Irrespective
of the UN
the U.S. is going to war
By
Jonathan
Power
September 20, 2002
LONDON - It was Dag Hammarskjold, the greatest of UN
secretary-generals, practitioner and contemplator in one,
who observed that the UN was not established to take
humanity to heaven but to save it from hell. He would
have been in his intellectual element wrestling with the
present situation. Is it better if the US does go to war
against Iraq that the UN approves it? It didn't do the UN
any good to be left on the shelf when the US and its main
European allies bypassed it and decided to bomb Belgrade
without a Security Council mandate. Or is it better that
the U.S. goes ahead without the approval of the UN? If
things go wrong with the war which well they might-
Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia told the
Financial Times on Tuesday that he despairs at a "racist"
war that could spark communal violence across the globe-
then the UN will at least be in a position to use its
diplomatic influence, its aid machinery and even its
peacekeeping forces to help quell these
eruptions.
It was one of Hammarskjold's appointees, the Irish
writer Conor Cruise O'Brien, who summed up the dilemma
that confronts the UN on these life and death occasions,
"The feeling that the thing feared may be averted, and
the thing hoped for won, by the solemn and collective use
of words. This prayer still converges on the UN -as on a
holy place- at times when, as in the Cuban missile crisis
of 1962, in the Middle Eastern crisis of the summer of
1967, the scourge of war seems once more about to
descend. It is the prayer that makes the drama
sacred."
Although not much remarked upon these days we went
through a similar crisis in March 1998. There was plenty
of talk of going to war and Secretary General Kofi Annan
rode off to Baghdad, to talk and talk and to pull Saddam
Hussein's sting. On his return he was treated like a hero
and his friends likened him to Hammarskjold. Well, he
brought four and a half year's of peace, which is not
bad. But what is worrying is that a re-read of the
debates of the time show that nothing has changed in
substance. It was exactly the same fear of weapons of
mass destruction that drove the U.S. to the brink of war
and it was the promises to Annan by Saddam to allow more
intrusive inspections that drove it back. But the
inference then was that if Saddam didn't deliver on his
part of the bargain that Annan would use his influence to
persuade the Security Council that it would have to vote
to support armed action. Professor Martin van Creveld of
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem made perhaps the
profoundest comment on the crisis: "Clinton's wrangling
with the UN Security Council and its emissary, Secretary
General Kofi Annan, brings to mind the way in which
medieval rulers once required the Pope's consent before
going to war. Now even the world's sole remaining
superpower finds it extraordinarily difficult to go to
war without obtaining the sanction of international law.
Thus the recent crisis may be remembered more as a
stepping stone towards delegitimizing war between
nations."
Remembering this, the French and the Saudis- with the
connivance of Secretary of State Colin Powell who seems
to have trumped Vice President Dick Cheney on the
going-to-the-UN issue- are perhaps walking the U.S. into
a trap. By acknowledging that they may change their own
position on the need for a war, but only as long as the
Security Council approves one, are they leading the
Americans into what O'Brien called "the solemn and
collective use of appropriate words" as a substitute for
war?
Probably not, because this time the U.S. appears
determined to go to war to depose Saddam, irrespective of
whether Iraq does allow in unfettered inspection and
whether it wins UN approval or not. Nevertheless,
Washington has consciously chosen to make things more
difficult for itself, which is a brave or foolish
position, depending upon the vantage point. On the other
hand, given Cheney's predilection for war, it is doubtful
if President George Bush would have sanctioned this
course if Powell hadn't been able to assure him that he
would go along with the larger American game plan if the
UN gambit- and it was never meant to be more than that-
failed.
Perspective on Saddam has evaporated before the
determination of the one and only superpower. One can say
that the invasion of Kuwait a decade ago was not the
Anschluss. An invasion of the Saudi oil fields would not
be the Sudetenland. The Republican Guard is not the 5th
Panzer division. The weapons of mass destruction that
Iraq possesses are primitive and are to be used only if
Saddam fears that he is going to be toppled by an
invading force. But all these arguments now seem to be
blowing away in the wind. The U.S. has decided to go to
war. The time for "the solemn and collective use of
appropriate words" is probably almost over.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
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"Like
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