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January 29, 2003
Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian journalist, says that the church leaders are caught up in the fog of peace. She says here that 'Australian churchman are caught up in moral surrender to the new secular God, the UN'. They are part of the compassion industry that has become a tool of the Left.
Underneath her criticism of 'the peace not war' position of the Australian churchman ----the basic criticism is the standard one that the making of independent moral decisions has giving into politics of appeasement of utopian pacifism----is a particular conservative assumption.
The UN is held to an inept organization, not much different from the old League of Nations, because the world consists of hostile nation-states engaged in power conflicts because they are all seeking to further their national interest at the expense of their rivals. Its a mean Social Dawinian world out there and nation-states have to fight to protect their self-interest. Power is all that matters, and since international law does not really exist, war is the best means of ensuring peace. History is then introduced to say that Saddam is the new Hitler. This view of the world, as an anarchic world dripping with blood and slaughter is called being realistic.
What is not acknowledged by neocons, such as Albrechtsen, is the challenge to the anarchic assumption by way that international law and international institutions are evolving to regulate the conduct of nation-states and to develop new modes of goverance. THe WTO, the International Criminal Court and the UN are examples of this.
This global mode of regulation and governance is rejected by neocons on the grounds that nothing should impinge on the negative freedom of the nation-state. Might is right. Justice is the rule of the strongest. No decision making should be given to the United nations.
This is the geopolitical assumption that the neocons regard as an unspoken truth and it is behind their attacks on the United Nations as a corrupt body. Votes are bought and sold in the name of self-interest whilst Germany and France in opposing the war with Iraq are merely acting to protect their lucrative business deals with Baghad. All that exists is self-interest and power.
This assumption is never defended publicly by the necons because it is taken to be the truth, even though it is very questionable assumption.
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Hmm, let me see, do you think the UN as it is currently constituted IS working?
The UN needs to be abolished and a new security organisation organised that reflects global realities.