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US, Britain: Rogue states in the making
NEW YORK-- At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, a former Peruvian diplomat expressed scepticism about the ability of the United Nations to survive a diplomatic battle between political giants. "When two small powers have a dispute'', he complained, ''the dispute disappears. When a great power and a small power are in conflict, the small power disappears. And when two great powers have a dispute, the United Nations disappears."

And so UN observers watching the slanging match between two big powers - the US and France - are wondering whether the days of the United Nations as a political force are numbered. As he heads for a diplomatic showdown with France, Russia and China in the Security Council, President George Bush has said that even if his resolution is rejected, he will still go to war without UN authorisation.

"We don't need UN approval to do so," he told reporters at a primetime news conference on Thursday. And the fact that he came to the UN in September last year to plead for his case for international support now appears disingenuous. What he obviously sought from the UN was political cover.

In an interview with MTV television last week, even British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was prepared to defy the UN and go to war alongside Bush despite a possible revolt in the ranks of his own Labour Party in London. But their joint war plans are facing formidable opposition both inside and outside the United Nations.

In one of his syndicated cartoons, Garry Trudeau portrays US educationists complaining about budgetary cuts on education while Bush "sits in his bunker buying up support for a war the whole world opposes." In the next panel in the cartoon, a White House aide is heard telling Bush: "And Russia wants $12 billion in unmarked bills" --the preferred mode of currency usually demanded by crooks seeking ransom money to release hostages-- for its support for the US resolution.

But even ransom money has failed to generate support for the US. The biggest surprise last week was the rejection by the Turkish parliament of a $26 billion US aid package which was conditioned on Turkey permitting the use of its bases by American troops.
Paradoxically, it was a democratically elected government that voted against a US military presence inside Turkey while it is rigidly authoritarian governments in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia that have facilitated the use of their bases by American troops in the Gulf.

If all three Arab countries had democratic assemblies-- as the US would have it one day -- they may well have rejected American requests for a military strike against one of their neighbours. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued last week that if any action is taken outside the Security Council, support for such unilateral action-- popular or otherwise-- would also be diminished in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Annan refused to concede that US action outside the UN would spell doom to the world body. "The United Nations is much, much larger than the Iraqi crisis," he said.
The Secretary-General, who has already complained that the international community is far too obsessed with Iraq to the point where it is ignoring some of the world's more pressing humanitarian problems, agrees that Iraq is just one of the more important issues of the day.

"We're dealing with economic, social, humanitarian and other issues. And we're dealing with many other crises around the world," he said. The speculation is that while the United States may go to war without Security Council authorisation, it may still return to the 191-member world body to seek its help to rebuild a post-war Iraq.

"If the Security Council is to be used as an instrument to pick up after the exercise of imperial power, that wouldn't be a good idea", says David Malone, president of the New York-based International Peace Academy. "And that's a lot to think about, and a lot to worry about," says Malone, a former Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations.

Last week was also a bad week for American diplomacy. Besides Turkey, it also lost the support of Russia and China, two permanent members who could either veto or abstain on the US-UK resolution calling for war. The Non-Aligned Movement, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), all opposed the war last week.

The US is poised not just to battle Iraq -- it is ready to take on the entire world, with democracy and public opinion being considered matters of little consequence in decision-making.

"If the US and Britain go to war against the wishes of the Security Council, then it will establish that these two are the real 'rogue states' of international law and politics," says Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois.

"They will have proved themselves to be the legal, political and historical equivalents to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy acting in defiance of the League of Nations during the period prior to the outbreak of the Second World War," Boyle said. "The rest of the world will draw the appropriate conclusions."

With Bush insisting the Iraq should keep destroying all its weapons of mass destruction, comedian Jay Leno says: "The Iraqis destroyed 10 missiles yesterday and eight more today. Bush may be the smartest military man in history. He's waiting until the enemy destroys all its weapons -- and then we declare war."

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