UN role in Iraq crisis
By Fred Goldstein
On March 2, the United Nations Security Council
passed a resolution whose wording had been intensely debated.
Would it say that Iraq risks "very severe consequences" if it
violates the latest agreement with Secretary General Kofi
Annan? Or would the wording read "the severest
consequences"?
Of course, behind such slight nuances lie great differences
in meaning. The United States and Britain interpret "severest,"
which was included in the final resolution, as the Security
Council giving them advance authorization to bomb Iraq if it
finds some violation. "Very severe" had been interpreted as
withholding from Washington authorization to bomb pending some
non-military form of action.
If others on the Security Council contest the U.S./British
take on the resolution, this further reflects how isolated the
United States and Britain continue to be. And it is another
sign of divisions among the imperialist powers, making it
harder for Washington and London to get a UN cover for their
planned naked aggression.
But just because it is harder doesn't mean the danger of
attack has diminished one iota. No UN resolution or diplomatic
understanding will stop the U.S. and British governments from
striking. What has stayed their hand is fear of mass anti-war
resistance in the Arab world and at home.
All those who sympathize with the Iraqi people want to find
a way to ward off the merciless military assault the Pentagon
is itching to deliver.
But in fact, while Secretary General Kofi Annan's diplomatic
arrangement with Baghdad gave a reprieve from military attack
to the Iraqis, it also served to get the Clinton administration
out of the corner it had painted itself into. Had it gone ahead
with bombing without a shred of world support, it would have
faced an even bigger firestorm of protest in the Arab world and
from the new anti-war movement at home.
To keep bombs and missiles from raining down on its people,
the Iraqi government has every right to exploit differences in
the Security Council between Anglo-U.S. imperialism on the one
hand and French imperialism, the counter-revolutionary Yeltsin
regime of Russia and the People's Republic of China on the
other. But the anti-war movement should never for one moment
look to the UN for salvation.
Instead, the workers, the oppressed and all anti-war
activists should have an independent policy in the current
crisis.
Security council dominated
by imperialists
The UN consists of the Security Council and the General
Assembly. These two different bodies have a somewhat different
social character.
The General Assembly has never been consulted for a moment
during the crisis. Yet it represents 185 nations, the vast
majority of the world's population.
The Security Council, on the other hand, is dominated by its
permanent imperialist members-the United States, Britain and
France. They can usually count on the collaboration of the
counter-revolutionary, would-be imperialist regime of Russia,
the fourth member.
The socialist government of the People's Republic of China,
the fifth permanent member, has unfortunately either acquiesced
to or severely limited its demands on the United States and
Britain in this crisis.
The vast majority of the countries in the General Assembly
are in fact oppressed and super-exploited by the ruling classes
of the imperialist powers that dominate the Security Council.
Of course, the governments of most of these countries in Asia,
Africa, Latin America and the Middle East represent their
native capitalist classes. They are weak governments that fear
both imperialism and the anger of the oppressed masses.
Year after year the General Assembly has voted against the
blockade of Cuba by enormous margins, only to be ignored by the
United States. No wonder the Clinton administration will not
dare to submit a decision on carrying out this latest
aggression to the General Assembly.
Any debate in the Security Council about whether to attack
Iraq, disarm it or apply sanctions is not a UN debate-it is a
debate among imperialist powers over how to subjugate Iraq.
No reaction to U.S. shredding
of UN charter
Nothing shows the imperialist character of the UN Security
Council so clearly as this: For days now the U.S. capitalist
media have been full of news about CIA plans to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. While they keep talking about "suspected" Iraqi
violations of the weapons agreement, there is nothing suspected
about this open U.S. declaration of plans to overthrow a
sovereign government.
For a member government to try to overthrow another member
not only violates international law but shreds the UN Charter
itself. It is grounds for the most serious punishment. Yet
powerful figures in Washington speak with impunity about
"taking out" Saddam Hussein.
The UN debates must be seen for what they are: debates
between the hard cop and the soft cop, between strong
imperialist powers and weak ones. In these arguments, the
workers and oppressed must oppose both sides.
Whether the French way or the U.S. way, the goal of all
these powers is to keep Iraq under the thumb of imperialism, to
get hold of its oil and exploit the Iraqi masses.
Weaker powers like France have to do it by maneuver and
diplomacy only because they lack the military and financial
power of the U.S.-Britain bloc. Washington wants to push its
weight around by military means-not only to defeat and
re-enslave Iraq but to establish its domination in the entire
region.
In fact, the premise behind both the 1991 Gulf War and the
UN sanctions-which have already killed over 1.5 million people,
mostly children-was drawn up by imperialism. It should be
soundly rejected.
Aggression wasn't the issue
Washington rounded up a massive coalition in 1990 on the
pretext of "stopping aggression" after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The issue in the Gulf War should never have been formulated
as aggression. That alone does not define the question for the
workers and oppressed.
Iraq invaded Kuwait because of immediate provocations-the
slant drill ing of Iraqi oil fields from inside Kuwaiti
territory and other aggressive maneuvers-but also because of
what Iraq asserts to be a historical claim to territory kept
under Britain's thumb after World War I.
Imperialism has been robbing and plundering the region of
its wealth for generations. Once the Iraqi invasion occurred,
regardless of its wisdom, the issue became: Was the territory
of Kuwait to remain in the hands of a puppet feudal monarchy
that holds its vast oil wealth in trust for imperialism? Or was
it to fall into the hands of a bourgeois nationalist regime
that has used its oil wealth directly for the national
development of the Arab people, even if on a capitalist
basis?
It was necessary not only to oppose imperialist attack but
to side with the Iraqis against the feudal monarchy and its
masters. That's what the heroic Palestinian people did.
As for Iraq's historical claims to the territory of Kuwait,
that is for the Arab people themselves to decide, independent
of the intervention of the imperialist oppressors.
Wall Street, London, Paris and Rome have no business
settling disputes between Arab peoples-or any other oppressed
people, for that matter.
There have been and always will be times when the workers or
the oppressed have to take the offensive against their
oppressors. That is their absolute right-whether in warfare, a
strike, or a struggle against racist police, the Ku Klux Klan
or anti-gay bigots. The right of first strike cannot be left to
the imperialists.
The Arab masses fully feel the great irony of the current
crisis. They know how much oil it takes to keep giant aircraft
carriers and warships afloat and to keep the sorties flying.
And they know that this oil necessary for U.S. and British
aggression has been stolen from them.
This totally symbolizes the historical relationship between
the Arab people and imperialism.
The vast technological, military-industrial complex that has
enabled the U.S., British and French ruling classes to dominate
the Arab world is based in large part on trillions of dollars
in wealth plundered from the region. It comes from the sweat
and blood of the Arab masses.
They built the Suez Canal, the railroads, the ports and the
pipelines that were used to carry their wealth back to the
imperialist metropolises-where it strengthened the world
domination of the financiers, the industrialists and the oil
barons.
If the United Nations truly represented the people and not
the exploiting ruling classes, it would be debating not how to
attack Iraq but how to force the imperialists of the United
States, Britain and their cutthroat colleagues out of the
Middle East. The next agenda item would be repaying the
hundreds of billions of dollars robbed over a century and a
half of imperialist plunder.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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