the United Nations, even if that body has been reduced to an instrument of U.S. policy for most of its existence.

The irrelevancy of the United Nations will not result from its opposition to the American plans for war against Iraq. In reality, the UN has been reduced to irrelevancy by its consistent failure to stand up to American aggression and war.

It matters very little what resolution on Iraq the UN Security Council ultimately adopts, if any, or whether or not that resolution authorizes military force against Iraq. Since 1991, a number of UN Security Council resolutions have been adopted in relation to Iraq. None of them authorized the use of military force and in every case the vast majority of members of the Security Council specifically opposed any use of force. However, the United States arrogantly insisted that military force had been authorized by the Security Council and proceeded to use it. The repeated failure of the UN Security Council to defend its position meant that it tacitly accepted its own irrelevancy.

The essence of the American resolution being debated at the UN is the total surrender of all vestiges of national sovereignty by the Iraqi government. The resolution has been deliberately crafted in such a way as to make it totally unacceptable by any country to which it would be addressed. It is specifically designed to force Iraq to reject it. Then, despite the fact that 13 of the 15 members of the Security Council have rejected war, the Americans, as they have done in the past, will declare that they are going to war to enforce a UN resolution and the Security Council will do nothing to stop them. Meanwhile, despite the fact that Israel has thumbed its nose at four times as many UN resolutions as Iraq, including recent unanimous Security Council resolutions that it must withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, the U.S. has consistently frustrated all efforts of the United Nations to enforce those resolutions.

The United States has issued a challenge to the United Nations that it must reduce itself to the servile tool of the American Empire or cease to exist. However, the opposite is the case. Rejecting the American dictate and enforcing its own Charter is the only way for the United Nations to regain its legitimacy and its relevancy in today's world.