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Tuesday, February 4, 2003
THE UN'S SIGNIFICANCE

Robert Wright's piece in today's NY Times starts off on the right track, but then veers into what you might expect from a piece on Iraq in the Times.


But an honest liberal has to admit that Mr. Bush's unilateralist belligerence lit a fire under the Security Council, giving the United Nations a prominence it has rarely enjoyed in its 57-year history. In fact, there remains a slim chance that the president could, however paradoxically, emerge as a historic figure in the United Nations' evolution toward enduring significance. But only if administration hawks make an admission of their own: that working through the United Nations could get them everything they profess to want. That means not just disarmament, but regime change and the introduction of democracy.

Both the United Nations' champions and its critics sometimes indulge a gauzy conception of its founding mission. The idea wasn't to bring world peace through love and understanding. The main idea was that powerful nations would spot troublemakers and pound them into submission (hence bringing "collective security," in polite language).


That I can agree with. Bush has given the UN a chance to show that it can actually stand up and do the job it was meant to do, but he goes on...

If President Bush starts a war without explicit Security Council sanction, and before weapons inspectors have caught Iraq red-handed, he will have undone any good he did for the United Nations in November. The lesson learned — by, say, a North Korean dictator — will be that if you let weapons inspectors in, America may attack you anyway, even if they don't find much of anything. But if the president works through the Security Council and unseats Saddam Hussein without war, this could be a watershed in the history of the United Nations.

If "Bush starts a war without explicit Security Council sanction," it won't be America that's doing harm to the UN's reputation; it will be the UN itself. The proof is there that Iraq is not complying, we already know that even if the Doves Dead Pigeons... (Even a dove will fight back so that term won't work...) don't want to admit it. It is up to the UN now to step up and go along with this war (assuming nothing radical comes out of Baghdad) or it will be their own fault that they have lost their significance.

Posted by Rob Bernard on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 at 5:34 PM in War/Terrorism/Middle East
 
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