In Australia in the 1990s it is easy to live under the comfortable misconception that the world is at peace. In fact there are some 30 major wars, wars in which more than 1000 people have been killed, presently being fought in locations such as Bosnia Hercegovina, South Africa, Somalia and Palestine. Innocent people continue to die, the earth's ecology continues to be trampled and resources continue to be squandered on the instruments of war while millions are deprived of food, clothing, medicine, education and shelter. KAREN FREDERICKS looks at the role of the United Nations in the politics of war and peace.
The secretary general of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his 1992 document An Agenda for Peace, points out that since the creation of the United Nations in 1945 there have been more than 100 wars, in which more than 20 million people have died. But with the end of the Cold War, he says, a new era has dawned, in which the security arm of the United Nations, "... once disabled by circumstances it was not created or equipped to control, has emerged as a central instrument for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and the preservation of peace".
"We the peoples of the United Nations, determined ... to maintain peace ... defend human rights and ... promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom ... combine our efforts to accomplish these aims."
So opens the Charter of the United Nations. But how is it that the air raid on the Al-Amariah bomb shelter in Baghdad, which killed 1500 civilians on February 13, 1991, or the massacre of unarmed demonstrators and bystanders in Mogadishu on June 13, 1993, may be carried out under such a charter? Are these the acts of "peacekeepers"? Is this the will of the peoples of the world?
The United Nations was formed at the close of the second world war. The General Assembly, consisting of representatives of all member nations (there are now 184), was to be the forum for discussion and adoption of recommendations on issues affecting international
peace and security. It was not, however, given any power to enforce its decisions. This power was given to the Security Council.
The Security Council was constituted to reflect the international power relations, based on military strength, existing at the close of the war. The victors — the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain — gave themselves permanent membership of the council. Ten other positions were to be elected, for two-year terms, by the General Assembly.
Resolutions of the Security Council require unanimous support from the permanent members and at least nine votes of the council as a whole. Thus a "no" vote, or "veto", from any one of the five permanent members will defeat a resolution. This veto power in the hands of the five permanent members has been perhaps the most defining characteristic of the UN.
While the General Assembly, and other UN bodies such as the International Court of Justice, may investigate matters and make recommendations, only the Security Council can actually do anything.
Boutros-Ghali's reference to "disabling circumstances" is a allusion to the frequent use of the veto before the collapse of the Soviet Union. During that period the power was used 279 times. Since May 31, 1990, it has not been used even once. The UN has begun more new operations in the first three and a half years of this decade than it carried out in the entire previous 43 years.
At the General Assembly session in September 1991, a succession of Western heads of state and foreign ministers, including George Bush, extolled the UN's role in the new post-Cold War, post-Gulf War world order.
The replacement of the Soviet Union by the Russian Federation has removed the only brake on intervention by the North-dominated Security Council in the internal affairs of the countries of the South. While the conflict between East and West may be said to be a thing of the past, the conflict between North and
South becomes ever more explosive.
Prior to the 1990s the United Nations was known primarily for its declarations, recommendations and findings. Many, if not most, of the documents bearing the UN crest were thoroughly researched, fair and consistent with the spirit of the organisation's charter of international peace and justice. Their main flaw was that they were merely pieces of paper, unable to be acted upon without the say-so of the Security Council.
Thus the General Assembly condemned Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon and the US invasions of Panama and Grenada. The International Court of Justice found that the US had acted illegally in waging a secret war against Nicaragua and that the South African government had committed hideous crimes against its own people. But their conclusions came to nought in the real world. The composition of the council ensured that Israel, South Africa and the US were immune from any kind of enforcement action.
They were free to ignore the UN, and that is what they did. The President of Iran expressed the views of many when he declared before the General Assembly in 1987 that the UN is only "a paper factory for issuing worthless and ineffective orders".
The "blue helmets" of the UN were deployed during this period only in very limited circumstances. There was one notable exception in the pre-1990 period — Korea.
In 1950 China's seat on the Security Council was still held by the Kuomintang government operating from Taiwan. When civil war erupted in Korea in 1950, the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council to protest against the denial of the Chinese seat to the government of China. The remaining council members were therefore able to resolve to send UN forces to Korea — under the command of the United States — unrestrained by the veto of the USSR. The resulting bloody war lasted for three years, during which time the US was so aggressive that it drew China into the war with the nominally UN command.
The Korean War was merely a taste of a Security
Council no longer bridled by the veto of the Soviet Union. The war which marks the beginning of the New World Order was the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, it was in breach of the same international laws flouted by the US only eight months before when it invaded Panama. (The Panama invasion also breached several Western Hemisphere conventions and the Panama Canal treaties.)
When Iraq went into Kuwait, however, the Security Council was called into emergency session immediately at the request of the US. It passed resolution 660 the same day, condemning the invasion, demanding an immediate withdrawal and calling for direct negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait. Four days later, it imposed a trade and financial embargo on Iraq and created a Special Sanctions Committee to monitor that embargo.
The quick response by the United Nations was seen as a positive development by many people, as was its "reasonable" approach to the issue — a warning and call for negotiations. But beneath the appearance of international cooperation to bring about peace, some rather different agendas were being played out.
Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, in his book The Fire This Time, sets out the method by which the US agenda was implemented in the name of the United Nations during this period.
First, he points out, the dispute was placed immediately before the Security Council, thus precluding any role for the General Assembly, since article 12 of the UN Charter prohibits the General Assembly from making any recommendations regarding a dispute before the Security Council.
Next, he writes, "In order to obtain votes on November 29 for the crucial Resolution 678, which would authorise member states 'to use all necessary means' to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait ... the United States engaged in open bribery, blackmail and coercion".
Ethiopia and Zaire got new aid packages, World Bank
credits and rearrangements of International Monetary Fund grants or loans. Colombia's aid package was increased after it voted for the resolution. The US forgave $7 billion in Egyptian debt.
In return for its abstention, China was awarded $114 million in deferred aid and the US secretary of state, James Baker, had a highly publicised meeting with the Chinese foreign minister, Qian Qichen, the day after the vote — the first such meeting since the Tiananmen Square massacre and a public relations coup for the Chinese government. The Soviet Union was provided with $4 billion in loans and emergency aid.
"Cuba and Yemen", writes Clark, "were subjected to both entreaty and punishment. The first meeting of the foreign ministers of Cuba and the United States in three decades occurred in a Manhattan Hotel on the eve of the November 29 vote when James Baker and Isidoro Malmierca sat down together ... Baker was measuring the feasibility of persuading Cuba to stop its efforts to enlist opposition to UN authorisation for an assault on Iraq. Cuba courageously voted against the resolution."
Yemen also voted "no" to 678. Within minutes of casting his vote, Yemen's ambassador was told that this would be "the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast". Three days later, a $70 million US aid package to Yemen was cancelled.
Even the United Nations itself became a recipient of US pay-offs. In the days when the US decried the UN as a hotbed of socialist bombast and rampant "Third Worldism", it had withheld payment of dues and had fallen severely into arrears. With the onset of the Gulf War, it paid $187 million in back dues — over half the debt.
Resolution 678 conferred absolute discretion to remove Iraq from Kuwait, on all UN members indiscriminately. It gave no guidance and imposed no limitation. It required no reporting. When the bombing of Baghdad began on the evening of January 16, 1991, the Security Council was in session in New York. Its diplomats emerged from the chamber unaware of the attacks being launched in their name.
"In Kuwait the UN was less the world's policeman than its sheriff deputizing a posse", says a pamphlet by the UN Association of the USA. "It identified the transgressor and set the goals and parameters of an operation to restore the peace, then passed out the deputy's badges to those volunteering to enforce the law."
But who was the sheriff and who was the deputy? The US sent 400,000 troops to the Gulf well before UN members were "deputised" on November 29, and US General Schwarzkopf was in command from the first. The UN secretary general was not even informed when Operation Desert Storm was to begin. US allies merely contributed money and troops.
But why does the US use the UN when its military strength would permit it to take precisely the same action in its own name alone, as it did, for example, in Panama?
A 46-page Pentagon document reported upon by the New York Times on March 8, 1992, asserts that "America's political and military mission in the post Cold War era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia, or territory of the former Soviet Union". It refers to the Gulf War as a "defining event in US global leadership", and says the "overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region's oil", concluding "we must continue to play a strong role through enhanced deterrence and improved cooperative security".
The overall goal is summarised by the Times as "a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behaviour and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy".
The UN Association of the USA's pamphlet, Partners for Peace, points out, however, that "Neither American nor world public opinion seems likely to tolerate the United States as the de facto global policeman".
The Association suggests that the use of "multilateral frameworks" which are "compatible with US interests" — such as the UN — are a better way to garner support for wars waged by the US. This is so both domestically, where the "Vietnam syndrome" remains a problem, and internationally, where the majority of countries are either "suspicious" of US motives or would prefer to be seen to be supporting the UN, rather than the US alone. "American leaders", says the Association, "have discovered anew that multilateral actions can command wider support than unilateral ones, not only abroad but even at home".
The opening stages of the Gulf War provided a textbook case of an international conflict in which one country invaded the territory of another. There is evidence, in fact, that the situation was engineered through covert action by US agencies in order to produce just such a clear-cut case.
The vast majority of armed conflicts, however, are internal or domestic conflicts — or conflicts over government. In order to be able to use the UN to intervene in such conflicts, the US has had to overcome a central pillar of the UN Charter.
Article 2, paragraph 7 of the Charter provides that "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII".
The sole exception to the non-interference rule — the mandate in Chapter VII for the Security Council "to maintain or restore international peace and security" — has been, prior the 1990s, interpreted very narrowly. With the advent of the New World Order, non-interventionism has become a thing of the past. Today the catchwords "peace-making" and "humanitarian intervention" have replaced the old concept that "peacekeeping" required the agreement of the state or states involved.
In April of 1991 troops under US command entered northern Iraq with the stated intent of creating "safe havens" for Kurds on Iraqi territory. The action was not authorised by the Security Council. Discussions with UN diplomats in New York had revealed trepidation, especially amongst the countries of the South, about any encroachment on the territory or authority of the Iraqi government, even if inspired by a concern for its disaffected citizens. Unable to win the council's authorisation, the US acted without it.
Presented with the fait accompli, however, the council's resolution 688, while stopping short of explicitly authorising the US intervention, in effect wrote the first chapter in the unfolding story of a new, interventionist UN. It condemned the Baghdad government's repression of its civilian population and invoked the magic words to justify UN intrusion — threats to international peace and security.
It demanded that Baghdad "allow immediate access by international humanitarian organisations to all those in need of assistance", anywhere in the country, and authorised the secretary general to provide protection to UN humanitarian aid workers, resulting in the deployment of a UN guard force.
The council did not act over the coup which removed elected left-wing President Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (whose election had been overseen by the UN just seven months before) just months after the invasion of northern Iraq. It passed the issue on to the General Assembly, which passed a non-binding economic sanctions resolution.
By contrast, in early 1992 the council acted quickly in response to British and US calls for harsh sanctions against Libya to force it to turn over to the US and Britain two Libyan nationals accused of participation in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The resolution was passed (all five non-aligned states — Zimbabwe, India, China, Cape Verde and Morocco — abstained) despite the fact that Libya had a case on the matter pending in the International Court of Justice.
But "Operation Restore Hope", the deployment of over 35,000 troops to Somalia, nominally under the
auspices of the UN but actually under the command of the US — with the agreement of no force in Somalia — marks the breakthrough for the new "interventionist" US/UN. Once again, the US began the operation unilaterally, and the UN took it up when it had become a fait accompli.
As a humanitarian intervention, it came too late. Somalis and aid organisations in the country had been crying out for UN and Western aid since the brutal, US-backed dictator Siad Barre was ousted in January 1991. By the time Operation Restore Hope had been instituted, thousands had already died and thousands more were beyond help.
But as a foundation stone for the New World Order, the intervention was precisely what was needed. Who could argue with intervention where the television showed us people starving in their thousands?
Responding to rumblings among the representatives of the South at the January 1991 sitting of the United Nations General Assembly that the US and not the UN was really in control of the New World Order, or that the two had become indistinguishable, George Bush reassured his audience that "... the United States has no intention of striving for a pax Americana ... We seek a Pax universalis built upon shared responsibilities and aspirations."
The facts speak otherwise. In the view of the US government and economic elite, a universal peace will have to be a US peace, and if the countries of the South don't share their "aspirations", they will be dealt with severely.