The United Nations and the Iraq War

Some time ago I promised to delve into and illuminate some of the reasons that it was a good idea for the US to invade Iraq. Since I'm still on vacation for a couple of days, I figured I'd start that up though it won't be finished. I still have other things I have to do also. As I was making a list of things to talk about, I suddenly became inspired to expound on the topic of the United Nations. So I've posted this piece first. It's not quite up to professional standards, as I've written it all at one sitting from what is in my head right now, but it's reasonably clear and I've sprinkled it with references when I could find relevant ones.


The Iraqi adventure has proven the abject uselessness of the United Nations as an international security agent.

After fourteen UN resolutions against Saddam’s defiant Iraq the UN did something bold and innovative to compel obedience… absolutely nothing. In addition to doing nothing, the international sanctions (and attached Oil for Food program) that were supposed to compel Iraq into doing something were subverted into private financial projects (i.e. bribery and embezzlement) by a variety of people ranging from the UN leadership to private business interests to members of governments, all the while secretly enriching Saddam Hussein and thereby defeating the entire purpose of the sanctions. On top of this, when the US and Britain proposed in 2002 to doing something to actually enforce the UN resolutions (read: threaten and perhaps use force), many of the other members did their utmost to block the proposed actions, including even the threat of force. (without the threat of force, why would Iraq agree to anything?)

While people (usually on the left) talk about the Iraq war as being the private project of President Bush and his minion, Tony Blair, in violation of international laws left and right, not to mention human decency, it has probably been the greatest single blow for a peaceful international order since the end of the Cold War. Or at least, it would have been were so many people not so doggedly, irrationally set against it. Think about it; for the first time since Korea (I specifically leave out Gulf War I, because if its intimate connection to Gulf War II; they may as well be two phases of the same conflict and perhaps even share a name) rogue international behavior in violation of UN resolutions (some of which explicitly threaten the use of force, although in diplo-speak, so typical laymen miss the point) would be met with real consequences. One of the reasons that the UN is weak is because the nations that it was designed to control, the Irans and North Koreas and Iraqs of the world, don’t listen to it. Again, why should they? No one will make them. The UN might, maybe, if the French and Russians and Chinese are in the mood to lose potential sales, pass economic sanctions which will be ignored or subverted after a few years, if not revoked outright because of ‘humanitarian reasons.’ (That was a constant debate in the UN throughout the 90s) But the use of force? That’s so… uncivilized. The same scenario can be extended to Iran and its nuclear ambitions, to genocide in Darfur and Rwanda and Serbia, et cetera. All pressing problems that the UN should, theoretically, counter. All terrible tragedies that instead require(d) private intervention because the Security Council couldn't/can't bring themselves to act. Finally, even private intervention on behalf of the UN as in 2003 (as I mentioned, previous resolutions that Iraq had violated promised the use of force) was condemned because (hah) it went around specific UN authority. So weakness (ahem, sophistication) breeds impotence, (endless ineffectual diplomacy) as you might expect

What the diplomatic bruhah before the Iraq invasion showed about the UN was that the UN as an institution absolutely lacked the means and collective will to enforce itself on the international community and, because of that, there's really nothing anyone can do about it when third party powers like the US and UK decide to act instead. France's vaunted and much abused (and apparently paid for, if you followed the above links) veto power in the UNSC proved utterly worthless in the end, because it exists and they threatened it on the premise that no one would dare to operate outside the explicit (rather than implied, as the US/UK did) blessings of the UN. But someone dared, and suddenly the big stick was broken. What Protestants care about being ex-communicated, after all?

What does this demonstration of impotence mean for the US? Well first of all no one, even foreign powers, can expect the UN to be a constraint against an unwilling United States in the future for the same reason that it hasn't been a constraint against any other power disinclined to listen to it; no one will make us. If the rules don't work for us, we will change (or ignore) the rules. Future international political battles will take place where they belong; behind closed doors.

I can already hear people whining about how that makes the US a 'unilateral' rogue nation. Well, they're right, sort of. If it is in our national interest to ignore 'the rules' then we will do so, as we have in the past. The thing is, so will everyone else. France can land troops in a west African nation or ruthlessly slaughter people in Algeria without asking permission, the Russians can storm and burn Chechnyan cities and extort Ukraine with its energy resources without going through international processes, the Chinese can threaten to (or actually) invade its neighbors like Tibet and Vietnam and Taiwan without the blessings of the UN... why can't the US topple an enemy power who violated a cease-fire by firing on our forces and broke the WMD clauses, attempted to assassinate a US President, and was a chief supporter of international terrorism? (any one of which is a cassus belli) Why aren't these other (sitting UN Security Council member) powers condemned? Why are THEY condemning us, the damned hypocrites? *shrugs* Because we're the US. Most everyone hates us. Those who don't hate us envy us. We're the biggest, brightest target on the international battlefield, which is why peace activists can, with a straight face and clear conscience, call us a terrorist nation and march in protests alongside Stalinist communists (yes, that happened in 2003. Several times) instead of against people like the Iranians, the Sudanese, Hamas, and so forth.

The launching of the invasion also demonstrated that UN resolutions might actually be carried out by a member nation independent of a specific UNSC "go" date. In its most basic terms, the UN authorized the use of force against Iraq in 1991, the use of force was suspended upon the signing of a cease-fire, the cease-fire was violated, and hostilities resumed, ending in the destruction of the Iraqi government. Therefore, the US and UK carried out the final execution of motions begun twelve years earlier. Hmm; UN Resolutions can be dangerous after all. Sure they may sit there for a decade or so, but sooner or later a member state can suddenly decide to enforce it and lo and behold they have (theoretically) executed the will of the UN body. The idea that a UN resolution would actually be enforced and driven to its conclusion is kind of a shocker; I suspect that there will therefore be fewer of them in the future, and more carefully worded. Given the lowest common denominator requirements in effect already, I expect a decrease in the number and even theoretical potency of UNSC Resolutions. The UN will slowly remove itself from any interference in international power politics beyond the symbolic level because its members fear that Resolutions might be used against them in the future by crazy unilateralists. Like America, for instance.

So it seems that the Iraq war has put a final nail into the relevancy of the United Nations to international politics. Not only is it too weak institutionally to compel behavior of any kind, but because nations can use its declarations as a sort of diplomatic legitimacy shield outside the explicit will of the decision-making body it will stop even trying to influence international politics in meaningful (at least in remotely controversial) ways.

As an American nationalist, I fervently hope this is true. I see the UN as a corrupt, ineffectual, anti-American country club which, at odds with all logic and morality, grants legitimacy and power to the most odious regimes on earth, within our borders and largely at our expense. And I would much rather see it weakened or disappeared than strengthened and intrusive.