Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.


February 26, 2003

THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Filed under: How the World Really Works — Dave Pollard @ 09:52
This week’s print version of the New Yorker includes an extensive article on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which is not included in the online version. It contains some interesting observations on the future of the U.N. at this critical juncture. A few examples:

For Annan, the chief lesson of the past decade is that the U.N. must say no to impossible missions and insufficiently supported mandates.

Annan has even suggested that preemptive military action may be justified to avert the threat of a massive slaughter or a genocide [such as occurred in Rwanda in 1994].

The reliance on ad-hoc coalitions of national armies [in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan and the Ivory Coast] to take on the missions that the U.N. is incapable of managing leaves the organization more dependent than ever on the will of its member states.

For the past three years, Annan has been unable to raise a force of even 7000 troops – the number that failed to hold Srebrenica – to beef up the U.N.’s miniscule peace-keeping mission in the Congo…where it is estimated that two to three million people have died since 1998 as a result of civil war and foreign occupation.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR WAR

Filed under: How the World Really Works — Dave Pollard @ 09:30
The London Guardian today urges Britons, and especially MPs voting this evening on a deceptively-worded resolution to give Blair authority to commit his country and troops to war on Iraq, to reject war and Bush’s artificial deadline. The Guardian instead supports the French/German/Russian proposal to extend and enhance inspections. The crux of the argument, lost in the rhetoric and arm-twisting, is that Resolution 1441 did not specify a deadline for Iraq compliance. Although Saddam is in material breach of the resolution, and behaving deplorably, there is no reason to believe that sustained pressure, at least for the four months proposed in the alternative proposal, will not allow progress to continue to be made.

The logical strategy should continue to be one of containment, and as long as Saddam does not pose an imminent threat to anyone (and there is no evidence he does) that strategy should prevail. Obviously, containment including continued inspections cannot be expected to work without the threat of consequences, but 1441 already does that, and it is working, even if too slowly for the warmongers. And the wording of 1441 does not say that the only possible consequence of non-compliance is war. There are many diplomatic alternatives short of war that can still be tried if Saddam even if fails to fully comply. For example, the U.N. could insist that Saddam step down, an action which might well be supported by many of Iraq’s neighbours. The point is that many untried alternatives exist, and there is no need for a short deadline.

Diplomacy takes time. It is messy, awkward, and frustrating. And if one of the combatants is so belligerent that no amount of persuasion will cause them to agree to a peaceful solution, diplomacy can sometimes fail. But until diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted, they need to be given time to work. As the Guardian concludes, this is not the time for war.

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