A Second Resolution
is Not Enough
by
Tariq Ali
Dissident Voice
February 21, 2003
A
massive majority in Britain is currently opposed to the war, but the anti-war
movement confronts a virtually uniform House of Commons. Both major parties are
united and Labour MPs incapable of mounting a parliamentary revolt to ditch
Blair, the only thing that could halt the drive to war. The British peace
movement, however, has a soft underbelly. A war that is unjustifiable if waged
by Bush and Blair alone becomes acceptable to some if sanctioned by the
"international community" - ie the UN Security Council. The
consciences of those opposed to the unilateralist bombing of cities and
civilian deaths are appeased if the weapons of destruction are fired with UN
support. This level of confusion raises questions about the UN today. Do its
resolutions carry any weight if opposed by the US, as has repeatedly been the
case with Palestine and Kashmir?
The UN and its predecessor,
the League of Nations, were created to institutionalize a new status quo
arrived at after the first and second world wars. Both organizations 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
collapsed soon after the Italian fascists occupied Ethiopia. Mussolini defended
his invasion of Albania and Abyssinia by arguing that he was removing the
"corrupt, feudal and oppressive regime" of King Zog/Haile Selassie and
Italian newsreels showed grateful Albanians applauding the entry of Italian
troops.
The UN was created after the
defeat of fascism. Its charter prohibits the violation of national sovereignty
except in the case of "self- defense". However, 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 authorized 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 three
decades.
This 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 allowed to get on with their business in clear
breach of the UN charter.
With the US as the only
military-imperial state, the Security Council today has become a venue for
trading, not insults, but a share of the loot. The Italian theorist Antonio
Gramsci predicted this turn of events with amazing prescience. "The
'normal' exercise of hegemony," he wrote, "is characterized by the
combination of force and consent, in variable equilibrium, without force
predominating too much over consent." There were, he added, 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 paralyzing of the antagonist or antagonists". This is an exact description
of the process used to negotiate Russian support at the UN as revealed in a
front-page headline in The Financial Times (October 4, 2002): "Putin
drives hard bargain with US over Iraq's oil: Moscow wants high commercial price
for its support."
The world has changed so
much over the last 20 years that the UN - the current deadlock notwithstanding
- has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures.
Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali was sacked on Madeline
Albright's insistence for challenging the imperial will: he had insisted that
it was the Rwandan genocide that needed intervention. US interests required a
presence in the Balkans. He was replaced by Kofi Annan, a weak placeman, whose
sanctimonious speeches may sometimes deceive an innocent British public, but
not himself. He knows who calls the shots.
As Mark Twain described it
in 1916: "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame
upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to
examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself
that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after
this process of grotesque self-deception."
If the security council
allows the invasion and occupation of Iraq either by a second resolution or by
accepting that the first was sufficient to justify war as a last resort, then
the UN, too, will die. It is necessary to insist that UN-backed war would be as
immoral and unjust as the one being plotted in the Pentagon - because it will
be the same war.
Tariq Ali is a critically acclaimed novelist and film-maker. His most recent
book is The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
(Verso, 2002). Email: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com. Posted with author’s permission.