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Increasingly the UN is appearing to toe the US line. Is the UN gradually becoming the United Nations of America?
asks writer Tariq Ali
| | |  Does the UN risk losing all credibility?Do you agree? Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444, lines open at 1.30pm. | |
LISTEN - Hear Tariq Ali discuss the UN
Does the United Nations matter any more? Do its Resolutions carry any weight if opposed by the United States? And does membership of the Security Council reflect the realities of today's world?
The answer in each case is no.
International organisations such as the UN and its ill-fated predecessor - the League of Nations - were created to institutionalise a new status quo, arrived at after two bloody conflicts. The First and Second World Wars.
Both organisations were founded on the basis of defending the right of nations to self-determination. In both cases their charters outlawed pre-emptive strikes, big power attempts to occupy countries or change regimes and stressed that the nation state had replaced Empires.
The League of Nations was unable to resist Mussolini's desire to gain an Empire. It collapsed soon after the Italian fascists occupied Ethiopia.
The United Nations was created after the defeat of fascism. Its structures reflected the new order.
Despite the presence of the Soviet Union, the UN was unable to defend the newly independent Congo against Belgian and US intrigue or save the life of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba; in 1950 the Security Council took advantage of a temporary Soviet boycott to authorise 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. During the 60s, the UN was unable to stop the war in Vietnam.
In the unipolar world of today, with only one Big Power, the Security Council has become a venue for trading, not insults, but a share of the loot. European allies shuffle their feet at excessive American 'unilateralism' - essentially discomfiting failures to consult that have served as a cover for European subordination.
China and Russia bargain weakly in return for their favours in the Security Council. And if these are not forthcoming, action is taken anyway.
And the present membership of the Security Council is entirely outmoded in any case: there are pressing arguments for Germany, Japan, India and Brazil.
The United Nations offers no shelter to the weak against the soldiers of infinite justice and the bombs of enduring freedom.
There are 189 member states of the United Nations. There is, according to the figures released by the US Defense Department, a US military presence in 120 countries today.
The United Nations of America?
The United Nations has, in the past, created organisations such as UNESCO and the World Health Organisation whose effect has benefited the world. But in these days of neo-liberal governance, it is the world of consumption, rather than well-meaning social-welfare organisations that rule the roost.
The world has changed so much over the last two decades and the UN has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures.
In the absence of any countervailing power US hegemony is able to impose its self-description as a global norm: the euphemism used to describe its power is 'the international community', a phrase which punctuates every unctuous speech by the UN Secretary General, himself now a US appointee.
A failure to recognise this reality weakens all attempts to reconstruct the globe in the American image.
Do you agree?
Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444
lines open at 1.30pm.
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