The UN was founded with the purpose of putting and end to power politics and creating a forum of international opinion to judge the morality of the actions of states. When created, the gratest promoter of the UN was the US and in it’s history it has never acted without the approval of the security council. Failing to bring forth enough evidence against Saddam to convince international opinion that an attack is necessary, what will Bush do?
I personally think that the US should not betray the instrument that has been the pillar of its foreign policy for decades. Ignoring the UN would be a big blow to the organization and would put in serius doubt it’s ability to maintain the peace. Will Bush put and end to Roosevelt’s dream?
Moderator’s Note:ZooMetropolis, our General Questions forum is for questions which have factual answers. For debates about politics (or religion or philosophy or any other field of human thought involving Big Questions without definitive answers), we have a separate forum called Great Debates, of which I am one of the moderators. Moderators can move threads when they’re posted in the wrong forum; I’ll spare the GQ mods the trouble and move this one myself.
TBone2: Cool it. Someone who’s new opened a thread in the wrong forum; it happens.
That said, it is a good idea to read the forum descriptions carefully before posting.
There is nothing like the UN for morality. Countries like Viet Nam, China, Cuba, Lybia and Uganada are far more moral countries than the US. Here’s a link to the “UN Commission on Human Rights”. unhchr.ch - unhchr Resources and Information.
I really wish I lived in China or Cuba where respect for human rights was the goal of the government.
Sarcasm aside, the UN is and has been a joke for a long time. The UN issues statements and mandates. At the same the same time the UN relies on the US to enforce those mandates. Without the US the UN is a toothless drooling body that cannot wipe it’s own ass.
The UN has been trivial for years. If the UN OK’s an attack on Saddam it isn’t going to help make the UN relevant.
I really have to disagree strongly with your sentiment. Outside the US, the mandates of the UN draw a lot of water, even if they aren’t followed or enforced often enough. The UN provides an important framework for international relations; we know that Iraq isn’t abiding by UN resolutions, for example, thanks to the fact that there is a UN to issue resolutions in the first place. Once again, outside the US, the UN has definitely not been ”trivial for years.”
In addition, your argument rests on a bizarre kind of circular logic. One of the major reasons that the UN is ”toothless,” as you put it, is precisely because important member states, most especially the US, simply refuse to submit to its authority. Since the US government (and its allies) regularly ignore UN resolutions, it contributes to the weaknesses that the UN is subsequently accused of displaying. Blaming the UN for this is the equivalent to blaming the victim for a crime committed against him.
No doubt there are flaws in the structure of the UN, and some of them are pretty glaring. Allowing states with notoriously poor human rights records to sit on the Human Rights Commission is a good example of such flaws. There’s also plenty of reason to decry the spinelessness of many European states, who don’t dare to stand up to the US (or others) when it acts up. But I don’t think we should throw out the baby with the bath water, myself.
I disagree. The human rights commission is a forum where countries which have, say, “different” views about human rights can debate, argue and negociate on this topic. That’s the whole point.
If only countries with a good human rights record were allowed in, it would be a club of good-behaving countries issuing statements saying how bad other countries are, which would be totally useless. There are already well-known NGOs which do a good job at pointting fingers at the failures. The HRC can only be of any use as it is, by including all countries. Some situations can certainly be ironical, but I’ve no issue with the current organization.
(and who could decide which countries have a good enough record, anyway? Let’s assume I consider the death penalty for people under 18 as a blatant offense against human rights, since it’s not allowed in any country in the world, even in extremely repressive ones, except a handful of exceptions. Then…whooosh…the USA isn’t allowed anymore in the HCR.)
clairobscur, I object to your word, “differerent.” Countries whose practice of “human rights” includes blowing up airliners and supporting genocide are more than “different.”
Yeah clairobscur, for us americans the only thing “different” about them is the relatively small scale of their atrocities. Maybe someday they’ll be big time players like us, but until that day arrives the UN Human Rights Commission is our pooch to sleep with, or whatever, as we see fit.
Remember when Bush offered not to attack the Taliban if they would just cooperate against al Qaeda? Of course, the Taliban never accepted that offer. They were so deeply in with al Qaeda that they couldn’t accept it. One pundit came up with the clever explanation, “He made them an offer they couldn’t accept.”
Today, we see that aproach being used with Iraq. Bush has offered not to attack if Saddam complies with all Security Council resolutions. Bush knows that isn’t going to happen, but he gets points for trying.
Here’s a thought. Maybe his speech to the UN is part of the same pattern. Bush has demanded that the Security Council pass a certain resolution, otherwise the US will act without UN authorization. Maybe Bush expects that the Security Council will not or can not do this. If no resulation is forthcoming, Bush will get credit for trying.
However, the United Nations may wind up with the Taliban and the Hussein government in the ash heap of history.
To return to the OP, should we attack without US approval? Well, ideally, no. But that’s not to say that we should never be able to attack without UN approval. To rely solely upon their blessing before we act to preserve our own security would be foolish at best, deadly at worst.
Say we know for a certainty that Saddam is going to nuke us in 6 months. For the purposes of this argument, it’s not important how we know, just suppose that we do, and it’s not a matter of debate. We take this info to the UN, and present it to them, and request their blessing in a pre-emptive attack. They say no. Now what? Do we sit there and wait to be nuked, and hope that then, maybe they’ll give us approval? Or do we go in, guns blazing, and try to stop this future nuking? Me, I hope for the guns blazing option. Anyone who would argue that we should wait until we lose thousands or millions of lives before we should act, I’m sorry, but my moral outlook is on such a different level than yours that debate would be pointless.
Now, if you concede that, given a certainty that Iraq is a serious threat to us, we are justified in attacking, it’s just a matter of arguing what comprises a “serious threat”, and how “serious” it has to be, etc. That’s a valid subject for debate. And once we ascertain how “serious” a threat is, then we can further debate whether it’s so serious that we should risk pissing off the world in order to act - God, I’m growing to loathe this word - unilaterally.
So in short, no, I don’t think it’s fundamentally necessary that we have the UN’s permission to attack Iraq, or any other nation. It just, in general, may be a very good idea.
Jeff
Iraq agreed to allow unfettered inspections as one of the conditions for a ceasefire to the Gulf War. They have broken this promise more than once.
So if the US attacks Iraq in order to enforce a UN security council resolution, and to enforce an agreement entered into by Iraq, how is it possible for the US to be acting without UN approval? Have they passed another resolution regarding the ceasefire to the effect of “Just kidding - Iraq is free to develop all the WMD they want!”
If the UN isn’t going to allow anyone to enforce the agreements that bring an end to a war, what good is a UN agreement?
The world comes to an agreement with Iraq to end the war. Iraq breaks the agreement. The US is the bad guy for enforcing the world’s agreement?
You gotta ask the UN, WTF? And not for the first time.
Either it was a real agreement, and should be enforced, or it wasn’t, and the Gulf War is still going on. Either way, Iraq needs to do as she is told, or get used to the bangy noises overhead.
Wow, let me get this straight. The UN is powerless because the UN will not back up it resolutions unless the US backs the UN? WTF? A quote from you:
Err, wrong. Iraq is the state that refuses to accept the UN resolutions. The US has been enforcing the UN resolutions since 1998. That is when the weapons inspectors left. After that the US and the UK enforced the no-flight zones.
You claim that the US refused to submit to the UN authority. I have a question: what do you think Saddam was doing during that time? Playing hopscotch? The US, and Bush, told the UN that the only way to be relevant is to actually make a difference in the world. The UN talks alot but doesn’t do a damned thing.
Or indeed ‘detaining’ suspects without recourse to legal representation in Guantanemo, by not labelling them POWs, despite the fact that the whole affair is characterised by the use of the word ‘war’ (on terrorism)
It’s interesting to look at this situation from the POV of, say, France or Russia (fellow countries on the ‘Veto Council’).
What if they denied the US a Resolution requiring Saddam allow Inspectors unfettered access or else action (invasion) would be countenanced.
Then something extremely nasty happened to the US – it would be, effectively, the end of the UN. No one, especially the US, would trust the UN.
Where would that leave the likes of Russia and France ? – without any international leverage at all.
Conclusion: It is not in the interests of any country with Veto power to deny another country a* legitimate* mandate/Resolution when that country’s security is in doubt, a mandate/Resolution supported with evidence and with options for the party allegedly doing wrong. Has to be the only logical result.
WTF indeed. Let’s see if we can take a step back and disentangle this knot.
As you know, the UN as a body is made up of member states. These states sign an agreement, formally known as the UN Charter, which dictates in a general sense how they should relate to each other, as well as the ways in which the international community is entitled to react when any given state fails to follow the agreed-upon rules (i.e., the Articles of the Charter).
Obviously, the UN can only be a ”strong” organization if all, or at least a majority, of the states involved actually abide by the rules laid down in its Charter. If many states, or for our purposes, a few particularly powerful states, refuse to abide by the Charter, then the UN does indeed become ”toothless;” it becomes toothless precisely because those states ignore the mandates of the Charter rather than uphold them. So, what makes the UN impotent? Well, precisely the fact that member states, the US prominent among them, ignore (when convenient) the principles of the Charter. This is made all the more scandalous when the states who choose to ignore the Charter are precisely those who have been awarded a special responsibility in upholding it: I’m referring here to the permanent members of the Security Council, and especially the US.
So, to get back to your question, the answer is yes: as long as the US government, the world’s only remaining ”superpower state,” refuses to back the UN, its Charter and principles, and its resolutions, then the UN will naturally continue to be ”toothless” – unless, of course, the rest of the member states are willing to rise up, in unison, and rebuke the US. But of course, nobody’s gonna defy the Master, unless they feel they have absolutely no other choice.
Does that make any sense?
Specifically to the point, any unilateral (yesterday’s word! Today’s word is….incommensurable!) military action taken by the US against another state is a breach of the Charter Article 2, sections 2, 3, and 4, which explicitly prohibits states from the threat or use of force in their relations with other states:
Thus, when OFL (Our Fearless Leader) proclaims that from here on out…
…as a matter of official policy, he is, in effect, reserving for the US the right to break the UN Charter, if it feels threaten – while warning that any other country which does so (such as Iraq did when it invade Kuwait) will, in all probability, suffer grave consequences. This proclamation, should it be put in to force, will certainly further weaken the UN as a body; whereas, had OFL pledged to scrupulously abide by the Articles of the Charter, and ensure their enforcement, it would have undoubtedly strengthened the UN.
At this point, if you’ve managed to read this far, you are no doubt wondering:
Well, no, on the contrary. He’s been gratuitously ignoring UN Security Council resolutions. That’s the justification the US government (and the UN) has for taking action against him. But, tell me, how can the US government employ that justification, when it reserves for itself the right to ignore the UN Charter at will? It’s like saying:
”We’re bombing him because he’s behaving as we do. He amasses weapons of mass destruction, precisely like us; they are a potential threat to his neighbors, precisely like ours are; he feels he can preemptively strike other states, just like we do; therefore, we’re gonna bomb him – regardless of what the rest of ya’ll think.”
There are arguments to the affect that Saddam Hussein must be removed by force that I feel are valid. The argument that the US has the right to do it alone, on the other hand, is self-contradicting.
El Jeffe:
I still owe you a response in that other thread, but in lieu of that for the moment:
Naturally, there is a provision in the UN charter that allows states to act in their own defense, namely the much-beloved Article 51:
I say much beloved, because apologists for US foreign policy always invoke Article 51 when defending US military aggression abroad. Thus, as I pointed out earlier, the US invasion of Panama was justified by the gov’t as an action permitted under Article 51; the US was merely defending itself against the ferocious onslaught originally initiated by Panamanian military forces against it (or something).
Otherwise, your analogy ain’t worth much, I’m afraid. Sorry. Of course, if we know that an attack is coming, we are surely justified in responding to it. But the real crux of the matter is that in the real world, we can never know such things – until, of course, it’s too late. Hence the debate: how much evidence must a state amass, with regard to an oncoming attack, before it may be allowed to strike preemptively? If we are to judge by the case of Iraq, then apparently the US needs very little, or even no evidence to claim justification for its actions.
After all, the idea that Iraq is an imminent danger to the US mainland is taken seriously only by idiots and ideologues.
Well, my analogy was specifically addressing the views of those (both on this board, and in the media) who say that we should never attack anyone without the consent of the UN, under any circumstances, no, no, no, baaaaad. Beyond that, then yes, it is a debate over how much evidence we need, and do we have that much.
Further, I think it’s misrepresentative of the views of those who favor war to suggest that we are afraid a direct attack against our mainland is about to take place. No, I can’t think of anyone who thinks that Saddam is going to be storming Miami Beach any time soon, or even launching an ICBM at us. The threat is not of that type. The worry is that Iraq will either attack our allies in the Middle East (which admittedly isn’t a direct threat to us, only to our interests, but I hope you would agree that if we knew Saddam was about to nuke Israel, we’d still be justified in a pre-emptive strike), or will sell or give these weapons to terrorists, who will use the weapons in a direct attack on our soil.
Further, your argument seems to assume that an attack is only justified if an attack on our soil is imminent. If Iraq is trying to build nukes, and plans to use them, but it’s going to take 5 years instead of 5 months, why is that no longer sufficient justification? So if that’s the case, we wait for 4 years, and then we can try to muster support for a strike? If a cop happens to learn that someone’s planning to commit murder, but it’s not going to take place until 2008, does that mean he shouldn’t bust the guy for conspiracy to commit murder? He should wait until 2007, and then look into it?
I would say if Saddam is actively seeking to harm the US, whether he’s close or not, we should take him out now. A threat is a threat, and the odds of things getting better in coming years are pretty slim, given the past 10 years as precedent.
Welcome back Zoo. Two posts, two threads. Me thinks you do not care what we think about the UN. I won’t say what I think your real purpose here is, but I will tell you that, IMHO, the above mentioned article 51 covers the US in this case. A first strike can be made in self defense.
*What threw me off here was your reference to the preservation of ”our own security,” in your earlier statement. It’s clear to the point of obviousness that a state must be granted the right to act militarily in order to protect its citizens and territorial integrity. Article 51 grants a state the right to do so, ”if an armed attack occurs,” until such time as the UN can get their act together to send reinforcements.
Otherwise, I guess I’m one of the people on this board who says ”that we should never attack anyone without the consent of the UN, under any circumstances, no, no, no, baaaaad.” But before explaining why, I just want to emphasize that in this discussion, I am not referring to ”we.” One of the major problems that plagues debates on these topics, in my opinion, is the unfortunate rhetorical tendency to merge the American public and the American state into one all-encompassing concept under the word “we.” We tend to think in terms of what ”we” do, or should do, and what ”they” do, or should do. But, in fact, the US public is not the same thing as the political structures that make up its government. This royal ”We” is a nifty rhetorical device, Jeff, designed to trick people like you and me into believing that ”we,” the people, and ”we,” the government, are one and the same thing – as if ”we” are all one big, happy family, and as if when the US government acts on ”our” behalf, it does so with ”our” best interests in mind. I don’t buy that; I think the US government most often acts in what it believes to be in ”its” best interest – or, more specifically, in the best interest of those people who are in a position to directly influence government policy, namely the wealthy, major corporate players, and so on.
When the US state pursues policies that I find morally repugnant, and that I do not support, it does not act in my name, nor in the name of a large percentage of its populace. Thus, for me, there is no ”we,” or ”our side,” as it is generally understood when we speak of these things. However, I find the use of this ”we” so endemic that I often fall into using it myself, by mistake. But I try not to; and when I think about this stuff, I try to keep a clear picture in my mind that the official US position on an issue, as expressed by the American government, is in no sense the same thing as ”our” position on the issue, nor are the interests of the US government necessarily congruent with the interests of the population it governs.
Short of the US actually being subjected to an attack, I don’t think the US government has the right to go around invading other states, just because we think they could be a threat, or that they might threaten our interests or allies, or whatever. I do not think that any state has that right. And I argue that if the US government decides to reserve that right for itself, it has two choices: either it must (by virtue of the principle of moral universalism) grant that right to all other states, or it must claim that, as a state, it is superior to all other states.
With regard to the first option, it is easy to see that such as situation would quickly dissolve into total international chaos. China, now granted the right to preemptive military defense, could on those grounds invade Taiwan; Russia could invade Poland; Sweden could invade Norway; and so on. It makes a complete mockery of the UN Charter and the principle of national sovereignty. It seems strange that those who criticize the ”toothlessness” of the UN insist at the same time that the US should pursue policies that clearly pull the UN’s teeth out of its jaw. That’s a very self-serving argument.
With regard to second option, to begin with, it’s simply arrogant to make such a claim. In addition, there is very little evidence of moral superiority in US foreign policy, quite the contrary. Finally, I sincerely doubt any other state on earth would be willing to give up their right of sovereignty simply because they believe, for some reason, that the US government is superior to them.
As I pointed out above, in my response to sleestak, favoring military action, on one hand, and favoring unilateral (there’s that goddamn word again) military action, on the other, are two different positions. I agree that there are valid arguments for military action against the Iraqi regime (although there are also valid arguments against such action as well); but I do not think there is any valid argument for the US to go it alone.
The US will in fact invoke Article 51 as applicable to its actions in Iraq, mark my words. Al Gore, in fact, recently made a speech in which he presented exactly that argument. As you can see for yourself above, 51 is only relevant ” if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations,” which, in the case of Iraq, has most definitely not occurred – nor is it even vaguely likely to occur in the foreseeable future. The standard US interpretation of 51, however, unique to our government, generously grants it the right to strike at whatever it considers to be ”credible threats” to its security, even if “we” have not been attacked first. As I have now mentioned several times, as one example, the US invoked Article 51 to justify its invasion of Panama. It did so as well when it invaded Grenada. One must use a very potent form of double-think to transform those unprovoked acts of aggression into acts of self-defense.
Think about it. The geni is out of the bottle. Every state in the world, practically, is trying in one way or another to build nukes, if they don’t already have them. Do you suggest that the US gov’t take over the world? Where do you stop, and why? How do you justify your decision to stop here – say with the overthrow of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria – rather than here, with the overthrow of Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia?
*Another analogy. These are tricky.
Conspiracy to commit murder is illegal now, and thus punishable under law. But note also that we do not send people to ”ride ’ol sparky home,” as they say, for conspiracy to commit – for the simple reason that they have not committed, yet. To me (if we must use this analogy), you seem to advocate a policy of arresting and executing a person for murder before the murder is committed – before, in fact, the person has even managed to acquire a murder weapon.
You know that person A doesn’t like you, and therefore, due to the risk that A will kill you, you decide to execute A, vigilante-style. You believe that it is right for you to do this, because you are superior to everyone else in your community; in fact, if someone else in the community were to do this, you would round up a number of other citizens and arrest him, or, if that didn’t work, go and shoot him yourself.
In executing A, you do not need solid evidence, nor do you need to convince other members of the community that your suspicions are correct. You merely need to suspect that A is out to get you, and that he might have the means to do so. If your evidence fails to convince others, you are nevertheless justified solely due to the fact that you suspect A, or perceive A to be a threat. It does not even matter that, in reality, A is a very small threat as of now, because he may be a more potent threat one day.
Essentially, there appears to be no situation in which your actions can be considered wrong, regardless of what you do. What sort of moral system is that?
