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December 13, 2005
Iran And A Toothless UN
A few posts ago I quoted some comments by Winston Churchill in which he lambasted Britain's policies that allowed Germany to rearm itself throughout the 1930s. But it doesn't take a lot of effort to imagine how appeasement would be an extremely seductive idea to anyone living in Britain or France during that time period--World War I was a long, brutal and horribly degrading war that was still at the forefront of everyone's consciousness. Hindsight is perfect and the future unknown, so the natural human tendency is to try to mold the future by looking backwards. In 1936, when Hitler began the military aggression that eventually culminated in WWII, the end of the Great War was only 18 years distant. As far as wars go, Vietnam was a mosquito bite compared to WWI and we Americans are still living under its shadow, and the end of that war is now much more distant than 18 years.
Keeping that in mind, I read this excellent article (thanks to Right Wing News) by Saul Singer with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Singer notes the near universal assumption (by non-military types, anyway) that Israel would enjoy the same success as it did in Iraq in 1981, when the Israeli air force destroyed Saddam's nuclear reactor at Osirak. But Singer points out that the Iranians have not been obliging enough to repeat Saddam's mistakes, and expert military opinions now express doubt that Israel would be able to reliably destroy the Iranian installations. Singer:
Still, the question remains, why is little Israel being left to fight the world's war? [...]
The irony here is that it is precisely those who claim to believe mot in a borderless world ruled by international law who are ushering in a new Hobbesian era. How is one to explain Europe's obsession with the United Nations on the one hand, and its emasculation of the principles on which that organization was founded?
If Europe, through the U.N. and in partnership with the U.S., simply followed the U.N. Charter, we would be living in a very different world today. That charter (Ch. 1, Art. 1, Para. 1, first sentence) states the U.N.'s purpose: "To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace..." (emphasis added).
Does this ring any bells? Is there a state that is a greater threat to international peace than Iran? How much terrorism does a state have to sponsor, how many member states does it have to threaten with destruction, and how far does it have to get in obtaining the ultimate means to carry out such threats before the collective obligations of free nations under the Charter are remembered?
The nations that wrap themselves most tightly in international law are actually those responsible for turning that law, and its aspirations for the world, into a dead letter. As in the case of Iraq, by refusing to join the U.S. in effective non-military collective action against Iran, Europe is making military action or an Iranian victory inevitable.
Emphases in bold are mine. It still confounds me that the anti-war types seem to think that the removal of Saddam was a unilateral action taken on a whim. Saddam invaded Kuwait, remember? And Bush 41 assembled a by-the-UN-book coalition and expelled him. And in the intervening 13 years Saddam flaunted nearly a score of UN resolutions and conditions imposed as conditions of his first war; it was only the resolve of the United States along with the support of allies like Great Britain that ended the filling of the mass graves in Iraq. The UN is an utter parody of its own stated ideals.
And now we are supposed to look to the UN to deal with an insane state armed with nuclear weapons?
I fear we have sunk into a 1930s mindset. Talk is cheap and toothless resolutions salve national consciences. With the Iraq war still unfinished there is great resistance to any talk of military action against Iran. But looking to the past or burying our heads in the sand will do nothing to influence the mullahs' course of action. Nothing at all.
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Comments
I thought that picture of el Baradei accepting his peace prize said it all. What sort of peace is this? And at what price?
We will continue to pay for the vain foolishness of the U.N. in blood and treasure until John Bolton heads the wretched thing up.
Posted by: AcademicElephant at December 13, 2005 03:36 PM
Great blog Jeff. Rachel linked to you and this is the firs time Ive read it. Great Stuff!!!!
Posted by: Lance at December 13, 2005 05:21 PM
AE: I just hope that Bolton can get some results before Iran makes the UN as relevant as the League of Nations.
Lance: Thanks, I appreciate it--and I'll be back to your place as well.
Posted by: Jeff at December 13, 2005 10:48 PM
