Suppose there is a sequel to UN Resolution 1441 authorizing use of force against Iraq and France, a permanent member of the Security Council, vetoes the resolution and Germany, non-permanent member, opposes it, what would happen?
If you listen to the dire warnings issued in Washington and London, the UN will go the way of the League of Nations and the whole world would collapse into Somalia-like chaos.
Of all the arguments put forward by the bomb-Baghdad brigade to get the UN on board, the most absurd is the parallel with the League of Nations. According to this argument, Iraq is now shaping up for the UN’s credibility as the 1930s Manchurian crisis did for the League of Nations. This would give the impression that the League of Nations failed in its mission and had to fold up because it was not able or unwilling to give a dubious legal cover for Japanese (read American) invasion of Manchuria (read Iraq) in 1931. Of course there can be “new history” as there is a “new Europe.”
Even the concern for UN “authority” expressed by President George Bush and his allies in the UK strains one’s credibility. Both US and UK have all along been threatening that they would invade Iraq “with or without UN backing”. Long before Resolution 1441 was passed, there was the claim that Resolution 678 (demanding Iraqi disarmament and passed in the wake of the first Gulf War) was all-encompassing in its sweep giving wide powers to the US and UK (not to the UN) to pounce on Iraq any time they wanted and in any way they chose.
The same Britain Tuesday accused France and Germany of “undermining” the United Nations. How? They are pursuing their own plan “to avoid a war” in Iraq. Could there be a more flagrant challenge to the authority of the UN and the post-1945 international order?
As the irony would have it, Britain fears that the joint initiative by French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to give arms inspectors more time could persuade the United States to abandon the “UN route” and take unilateral action against Iraq. In short, Washington’s magnanimity to “go down the UN route” is clearly on the understanding that the UN would “go down the US route” in everything. Maybe the US wants the UN to be a roaring lion when it comes to Iraq and a church mouse when it comes to Israel. A survey of nearly 1,500 resolutions passed by the UN Security Council reveals that more than 90 are violated by countries other than Iraq. Israel tops the list of defaulters. There are more than 60 UN resolutions on Israel and none of them has been implemented and no damage seems to have been done to the UN authority or prestige. Can it be that representatives of some 50 countries met in San Francisco and adopted the draft charter on June 26, 1945 to establish an organization with the sole purpose of subjecting Iraq, some five decades later, to unprecedented infringements of traditional concepts of national honor and sovereignty?
So much for the US respect for international law and UN credibility. Now there is some unsolicited concern for the prestige and authority of France and Germany too. If Paris and Berlin continue to oppose US moves and plans on Iraq, the argument runs, they will be marginalizing themselves and reducing their capacity to play any “meaningful role” on the world stage. The question is what price this role if its only purpose is to back the US even when it acts illegally and in defiance of world opinion.
