![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
Here goes the promised rant:
After spending too much time in the company of the self-proclaimed conspiracy theorists, namely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tryogeru and kaydeefalls, I may have picked up a little too much of their paranoid, don't-trust-the-government, X-Files mentality, but I am worried about the Bush administration's attitude toward the UN. I'm slowly reimmersing myself into keeping close track of international news again, through the BBC World News Service and the New York Times. Now the administration has made plenty of speeches about how they plan for the UN to take a vital role in the process, but there are more than a few signs that seem to indicate that they want the role to be an effectively useless one.
First of all, most the international aid agencies in Iraq are being coordinated by the Pentagon, which has made some relief organizations reluctant to join in the reconstruction effort. (They say that if the Pentagon controls aid money, then humanitarian efforts could potentially become a part of military strategy, i.e. distributing food, medicine and money to areas that are docile under U.S. control.) There is no branch of OCHA set up in Iraq, last I heard, and I haven't heard much about the UNDP either. Just because I'm not hearing about the UN agencies doesn't mean that they aren't there, but I remember that the news made much more references to UN affiliated organizations in Afghanistan after the Taliban than they do now in Iraq after Hussein.
Second of all, the U.S. wants to put an end to sanctions and the oil-for-food program, which I'm not objecting to on principle, but I think the haste to call for a change in UN policy is disturbing. I never liked sanctions much myself, but they are one of the few means of enforcement allowed to the Security Council, and the Times made a rather ominous concluding remark last week about how sanctions are currently the only mechanism of UN involvement in Iraq. I may be reading too much into this development, but the fact that the U.S. is rushing to put an end to the sanctions (some cynics say it is so that Iraq can sell oil to the U.S. without the constraints of the oil-for-food programs, never mind that it's been doing that covertly for years already) suggests that the U.S. doesn't want too much UN interference.
Third of all, the U.S. sold the major contract for reconstruction to an American company, and apparently the British are miffed because the bidding process wasn't transparent and didn't even consider any foreign companies in its starting pool. (They also allude to the hefty campaign contributions made to certain Republican politicians, but we all knew the lobbying in Washington is behind most decisions anyway.) The subcontractors will most likely include some foreign corporations, but the way that the U.S. government has been handling this matter generally suggests that it plans to keep the reconstruction effort firmly in American hands. Or at least under American control, with nominal involvement by the UN and the EU as sops to global opinion.
And that whole separate weapons inspection team! Argh! I hope I don't have to spell out what that means.
The truth is, the reason why this war is different from all the other American military interventions and interferences of the past who-knows-how-many years is that it was a mostly unilateral preemptive strike. (We had some allies, true, but you can't call it multilateral simply because Britain and Poland send some troops.) Yes, it may have been in the national security interests of the U.S. to attack Iraq (although that rationale has lost much of its force, to be replaced with "America the Liberator" instead), but it wasn't self-defense, not without a direct and immediate military threat. A preemptive strike is effectively in violation of the UN Charter. What will the consequences of this precedent be? India can go and attack or even bomb Pakistan and call it a preemptive strike against terrorism. Which will be true. Hopefully, that scenario is unlikely. Or nations can openly violate other articles of the Charter, citing this war as example. It won't be so easy for any other country to get away with it, but the truth is, what can the UN do? The Charter is enforced by consensus. Potentially, the Secretary-General can revoke membership, but that's impossible for the big countries, especially the U.S., without which the international organization will flop down like a house of cards (see the League of Nations).
All right, so countries have violated international law innumerable times before, but they usually didn't incorporate it openly into foreign policy. And indeed preemptive strikes are very effective strategically, much less messy and costly than deliberately handicapping yourself by waiting for your enemy to get to you first. Nevertheless, let's think of the counterpart in individual society. If you had an enemy, who definitely possessed weapons, possibly illegal weapons, and was likely to kill you, do you think any court would consider that an excuse to go and kill that man before he even attempted to attack you? Possibly your sentence would be decreased to, say, manslaughter (I'm not too sure about that, not being a lawyer), but I doubt that any jury would consider you innocent by reason of "self-defense". They'd certainly clap you in jail, even if they might not be wholly unsympathetic to your situation. Of course, if there is a serious likelihood that the man will kill you, then it'll be in your interests to kill him first. But societies don't work like that.
This metaphor is imperfect for several reasons. Obviously, nations are very different from individuals. Also, there is no "society" of nations, and international relations are basically in a state of total, utter anarchy, with only moderate attempts at civilization through organizations like the UN and NATO and the EU. Furthermore, if you really were in the above situation, you'd ask the police for help instead of taking things into your own hands, and there is no international equivalent of a police force. Finally, if we're going to make the metaphor accurate with respect to the U.S., you as potential preemptive murderer would probably be a billionaire and a prominent politician to boot, which means you'll have enough money to buy off the judge and jury, getting off scot-free in the end. Also the worst enemy that you killed would most likely be a former criminal and a relatively poor man, although he may have lots of illegal funds hidden away in inaccessible places, so there'd be more public support at least among your rich and powerful peers. (And your not-so-rich-or-powerful, but certainly ambitious underlings.) Urgh, I think this metaphor is running away with itself.
My real point is, the war happened and is most likely over (though it's not really over until Saddam Hussein is either tried like Milosevic or assassinated), and from quite a few perspectives, it wasn't wrong of the U.S. to attack. But the fact that the U.S. went ahead without UN consensus has damaged that organization's reputation severely, and while we may not see the effects now, I do think there is a subtle change in our opinions of its efficacy that will prove to discredit it in the long run. I've opined to my parents that the only real face-save for the UN is in the reconstruction process, and the U.S. approach so far has been rather discouraging. (Imagine, an American general put in charge of the interim administration! I mean, I know they convened a Congress and all that, but!)
Still, I hope the past fifty years has entrenched enough of a sense of protocol or tradition in U.S. implementation of foreign policy to keep the U.S. using the UN as at least a convenient formality and possibly even a true global forum. News commentators have mentioned a "New Imperium" that has arrived with the expansion of the war on terror. Sounds ominous doesn't it? One reporter said that we fought "the right war for the wrong reasons", that we should have justified it to the international community as a humanitarian action and negotiated more actively for a Security Council consensus before we went to war. I don't know if I quite agree with him that the U.S. should now rectify its earlier errors by taking a more interventionist and more consistent approach. Certainly on grounds of personal moral superiority, it would feel more satisfying if the U.S. had a humanitarian agenda that cracked down on "allies" as much as it did on enemies. But I think that's impossible, and the whole "holier-than-thou" attitude of the U.S. is insufferable as it is. I would prefer however that the U.S. take a more multilateral and diplomatic approach in the future, especially with this "bullying" (as my father calls it) philosophy that Bush has in foreign policy.
By the way, I'd like to shout out a resounding "I told you so." Lyd-chan and I were discussing this idea of "America the liberator", and I told her that if Iraq has a true democracy, there's a huge risk that the people will simply elect a religious fundamentalist government like Iran. And guess what? The Shi'ite majority in Iraq, politically underrepresented and oppressed under Hussein (according to NPR News), is calling for a Islamic government. I do admit that I think Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and that on a certain level, I'm glad the U.S. got rid of him. It's rather relieving to see the footage of Iraqis cheering in the streets (even after American media bias has been accounted for). But it's stupid to think, "Oh, now that Iraq is liberated, it'll become a nice obedient democratic ally in the Middle East."
Democracy isn't really the absolute best form of government, especially since there is more than one type of democracy, and most types include rampant corruption, thin veils over dictatorships, and/or civil war. In some sense there is no true democracy at all, no, not even in the U.S., and in another sense, what we all really mean when we say democracy is a constitutional republic that more or less respects a certain number of human rights, includes the separation of powers, and has a change of rulers in a period that is less than a human lifetime. That's a good and decent government, but not the best. Maybe we can call it the best compromise, but even that's not necesssarily true. Look at South Korea up until the 1990s. Kim Young-sam, who was before Kim Dae-jung, was possibly the first president who wasn't actually a dictator underneath (and let's not talk about the immense political corruption that's still present in the insane party system and boils up into a scandal every few months). But the country was able to develop its economy most rapidly under its worst dictator. And you wonder why the non-Western world isn't always so thrilled about American ideals? I'm not saying democracy is bad; on the contrary, I can't really think of a better alternative for a stable developed country. But I don't think we should sanctify it and wax poetic on its virtues to the point of being blind about reality.
...Tari
Here goes the promised rant:
After spending too much time in the company of the self-proclaimed conspiracy theorists, namely
tryogeru and kaydeefalls, I may have picked up a little too much of their paranoid, don't-trust-the-government, X-Files mentality, but I am worried about the Bush administration's attitude toward the UN. I'm slowly reimmersing myself into keeping close track of international news again, through the BBC World News Service and the New York Times. Now the administration has made plenty of speeches about how they plan for the UN to take a vital role in the process, but there are more than a few signs that seem to indicate that they want the role to be an effectively useless one. First of all, most the international aid agencies in Iraq are being coordinated by the Pentagon, which has made some relief organizations reluctant to join in the reconstruction effort. (They say that if the Pentagon controls aid money, then humanitarian efforts could potentially become a part of military strategy, i.e. distributing food, medicine and money to areas that are docile under U.S. control.) There is no branch of OCHA set up in Iraq, last I heard, and I haven't heard much about the UNDP either. Just because I'm not hearing about the UN agencies doesn't mean that they aren't there, but I remember that the news made much more references to UN affiliated organizations in Afghanistan after the Taliban than they do now in Iraq after Hussein.
Second of all, the U.S. wants to put an end to sanctions and the oil-for-food program, which I'm not objecting to on principle, but I think the haste to call for a change in UN policy is disturbing. I never liked sanctions much myself, but they are one of the few means of enforcement allowed to the Security Council, and the Times made a rather ominous concluding remark last week about how sanctions are currently the only mechanism of UN involvement in Iraq. I may be reading too much into this development, but the fact that the U.S. is rushing to put an end to the sanctions (some cynics say it is so that Iraq can sell oil to the U.S. without the constraints of the oil-for-food programs, never mind that it's been doing that covertly for years already) suggests that the U.S. doesn't want too much UN interference.
Third of all, the U.S. sold the major contract for reconstruction to an American company, and apparently the British are miffed because the bidding process wasn't transparent and didn't even consider any foreign companies in its starting pool. (They also allude to the hefty campaign contributions made to certain Republican politicians, but we all knew the lobbying in Washington is behind most decisions anyway.) The subcontractors will most likely include some foreign corporations, but the way that the U.S. government has been handling this matter generally suggests that it plans to keep the reconstruction effort firmly in American hands. Or at least under American control, with nominal involvement by the UN and the EU as sops to global opinion.
And that whole separate weapons inspection team! Argh! I hope I don't have to spell out what that means.
The truth is, the reason why this war is different from all the other American military interventions and interferences of the past who-knows-how-many years is that it was a mostly unilateral preemptive strike. (We had some allies, true, but you can't call it multilateral simply because Britain and Poland send some troops.) Yes, it may have been in the national security interests of the U.S. to attack Iraq (although that rationale has lost much of its force, to be replaced with "America the Liberator" instead), but it wasn't self-defense, not without a direct and immediate military threat. A preemptive strike is effectively in violation of the UN Charter. What will the consequences of this precedent be? India can go and attack or even bomb Pakistan and call it a preemptive strike against terrorism. Which will be true. Hopefully, that scenario is unlikely. Or nations can openly violate other articles of the Charter, citing this war as example. It won't be so easy for any other country to get away with it, but the truth is, what can the UN do? The Charter is enforced by consensus. Potentially, the Secretary-General can revoke membership, but that's impossible for the big countries, especially the U.S., without which the international organization will flop down like a house of cards (see the League of Nations).
All right, so countries have violated international law innumerable times before, but they usually didn't incorporate it openly into foreign policy. And indeed preemptive strikes are very effective strategically, much less messy and costly than deliberately handicapping yourself by waiting for your enemy to get to you first. Nevertheless, let's think of the counterpart in individual society. If you had an enemy, who definitely possessed weapons, possibly illegal weapons, and was likely to kill you, do you think any court would consider that an excuse to go and kill that man before he even attempted to attack you? Possibly your sentence would be decreased to, say, manslaughter (I'm not too sure about that, not being a lawyer), but I doubt that any jury would consider you innocent by reason of "self-defense". They'd certainly clap you in jail, even if they might not be wholly unsympathetic to your situation. Of course, if there is a serious likelihood that the man will kill you, then it'll be in your interests to kill him first. But societies don't work like that.
This metaphor is imperfect for several reasons. Obviously, nations are very different from individuals. Also, there is no "society" of nations, and international relations are basically in a state of total, utter anarchy, with only moderate attempts at civilization through organizations like the UN and NATO and the EU. Furthermore, if you really were in the above situation, you'd ask the police for help instead of taking things into your own hands, and there is no international equivalent of a police force. Finally, if we're going to make the metaphor accurate with respect to the U.S., you as potential preemptive murderer would probably be a billionaire and a prominent politician to boot, which means you'll have enough money to buy off the judge and jury, getting off scot-free in the end. Also the worst enemy that you killed would most likely be a former criminal and a relatively poor man, although he may have lots of illegal funds hidden away in inaccessible places, so there'd be more public support at least among your rich and powerful peers. (And your not-so-rich-or-powerful, but certainly ambitious underlings.) Urgh, I think this metaphor is running away with itself.
My real point is, the war happened and is most likely over (though it's not really over until Saddam Hussein is either tried like Milosevic or assassinated), and from quite a few perspectives, it wasn't wrong of the U.S. to attack. But the fact that the U.S. went ahead without UN consensus has damaged that organization's reputation severely, and while we may not see the effects now, I do think there is a subtle change in our opinions of its efficacy that will prove to discredit it in the long run. I've opined to my parents that the only real face-save for the UN is in the reconstruction process, and the U.S. approach so far has been rather discouraging. (Imagine, an American general put in charge of the interim administration! I mean, I know they convened a Congress and all that, but!)
Still, I hope the past fifty years has entrenched enough of a sense of protocol or tradition in U.S. implementation of foreign policy to keep the U.S. using the UN as at least a convenient formality and possibly even a true global forum. News commentators have mentioned a "New Imperium" that has arrived with the expansion of the war on terror. Sounds ominous doesn't it? One reporter said that we fought "the right war for the wrong reasons", that we should have justified it to the international community as a humanitarian action and negotiated more actively for a Security Council consensus before we went to war. I don't know if I quite agree with him that the U.S. should now rectify its earlier errors by taking a more interventionist and more consistent approach. Certainly on grounds of personal moral superiority, it would feel more satisfying if the U.S. had a humanitarian agenda that cracked down on "allies" as much as it did on enemies. But I think that's impossible, and the whole "holier-than-thou" attitude of the U.S. is insufferable as it is. I would prefer however that the U.S. take a more multilateral and diplomatic approach in the future, especially with this "bullying" (as my father calls it) philosophy that Bush has in foreign policy.
By the way, I'd like to shout out a resounding "I told you so." Lyd-chan and I were discussing this idea of "America the liberator", and I told her that if Iraq has a true democracy, there's a huge risk that the people will simply elect a religious fundamentalist government like Iran. And guess what? The Shi'ite majority in Iraq, politically underrepresented and oppressed under Hussein (according to NPR News), is calling for a Islamic government. I do admit that I think Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and that on a certain level, I'm glad the U.S. got rid of him. It's rather relieving to see the footage of Iraqis cheering in the streets (even after American media bias has been accounted for). But it's stupid to think, "Oh, now that Iraq is liberated, it'll become a nice obedient democratic ally in the Middle East."
Democracy isn't really the absolute best form of government, especially since there is more than one type of democracy, and most types include rampant corruption, thin veils over dictatorships, and/or civil war. In some sense there is no true democracy at all, no, not even in the U.S., and in another sense, what we all really mean when we say democracy is a constitutional republic that more or less respects a certain number of human rights, includes the separation of powers, and has a change of rulers in a period that is less than a human lifetime. That's a good and decent government, but not the best. Maybe we can call it the best compromise, but even that's not necesssarily true. Look at South Korea up until the 1990s. Kim Young-sam, who was before Kim Dae-jung, was possibly the first president who wasn't actually a dictator underneath (and let's not talk about the immense political corruption that's still present in the insane party system and boils up into a scandal every few months). But the country was able to develop its economy most rapidly under its worst dictator. And you wonder why the non-Western world isn't always so thrilled about American ideals? I'm not saying democracy is bad; on the contrary, I can't really think of a better alternative for a stable developed country. But I don't think we should sanctify it and wax poetic on its virtues to the point of being blind about reality.
...Tari
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-27 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-28 08:00 am (UTC)