Media Guide: How To View The United Nations
by Norman
Solomon
Dissident Voice
October 4, 2002
News coverage of the United Nations gets confusing sometimes.
Is the U.N. a vital institution or a dysfunctional relic? Are its Security
Council resolutions profoundly important for international relations -- or
beside the point because global leadership must now come from the world's only
superpower?
These days, we keep hearing that the United States will
need to launch a full-scale attack on Iraq because Saddam Hussein has violated
U.N. Security Council resolutions -- at the same time that we're told the U.S.
government must reserve the right to take military action unilaterally if the
Security Council fails to make appropriate decisions about Iraq.
To clarify the situation, here are three basic guidelines
for understanding how to think in sync with America's leading politicians and
pundits:
* The U.N.
resolutions approved by the five permanent members of the Security Council are
hugely important, and worthy of enforcement with massive military force, if the
White House says so. Otherwise, the resolutions have little or no significance,
and they certainly can't be allowed to interfere with the flow of American
economic, military and diplomatic support to any of Washington's allies.
Today, several countries are continuing to ignore large
numbers of resolutions approved by the U.N. Security Council since the early
1990s. Morocco remains in violation of more than a dozen such resolutions. So
does Israel. And Turkey continues to violate quite a few. But top officials in
Rabat, Jerusalem and Ankara aren't expecting ultimatums from Washington anytime
soon.
* Some U.N.
resolutions are sacred. Others are superfluous.
To cut through the media blather about Security Council
resolutions that have been approved in past years, just keep this in mind: In
the world according to American news media, the president of the United States
has Midas-like powers in relation to those U.N. resolutions. When he confers
his holy touch upon one, it turns into a golden rule that must be enforced.
When he chooses not to bless other U.N. resolutions, they have no value.
* The United
Nations can be extremely "relevant" or "irrelevant,"
depending on the circumstances.
When the U.N. serves as a useful instrument of U.S. foreign
policy, it is a vital world body taking responsibility for the future and
reaffirming its transcendent institutional vision. When the U.N. balks at
serving as a useful instrument of U.S. foreign policy, its irrelevance is so
obvious that it risks collapsing into the dustbin of history while the USA
proceeds to stride the globe like the superpower colossus that it truly is.
"There's a lot of lofty rhetoric here in Washington
about the U.N.," says Erik Leaver of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Pretty words now function as window-dressing for imminent war-making. While the
president claims the right to violently enforce U.N. Security Council
resolutions, Leaver adds, "there are almost 100 current Security Council
resolutions that are being ignored, in addition to the 12 or so resolutions
that Iraq is ignoring. What the U.S. is saying here is that it has the right to
determine which Security Council resolutions are relevant and which are
not."
Leaver, a researcher with the Foreign Policy In Focus
project (www.fpif.org), is outside the usual media box when he brings up a key
question: "If the U.S. takes military action using the cover of the United
Nations, what is to prevent other countries from launching their own military
attacks in the name of enforcement of U.N. resolutions -- against Turkey in
Cyprus, or Morocco in Western Sahara, or Israel in Palestine? This is precisely
the reason why the doctrine of pre-emptive force is a dangerous policy for the
United States to pursue."
When Leaver maintains that "we can't uphold the U.N.
at one moment and then discard it the next," he's up against powerful
media spin that hails such hypocrisy as a mark of great American leadership on
the world stage.
During an Oct. 2 news conference, White House press
secretary Ari Fleischer didn't miss a beat when he tried to explain how the
United States could justify blocking implementation of the most recent Security
Council resolution about U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq. Fleischer said that
the U.S. government's task could be accomplished with "logic" and
"diplomacy."
From the vantage point of Washington's reigning politicians
and most of the journalists who cover them, it's quite proper to treat the
United Nations as a tool for U.S. diplomacy -- war by another means, useful
till it's time for the bloody real thing.
Norman
Solomon's latest book is The Habits of Highly
Deceptive Media. His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
Email: mediabeat@igc.org