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CounterPunch
February
24, 2003
A Second Resolution is Not Enough
The
Soft Underbelly of the Peace Movement
by TARIQ ALI
A massive majority in Britain is currently opposed
to the war, but the anti-war movement confronts a virtually uniform
House of Commons. Both major parties are united and Labour MPs
incapable of mounting a parliamentary revolt to ditch Blair,
the only thing that could halt the drive to war. The British
peace movement, however, has a soft underbelly. A war that is
unjustifiable if waged by Bush and Blair alone becomes acceptable
to some if sanctioned by the "international community"
- ie the UN security council. The consciences of those opposed
to the unilateralist bombing of cities and civilian deaths are
appeased if the weapons of destruction are fired with UN support.
This level of confusion raises questions about the UN today.
Do its resolutions carry any weight if opposed by the US, as
has repeatedly been the case with Palestine and Kashmir?
The UN and its predecessor, the League
of Nations, were created to institutionalize a new status quo
arrived at after the first and second world wars. Both organizations
were founded on the basis of defending the right of nations to
self-determination. In both cases their charters outlawed pre-emptive
strikes and big-power attempts to occupy countries or change
regimes. Both stressed that the nation state had replaced empires.
The League of Nations collapsed soon
after the Italian fascists occupied  Ethiopia. Mussolini defended his invasion
of Albania and Abyssinia by arguing that he was removing the
"corrupt, feudal and oppressive regime" of King Zog/Haile
Selassie and Italian newsreels showed grateful Albanians applauding
the entry of Italian troops.
The UN was created after the defeat of
fascism. Its charter prohibits the violation of national sovereignty
except in the case of "self- defense". However, the
UN was unable to defend the newly independent Congo against Belgian
and US intrigue in the 1960s, or to save the life of the Congolese
leader Patrice Lumumba. And in 1950 the security council authorized
a US war in Korea.
Under the UN banner the western armies
deliberately destroyed dams, power stations and the infrastructure
of social life in North Korea, plainly in breach of international
law. The UN was also unable to stop the war in Vietnam. Its paralysis
over the occupation of Palestine has been visible for over three
decades.
This inactivity was not restricted to
western abuses. The UN was unable to act against the Soviet invasion
of Hungary (1956) or the Warsaw Pact's entry into Czechoslovakia
(1968). Both Big Powers were allowed to get on with their business
in clear breach of the UN charter.
With the US as the only military-imperial
state, the security council today has become a venue for trading,
not insults, but a share of the loot. The Italian theorist Antonio
Gramsci predicted this turn of events with amazing prescience.
"The 'normal' exercise of hegemony," he wrote, "is
characterized by the combination of force and consent, in variable
equilibrium, without force predominating too much over consent."
There were, he added, occasions when it was more appropriate
to resort to a third variant of hegemony, because "between
consent and force stands corruption-fraud, that is the enervation
and paralyzing of the antagonist or antagonists". This is
an exact description of the process used to negotiate Russian
support at the UN as revealed in a front-page headline in The
Financial Times (October 4, 2002): "Putin drives hard bargain
with US over Iraq's oil: Moscow wants high commercial price for
its support."
The world has changed so much over the
last 20 years that the UN - the current deadlock notwithstanding
- has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial
adventures. Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali
was sacked on Madeline Albright's insistence for challenging
the imperial will: he had insisted that it was the Rwandan genocide
that needed intervention. US interests required a presence in
the Balkans. He was replaced by Kofi Annan, a weak placeman,
whose sanctimonious speeches may sometimes deceive an innocent
British public, but not himself. He knows who calls the shots.
As Mark Twain described it in 1916: "Next
the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon
the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them,
and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will
by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank
God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque
self-deception."
If the security council allows the invasion
and occupation of Iraq either by a second resolution or by accepting
that the first was sufficient to justify war as a last resort,
then the UN, too, will die. It is necessary to insist that UN-backed
war would be as immoral and unjust as the one being plotted in
the Pentagon - because it will be the same war.
Tariq Ali
is an editor of New Left Review and a frequent contributor to
CounterPunch. This article is extracted from his new book The
Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads And Modernity,
published by Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
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