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What? UN Dead? Well, Boo-hoo!
Well,
it finally happened. We woke up to the familiar images of the
Baghdad skyline, rendered in an eerie green, erupting with
antiaircraft fire and flame, listening to the screeches of missiles
plummeting into that most ancient Arab capital. The US went ahead
and did it, definitively turning its back on hopes for the
international legitimacy conferred by a Security Council resolution,
a resolution that would have signified that the divine mandate of
the United Nations to wage war had been bestowed upon the
belligerent; sanction to wage “a just war.” The UN had finally
been proven impotent, obsolete, a handy tool of the superpower to be
used when convenient and discarded when unwieldy. The UN had finally
been exposed, its façade irrevocably shattered, its ineffectuality
revealed for all to see.
Arab
Self-Mortification
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Iraqis mourn their relatives as more civilians die with the bombings. |
In
the midst of the cries of the injured, the deafening roar of the
cruise missiles, the explosions that lit up the sky, the opponents
of this illegitimate war spoke out in one thunderous, stentorian
voice:
The
United Nations must stop this war. We must appeal to the UN. The
General Assembly’s powers must be invoked.
It
is here that the record screeches to a jarring halt. What? Who? The
UN? What is this morbid obsession with working through the very
system that inflicted this invidious arrangement, this “New World
Order” on us? What is this affliction that forces us to seek out
and beg succor and aid from those who have trodden us underfoot?
When did the Muslim and Arab world become masochistic?
It
is a simple fact that some systems are not susceptible to change,
and are by their very nature impervious to dissent, regardless of
how legitimate the grievances that spawned such dissent are. One
could not ask the blacks of South Africa to work through Apartheid,
the system that would not even acknowledge them as human, the system
that pillaged and burned and built the squalid townships.
The
Grand Idea Doomed to Failure
The UN is a relic of a time that never existed.
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I
can no longer see or understand the supposed legitimacy conferred
upon a course of action, regardless of how illegitimate or evil, by
the simple mechanics of a majority vote. I could neither see nor
understand this travesty of logic even before the deathblow of
“Operation Iraqi Freedom [sic]” was dealt the UN. In a world
governed by an overwhelmingly realist paradigm, it seems a cruel
joke to bestow such power upon the vestige of idealist thought the
UN has become.
The
UN is a relic of a time that never existed. Idealism was a fad, an
intellectual trend that existed in a perpetual state of denial.
Idealism was, well, an ideal. An ideal to work for, to espouse, but
to be discarded where it clashed with a state’s interests. In
other words, idealism was essentially a hypocrisy. In the face of
all available evidence, in the face of everyday reality, man was
rational, man could be trusted to do the right thing, and what
better way to ensure a proper course of action than by basing
decisions upon the will of a large number of such reasonable
creatures? Surely, the collective will of man cannot err? And
surely, what better system to adopt for a global forum than to
extrapolate and apply such logic to states in their infinite
complexity?
This
Enemy of My Enemy is No Friend of Mine
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Richard Perle, the “Prince of Darkness” |
The
irony does not escape me, that in my utter contempt for the United
Nations and the system it spawned, I have found perhaps my only
common ground with the US administration. In this matter, I find an
unlikely ally (brief, though, our coalition shall be)
in the person of the
odious Richard Perle, the recently dethroned Chairman of the Defense
Policy Board and avowed nemesis of the UN and its faithful. It was
he who so brazenly stated, during the fateful Trilateral Debate in
Prague,
I
am very troubled at the idea that the United Nations is the sole
legitimizing institution when it comes to the use of force… Is the
United Nations better able to confirm legitimacy than, say, a
coalition of liberal democracies?
Does
the addition of members of the UN like China, for example, or Syria
add legitimacy to what otherwise might be the collective policy of
countries that share our values? I don't think so. It's a dangerous
trend to consider that the United Nations, which
includes a very large
number of nasty regimes, is somehow better able to confirm
legitimacy than other institutions like the European Union or NATO…
Votes
are bought and sold at the UN…
Why is the United Nations a greater source of legitimacy than NATO? NATO has every capacity to become a legitimizing international institution with respect to the use of force because it is composed of liberal democracies that have exhibited since its inception an absence of self-aggrandizement and a responsible effort to bring about peace and stability. Why shouldn't NATO be as legitimate as the UN, which happens to contain a lot of dictatorships?1
Mr.
Perle and I are joined by our conviction that the UN must go. Mr.
Perle holds this conviction because the UN tends to needlessly
hamper the self-aggrandizement of the US Mr. Perle specifically
claims is absent from its policy, whereas I hold this conviction
because this corrupt international organ has long been the bane of
everything I and my people hold dear.
Indeed,
I have learned, painfully, as an adherent to that most marginalized
and reviled of faiths, the folly of the “liberal conceit of safety
through international law administered by international institutions.”
2
I
Concede…
It protected US allies from condemnation and the legal repercussion of their actions. |
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The
UN was useful, occasionally, to the mutually exclusive goals of both
Mr. Perle and I. As to Mr. Perle, the UN after all granted the US
the legitimacy it sought in many of its wars; it served US interests
by protecting the US’ allies from condemnation and the legal
repercussion of their actions; and it inflicted illegitimate
sanctions and embargoes on the US’ enemies through the Holy
Majority Vote. This is why it rankles endlessly to hear Perle
criticize the UN as being a place where votes are bought and
sold; indeed it is, and
none have done so better or with more frequency than the US.
As
to mine, and I speak humbly as a Muslim and an Arab, the UN
occasionally was able to wriggle free of the chains that bind it so
tightly to the will of the US, and on these rare and memorable
occasions, a stinging reproach was issued against the conduct of the
US and its cronies. But alas, these incidents are few and far
between, and had little to no effect on the subsequent conduct of
the US.
The
UN also has many achievements to its credit, such as the eradication
of smallpox and various other developmental and environmental
initiatives… and perhaps Perle speaks the truth when he suggests
that, in the aftermath of the US’ murder of the enfeebled UN,
“The ‘good works’ part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping
bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will
continue to bleat.”3
Perhaps that would be the best arrangement: Strip the UN of
the Security Council, ending its rule of international High Politics.
Overcompensation
Misses the Mark Completely
We tighten the screws that bind us to their discarded standards. |
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It
would seem that the dismal failure of the League of Nations caused
the ostensibly well-intentioned founders of the United Nations to
radically overcompensate in the Charter of the new organ. No more
would they risk the Great Powers losing interest in global affairs.
To ensure the continued participation of these powers, they would be
granted rights and privileges that set them head and shoulders above
the rest of the rabble that constituted the fledgling UN. They were
deemed worthy of this responsibility
for their victory over
the axis (France being the anomaly). For this greatest of human
achievements, five states were selected to be the bearers of a final
say on all affairs of this great forum. Five states entrusted with a
veto, the power to effectively
block the will of the
majority, the ability to prevent what all others deemed the wisest
course of action, because the wielders of this power Know Best.
Undoubtedly,
the five in question diligently pursued the establishment of such a
powerful arrangement, arrogating to themselves supreme power in
international High Politics. Much of the blame for what the UN has
been allowed to become lies with the states that flocked to sign the
Charter, particularly Muslim and Arab states, consigning themselves
to perpetuity at the bottom of the political food chain.
In
so doing, the states signatory to the Charter effectively introduced
an “hereditary” oligarchy, based on nation rather than
bloodline, that would dominate the UN, empowered with the ability to
wage war or enforce peace, to make and break states… if none
among the five
dissented. This was the woefully inadequate Achilles’ heel
intended to check the Security Council.
An
Institutionalized Affront to Reason
Even if Truman was righteous, what guarantee did the Charter contain that would save us from Presidents-to-come? |
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Even
if one were to concede the impossible to concede, that the original
or first Five really did Know Best, really were worthy of this great
responsibility, how could the diplomats and representatives who
subsequently signed on to this Charter have condemned their states
to existing at the mercy of the Five’s whims for untold
generations? Even if one could, for the sake of argument, concede
that Truman was, in some sense, righteous, what kind of guarantee
did the Charter contain that would save us from
Presidents-and-administrations-to-come, like the abominable Mr. Bush
and his corporate cronies?
Perhaps
the most appropriate expression of the institutionalized affront to
human reason – enshrined by such a structure in its blind faith in
the reason, rationality, and sagaciousness of the Five – lies in
Thomas Paine’s famous condemnation of monarchy, the fundamental
nature of which does not differ greatly from that of the bestowment
of a perpetual “final say” upon the Five,
…the
idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of
hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an
hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as
ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.
…a
body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to
be trusted by anybody.
…it
is continuing the uncivilized principle of government founded on
conquest, and the base idea of man having property in man and
governing him by personal right.4
Indeed,
the Five are “hereditary” legislators. Arguably, they are the
most powerful legislators in the world, appointees of governments
who have earned the right of Final Say by virtue of their conquest
of Nazi Germany – governing High Politics by a right granted due
to the questionable achievements of their predecessors. The Five are
unaccountable; arguably, individuals guilty of the crimes
perpetrated by the various manifestations of the Five would have
been subject to the harshest legal punishments, if not downright
lynched.
But
no matter. There is no reason to dwell on the past. The UN is dead.
Its masters could no longer tolerate the unnecessary shackle of
needing to agree with their four co-rulers.
Away
With You, Mr. Perle!
Where
I gratefully depart from the Prince of Darkness, as the
international media has dubbed warmonger Perle, is in the projected
consequences of the death of the UN, and the birth of an age of war
by “willing coalition[s] of liberal democracies,”5
those most righteous avatars of peace and freedom and Godly
fury who can do no wrong.
Whereas
Mr. Perle hails these atavisms as “by default, the best hope for
[the new world] order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of
the abject failure of the UN,”6
I believe that they will drive the world into a period of
chaos and anarchy unrivaled in history. Never before has such military and economic power been
completely unregulated by a system of international law, and never
have the wielders of such power been left completely to their own
designs, unopposed. For there should be no illusions about this,
that currently none have the ability to oppose the US; such is the
nature of the unipolar world. Certainly, plenty exist who have the
will, which leads many to conclude that the fate of the US will be
that of Rome, in that it will eventually succumb to “a death of a
thousand cuts,” as Professor Joseph Nye described Rome’s demise.7
Anarchy?
Bring it On!
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What do we have to fear from anarchy? |
Why
then, one might ask, is the author gleefully trumpeting the demise
of the UN? Because anarchy eventually hammers out a new system. This
is the nature of things. And anarchy is better than the
institutionalized evil that has been churned out by the US in the
name of the UN and the international community for the past few
decades.
We
have nothing to fear from anarchy. We are already at the mercy of
ruthless men, unaccountable men who unleash savage destruction on
our lands and people with impunity. Or we are at the mercy of their
proxies and allies, who ravage and pillage our lands in our names,
propped up by funds and arms from the likes of these “coalitions
of the willing.” What more can be done to us? Our states,
illegitimate and otherwise, are broken and made; our lives are
forfeit if the interests of these heavenly coalitions are at stake;
our beliefs are trodden under their feet like so much chaff.
International
laws, forged as they were by the powerful, the victorious, are more
often than not used to condemn us, but never our oppressors. They
are shackles then, for such is the nature of laws; and while the US
throws off its shackles to run amok with
the lives and destinies
of our people, we tighten the screws that bind us to their discarded
standards.
It
is time for us to realize that we must rise from the ruins of the
“liberal conceit of safety through international law administered
by international institutions” we were buried under, and find our
own solutions to our plight, uninhibited by the chains of
international law or legitimacy. In this, we should follow the
shining example set by that grand superpower, the United States of
America.
Azizuddin
El-Kaissouni
is a staff writer for IslamOnline. A graduate of the American
University in Cairo, he holds a BA in Political Science with a
specialization in International Law. He frequently writes about the
status of Muslim minorities around the world. You can reach him at azizuddin@islam-online.net.
1-
Perle, Richard “Who
says the United Nations is better than NATO?” International Herald Tribune November 28, 2002.
2-
Perle, Richard “Thank
God for the death of the UN.” Guardian
Unlimited March 21, 2003.
3-
Ibid
4-
Paine, Thomas. The
Rights of Man.
5-
Perle, Richard “Thank
God for the death of the UN.” Guardian
Unlimited March 21, 2003.
6-
Ibid
7-
Nye, Joseph “The
New Rome Meets the New Barbarians: How America Should Wield Its
Power.”
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