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The United Nations

Many peace activists and progressives look to the United Nations as an arbiter of power and a force for good reigning in the US. But the reality is somewhat different

From its founding in 1946, real power in the United Nations (UN) was wielded by a cabal of the rich and powerful. Intended during the Cold War to arbitrate between the US, UK and their allies in the imperialist bloc and the post-capitalist nations led by the Soviet Union it has now become, in the unipolar world, a tool to implement the plans of the US, its UK client and their allies, full stop.

At the core of the UN is the Security Council, made up of the five permanent members: the US, UK, France, Russia and China. Anyone of these nations has the power to veto the decisions of the UN. Why? Because the US, UK and France were the three largest imperialist nations on the winning side of the World War II. Russia led the Soviet bloc and China, which joined in 1970, was the other major post capitalist nation.

The Security Council makes the decisions that form the basis for international law. Its members are not neutral, they do not act for the greater of good of humanity, their power is one of the spoils of war, their seat is a mark of their continuing economic or military power. Justice, peace, love and harmony don’t come into it, they never have and they never will.

International law is the law of the oppressors against the oppressed. They decide what it is and if and when it is implemented. Any casual examination of the UN’s record exposes its consistent failure and refusal to act in the interests of the poor and oppressed see Rwanda, Somalia, Srebrenica and Palestine.

But the UN as a cold war arbiter faces an acute problem in the new world order of globalisation and US hegemony. US hawks always questioned the value of the UN, even during the cold war. Paralysed by the contradiction at its core, between the imperialist and post-capitalist blocs, the UN was unable to act consistently in the interests of its most powerful member the US. Now freed from that contradiction, the US discovers that even the limited power of restraint, granted to its rivals through the structures of the UN and in particular the Security Council, are intolerable. Why should it let them tell it what to do?

In 1991 a UN coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait. They did so to make a point, that no nation could launch unauthorised invasions of its neighbours. Iraq had earlier offered to withdraw from Kuwait, if its withdrawal was part of general Middle East peace conference.

Following their victory the UN introduced the “most comprehensive” regime of sanctions in its history, to effectively disarm Saddam’s regime. Alongside these sanctions UNSCOM, the UN weapons inspectorate, was allowed unfettered access to Iraq in order to destroy its weapons of mass destruction its long range ballistic missiles, chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear programme.

The sanctions and weapons inspectorate were not designed to bring about Middle East peace. The UN’s fine words in its original resolution about disarming the whole region, which includes Israel, were quickly forgotten. They were there to demonstrate to the world who were the bosses in the new world order. The sanctions prevented the import of anything that could have what the UN regarded as a dual use, or be potentially used in a weapons programme.

The sanctions covered pencils, which contain graphite, cancer treating medicines and equipment, both a potential nuclear threat. UNSCOM was incredibly successful in its mission. It destroyed Saddam’s entire Scud missile force, barring two missiles unaccounted for; it blew up his nuclear programme and rendered useless his stocks of chemical and biological weapons. Even the British government’s own dossier Iraq’s Weapon’s of Mass Destruction concedes, “Between 1991 and 1998 UNSCOM succeeded in identifying and destroying very large quantities of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles as well as associated production facilities. The IAEA also destroyed the infrastructure for Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme and removed key nuclear materials.”

Dick Cheney, the US Vice President explained: “We don’t have all the evidence, we have 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent. We don’t know how much. We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he [Saddam] is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.”

Actually this reveals clearly that they don’t have the evidence and they don’t care, because that’s not what it’s all about.

So the UN has disarmed Iraq and served its function. Now it must do as the US wants or get out of the way. The US will settle for nothing less than a UN resolution framed to prevent Iraq meeting its demands whatever they do. At least they’re honest. As Condaleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser put it: “Let’s be very clear that the absence of resolutions is not the problem, nobody is going to negotiate anything with this regime.”

The US has used September 11 to free itself from the constraints of the post-war consensus upon which the UN was built the outlawing of pre-emptive, first strike, assaults attacks, or wars. The US is now committed to a new pre-emptive strike doctrine and the UN has to like it or lump it.

The demand for the return of the inspectors was always a chimera. The US never wanted it to happen. It was merely the pretext for a new war. As soon as Iraq agreed the unconditional acceptance of UN demands, the US refused them.

So who needs the UN now? Not the US who will accept its support as long as it does what it’s told. Not the workers and oppressed, the first victims in any conflict authorised by the UN.

No, the people who need it are those who want to maintain the fiction of the “international community” the reformists in the imperialist heartlands who need it as a cover when they call on the workers to support each and every bloodbath their rulers embark upon and the weaker imperialist states, fearful but powerless in the face of the US drive towards world domination. They may not be able to rely on this fiction for much longer.

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