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CounterPunch
September
13, 2002
Iraq and the US:
Contempt
for the United Nations
by Adam Jones
On September 12, U.S. President George W. Bush
addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. He was
there to make the case for vigorous action against Iraq. Bush
told delegates that the U.N. had been born in "the hope
of a world moving toward justice, escaping old patterns of conflict
and fear." He then reeled off a list of Saddam Hussein's
transgressions against Security Council resolutions. Hussein's
actions, the president said, proved "his contempt for the
United Nations." "Are Security Council resolutions
to be honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence?"
Bush asked. "Will the United Nations serve the purpose of
its founding or will it be irrelevant?"
Much the same question could have been
asked in 1986, and was asked by a few dissident voices.
In June of that year, the International Court of Justice (also
known as the World Court)--the leading institution for the adjudication
of international law--issued its verdict in the case of Nicaragua
vs. the United States.
The U.S., under President Ronald Reagan,
had spent the first half of the 1980s waging a massive campaign
against the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
U.S. strategy included direct attacks by CIA operatives, and
tens of millions of dollars in support for the U.S.-created and
-trained "Contra" rebel forces.
The World Court found that the U.S. actions
constituted "an unlawful use of force .... [that] cannot
be justified either by collective self-defence ... nor by any
right of the United States to take counter-measures involving
the use of force." A good argument can be made that the
court was, in fact, convicting the United States of international
terrorism, which the U.S. Congress has defined as "any activity
that ... appears to be intended ... to intimidate or coerce a
civilian population ... [or] to influence the policy of a government
by intimidation or coercion." The court ordered the United
States to pay reparations, estimated at between $12 billion and
$17 billion, to Nicaragua.
All of this was, of course, irrelevant
to the course of actual events. The United States had announced,
as soon as the World Court accepted jurisdiction in the case,
that it would boycott the proceedings and not recognize the verdict.
Two weeks after that verdict was issued, the U.S. Congress voted
an extraordinary $100 million for the "Contras," thereby
expressing its determination to pursue the terrorist campaign
regardless of international law and global public opinion.
It is true that the U.S. did not have
to worry about ignoring Security Council resolutions, as Saddam
Hussein has done over the last decade. As a permanent member
of the Council, the U.S. can simply veto any resolution it dislikes.
Shortly after the World Court decision, Nicaragua appealed to
the Security Council, with a motion calling on all states to
respect international law. The U.S. killed the resolution (the
vote was 11-1, with 3 abstentions). Nicaragua then took its case
to the General Assembly, where it secured a 94-3 vote demanding
that the U.S. respect the World Court's verdict. The Assembly,
though, had no way of enforcing the resolution, given the U.S.
veto in the Security Council.
"From these events," wrote
Noam Chomsky in 1988, "we perceive with great clarity the
self-image of American elites: the United States is a lawless
and violent state and must remain so, independently of such nonsense
as international law, the World Court, the United Nations, or
other international institutions ... Meanwhile starry-eyed ideologues
pay their tributes in awed and reverential tones to our unique
commitment to the rule of law."
In 1990, the Sandinista government of
Nicaragua was defeated in elections and replaced by a coalition
headed by Violeta Chamorro. That government agreed to abandon
Nicaragua's claim for compensation, in return for a paltry $60
million in U.S. aid to assist with the program of economic privatization
and "shock therapy" then being imposed on Nicaragua's
long-suffering population. This did not, however, affect the
World Court's verdict, which still stands. It serves as a lonely
reminder of the U.S.'s "unique commitment to the rule of
law"--unique, that is, in the U.S.'s determination to preserve
its immunity from the rule of law.
On the same day as President Bush's speech
to the General Assembly, The Washington Post published an article
about Nicaragua's plight today. It noted that the country is
now the second-poorest in the western hemisphere, after Haiti.
The dramatic improvements in nutrition, health care and literacy
associated with the Sandinistas' first years in power were crushed
by the U.S.-led terrorist campaign, and further "rolled
back" after the U.S.'s favoured politicians took power in
1990.
Violeta Chamorro was succeeded, in 1996,
by Arnoldo Aleman. Aleman, according to the Post article, now
stands accused of looting more than $100 million U.S. from the
country's scarce resources during his six years in power. He
had been vocally supported by the United States throughout the
period of his alleged thievery. As the Post put it: "Aleman
was long a protege of the United States, which focused on his
staunch anti-Sandinista credentials rather than the mounting
evidence that he was fleecing his country."
Nicaragua's new president, Enrique Bolanos,
inherits the automatic U.S. support given to any conservative
politician in the Third World who conforms to Washington's agenda,
at home and abroad. But even he seems unable to wring much in
the way of assistance out of the United States. With a loan of
$100 million, Bolanos says, "I could work wonders."
This is approximately equal to the money that Arnoldo Aleman
is said to have stolen from his people, with enthusiastic U.S.
support. It is a small amount compared to the hundreds of millions
of dollars that the U.S. devoted to overthrowing the Sandinista
government in the 1980s, and a tiny fraction of the billions
owed to Nicaragua under the World Court verdict.
Nonetheless, it appears doubtful that
the money will be provided, even as a loan. "I'm not sure
that just giving him [Bolanos] $100 million is going to solve
his problems," said an anonymous U.S. official. George Bush,
meanwhile, was telling the U.N. General Assembly of America's
"commitment to human dignity," and its "joining
with the world to supply aid where it reaches people and lift
up lives."
This cynical record--of trampling international
law, ruining a small Third World country perhaps beyond recovery,
and then looking elsewhere while starvation and misery reign
in the aftermath--should be borne in mind when we listen to the
Bush Administration's lectures on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. It
is hardly a coincidence that many key personnel associated with
U.S. policies toward Central America in the 1980s--policies that
directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people, in Nicaragua and throughout the region--have returned
to power under George W. Bush. (Think of Otto Reich, Elliott
Abrams, and the former ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte--today,
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.) There is no reason to
expect that the commitment of these figures to the rule of law,
and that of others within the Bush Administration, will be any
less selective this time around.
The world community should not allow
its agenda to be dictated by a U.S. regime that sees international
law and the United Nations as useful weapons to be used against
designated enemies, but nuisances to be ignored in conducting
its own foreign policy.
Adam Jones
is professor of international studies at the Center for Research
and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City. He is editor
of the forthcoming volume, "Genocide, War Crimes, and the
West: Ending the Culture of Impunity" (Zed Books). Email:
adam.jones@cide.edu
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September
11, 2002
Anis Shivani
How to
Survive in Ashcroft's America
Pierre Tristam
Abusing
the Sorrows of 9/11
David Krieger
Resisting
Bush's
"Relentless War"
Jerre Skog
9/11 One
Year Later:
Remember the Others, Too
Dave Marsh
Illegal
Music?
A Sampler's Delight
Norm Dixon
How the
Warmongers Have Exploited 9/11
September
7 / 8, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim
and Jason Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
Resources:
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