[Nasional-e] Credibility at a price

[Ambon]

Gary Younge Forget the humanitarian principles on which it was founded:
money and power now drive the UN

Credibility at a price

W hen Yemen voted against attacking Iraq in 1990 the US government described
its vote as "the most expensive 'no' in history". Yemen may have been a
member of the UN security council, but with a per capita income of about 2%
of that in the US its diplomatic rights were no match for the dollar's
might.
Following its refusal to back the first Gulf war, the US cut off aid and
pushed to make it a virtual pariah state. As the UN's chief weapons
inspector, Hans Blix, packs his bags for Baghdad the UN risks being used as
a fig leaf for the military and economic pretensions of the US and Britain.
Having argued that bombing Iraq without UN authorisation would be illegal,
we must now explain why bombing with UN blessing would still be immoral. For
while it was right to insist that the US act within the auspices of the UN,
it was wrong to raise false hopes that the UN would be either able or
willing to prevent a military attack.
The UN is anything but perfect. Its structures are outmoded, its methods are
undemocratic and its record of restoring, defending or establishing
democracy around the globe is weak. Like any multilateral institution, the
resolutions that emerge from it reflect the balance of power among those
within it. As globalisation has accelerated over the past decade, for
example, we have seen the ascendancy within the UN of the representatives
not of nations but of capital.
In 1999 the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, told the Business-Humanitarian
Forum: "The business community is fast becoming one of the UN's most
important allies - that is why the organisation's doors are open to you as
never before." Two months later the United Nations Development Programme
accepted $50,000 from 11 multinationals in return for privileged access to
their offices.
As Yemen found out to its cost, the UN operates, by and large, according to
the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. Those without are
left to fend for themselves. It is the UN's inability to deliver for the
poor, on aid, trade, the environment and development, that makes it appear
irrelevant to most - not its tardiness in delivering war for the wealthy.
None the less the existence of the UN, founded as it was on
 humanitarian principles, has proved an irritant to the great powers. And
never more so than now.
In the aftermath of September 11 George Bush's adviser on foreign affairs,
Condoleezza Rice, asked senior staff at the National Security Council to
seriously consider the question "how do you capitalise on these
opportunities" in order to change US foreign policy. The answer was a
strategy that would formalise the US's role as the world's most powerful
rogue state - like a well-armed vigilante, acting in its own interests and
outside of the law, alone where necessary and with others where possible. In
this context, with Washington heading at breakneck speed to the conclusion
that it could and should impose its will unilaterally on the rest of the
world, forcing it to the UN's negotiating table applied an important brake.
This was an achievement. Whatever problems there may be with the UN
resolution passed last week (and there are many), at least it does not
authorise force. This came about not because Tony Blair supported Bush, but
because nobody else did. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Americans
felt it too great a risk to go it alone, and went to the UN. Were it not for
that we would almost certainly now be at war. The return of the inspectors
should also be welcomed. The world will be safer without weapons of mass
destruction - whether they are owned by Iraq or Israel, exported by Britain
or the US, or imported by Pakistan or India.
So, for the moment, talk of pre-emptive strikes has been quashed, and regime
change is being qualified. Moreover the inspectors' return represents a
principle the US had tried to bury alive: that before there can be
prosecution, there must first be proof. Quite how long that moment will
last, however, is a moot point. If forcing the US to negotiate was an
achievement, the outcome of those negotiations was most certainly not a
victory.
The case against war remains as strong as ever. There is still no evidence
that Iraq presents an
 immediate threat to the rest of the world - nor have any links to September
11, Bali or any other recent terrorist atrocities been established. Yet last
week's resolution was packed with blatant tripwires, unrealistic timetables
and intrusive rules - which no sovereign power would accept under normal
circumstances - and a potentially lethal fudge, which the US and Britain may
well choose to interpret as a mandate for war.
While it has slowed the US and Britain down, it has not altered their
course. Even as they cloak themselves in the legitimacy conferred by the
UN's imprimatur, they insist they are just as happy to act without it. As a
US official said last week: "The president has all the authority he needs
should he decide to strike Iraq, thanks to the congressional resolution."
The biggest threat to the UN's credibility now is not Saddam Hussein, but
Bush. The US position, endorsed by Britain, is cynical. They support
multilateralism when multilateralism supports them. When global rules prove
inconvenient - be it Kyoto, steel tariffs or the
 chemical weapons test ban treaty - they are happy to do without them.
Mirroring that cynicism will do those who oppose the war no good. Our
problem with the UN resolution should not be that it fails to meet our
pragmatic demands, but that it is not based on the principles that would
give it credibility. There is no contradiction between calling on the US to
act within international law and insisting that international law should be
applied fairly, adhered to universally, and executed consistently. If Iraq
is in material breach of UN resolutions, then Israel is no less so. If the
rights of UN inspectors are sacrosanct, then the rights of asylum seekers,
under the universal declaration of human rights, are no less so either.
Yet so long as a few pick and choose which laws should be followed or
flouted, then none can have confidence that legality has any relevance over
and above what you can get away with. So long as the UN is prey to bribery
and bullying, then the resolutions that it passes will have no more moral
authority than the cheques that are drawn on its account.

The Guardian Weekly 14-11-2002, page 13