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Dealing in double standards: Bush at the
UN
By Stephen Zunes
(Posted
with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
The last - and only - time the United
States came before the United Nations to accuse a
radical Third World government of threatening the
security of the United States through weapons of mass
destruction was in October 1962. In the face of a
skeptical world and Cuban and Soviet denials, US
ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented dramatic photos
clearly showing the construction of nuclear missiles on
Cuban soil. While the resulting US military blockade and
brinksmanship was not universally supported, there was
little question that the United States had the evidence
and that the threat was real.
Despite vastly
improved reconnaissance technology in the subsequent 40
years, President George W Bush, in his long-anticipated
speech before the United Nations, was unable to present
any clear proof that Iraq currently has weapons of mass
destruction or functioning offensive delivery systems.
Yet lack of credible evidence was only one
problem with the president's speech.
For
example, his comparison with the League of Nation's
failure to stand up before Japanese, Italian and German
aggression in the 1930s is completely ahistorical. The
Axis powers were heavily industrialized countries that
had conquered vast stretches of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Today's Iraq, by contrast, is an impoverished Third
World country that for 12 years has been under the
strictest sanctions in world history and has long since
been forced to withdraw from neighbors it once briefly
occupied.
President Bush also asserted that Iraq
was poised to march on other countries back when it
seized Kuwait in 1990 - a charge originally made by his
father - to demonstrate the need for unilateral American
initiatives. This claim, however, has long since been
disproven by subsequently released satellite photos that
showed less than one-third the number of Iraqi soldiers
in Kuwait than claimed by the United States and that -
rather than massing on the border as alleged - they were
actually digging in to defensive positions around Kuwait
City.
Virtually every delegate representing the
world's nations present at the president's speech must
have recognized the brazen act of hypocrisy in citing
findings by the UN Human Rights Commission on Iraq,
whose reports criticizing the human rights records of
American allies have often been summarily dismissed by
US officials.
Double standards were most
apparent, however, in President Bush's stress on the
importance of enforcing UN resolutions.
The list
of UN Security Council resolutions violated by Iraq
cited by President Bush pales in comparison to the list
of UN Security Council resolutions currently being
violated by US allies. Not only has the United States
not suggested invading these countries, the US has
blocked sanctions or other means of enforcing them and
even provides the military and economic aid that helps
make these ongoing violations possible.
For
example, in 1975, the UN Security Council passed a
series of resolutions demanding that Morocco withdraw
its occupation forces from the country of Western Sahara
and that Indonesia withdraw its occupation forces from
East Timor. However, as then-US ambassador to the United
Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan later bragged, "The
Department of State desired that the United Nations
prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it
undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it
forward with not inconsiderable success."
East
Timor finally won its freedom in 1999 after 24 years of
US-backed occupation. Moroccan forces still occupy
Western Sahara, however, with the Bush administration
supporting Morocco's defiance of subsequent UN Security
Council resolutions that simply call for an
internationally supervised referendum for the Western
Saharan population to determine the fate of their desert
nation.
Meanwhile, Turkey remains in violation
of UN Security Council resolutions 353 and 354 calling
for its withdrawal from northern Cyprus, which this NATO
ally of the United States has occupied since 1974.
The most extensive violator of UN Security
Council resolutions is Israel, by far the largest
recipient of US military and economic aid. Israel's
refusal to respond positively to the formal acceptance
last March by the Arab League to the land for peace
formula put forward in UN Security Council resolutions
242 and 338 arguably puts Israel in violation of these
resolutions, long seen as the basis for Middle East
peace. There can be no argument, however, that Israel
remains in defiance of a series of other UN Security
Council resolutions. These include resolutions 262 and
267 demandingt that Israel rescind its annexation of
greater East Jerusalem, as well as the more than a dozen
other resolutions demanding Israel cease its violations
of the Fourth Geneva Convention, such as deportations,
demolitions of homes, collective punishment and seizure
of private property.
Unlike some of the
hypocritical and mean-spirited anti-Israel resolutions
passed by the UN General Assembly, such as the
now-rescinded 1975 resolution equating Zionism and
racism, these Security Council resolutions challenging
Israeli policies have been well-grounded in
international law.
For example, UN Security
Council resolutions 446 and 465 require that Israel
evacuate all of its illegal settlements on occupied Arab
lands. The United States, however, insists the fate of
the settlements is a matter of Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations. In fact, the Clinton Peace Plan of
December 2000 would have allowed Israel to illegally
annex most of these settlements and surrounding areas
into Israel. Even more disturbing, the US decision to
help fund Israel's construction of Jewish-only "bypass
roads" in the occupied West Bank to connect the illegal
settlements with Israel puts the United States in
violation of Article 7 of resolution 465, which
prohibits member states from facilitating Israel's
colonization drive.
There is little doubt that
the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein is in violation of UN
Security Council resolutions. The regime must indeed
either be forced to change its behavior or be replaced.
That, however, is a decision for the Iraqi people or the
United Nations, not the United States alone.
According to Articles 41 and 42 of the UN
Charter, no member state has the right to enforce any
resolution militarily unless the Security Council
determines that there has been a material breach of its
resolution, decides that all nonmilitary means of
enforcement have been exhausted and specifically
authorizes the use of military force. This is what the
Security Council did in November 1990 with Resolution
678 in response to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, which
violated a series of resolutions passed that August that
demanded their withdrawal. When Iraq finally complied by
withdrawing from Kuwait in March 1991, this resolution
became moot.
Although UN Security Council
Resolution 687, which demands Iraqi disarmament, was the
most detailed in the world body's history, no military
enforcement mechanisms were specified. Nor has the
Security Council specified any military enforcement
mechanisms in subsequent resolutions. As is normally the
case when it is determined that governments are
violating all or part of UN resolutions, any decision
about enforcement is a matter for the Security Council
as a whole - not for any one member of the Council.
If the United States can unilaterally claim the
right to invade Iraq because of that country's violation
of Security Council resolutions, other Council members
could logically also claim the right to invade states
that are similarly in violation; for example, Russia
could claim the right to invade Israel, France could
claim the right to invade Turkey, and Britain could
claim the right to invade Morocco. The US insistence on
the right to attack unilaterally could seriously
undermine the principle of collective security and the
authority of the UN and, in doing so, would open the
door to international anarchy.
Until the Bush
administration ends its gross exaggerations of Iraq's
current offensive military capabilities, double
standards on human rights and UN Security Council
resolutions, and ongoing threats to illegally invade
Iraq, the United States simply does not have the
credibility to lead the international effort to
challenge Saddam Hussein's regime.
Stephen
Zunes is an associate professor of
politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies
Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as
Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus
Project and is the author of Tinderbox: US Middle
East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, to be
published in October by Common Courage Press.
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in
Focus.)
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