|
February 5, 2003
Opinion polls show that a majority of Australians are willing to go to war with Iraq with a UN mandate. Around 75% of Australians do not support a war with Iraq without UN approval and so they are opposed to John Howard's unilateral stance. John Howard and his neo-conservative supporters are definitely out of step with public opinion.
This places the neo-cons on the defensive, as they are 100% behind the US, Britain and Australia bypassing the UN and going to war with Iraq alone. Neocons are conservatives who work within the horizons of realpolitik that gives primacy to the national interst, emphasize the geopolitics, and see international relations as the inevitible struggle of warring states. They see the cosmopolitan support for the UN as the first step to a federated world government.
What neocons do when faced with the above situation? They attack public opinion with all guns blazing. Thus Janet Albrechtsen says Australian citizens have a Misinformed trust in a toothless tiger. We shy away from unilateral action by the US & allies because the UN told us to; our argument is based on a 'lack of logic to say nothing of moral abdication.' There is a blog on this article by Gummo Trotsky who just cannot resisting commenting on articles by his favourite hero-columnist. And a very fine blog it is too.
The obvious inference of Albrechtsen's sweeping criticism is that we Australian citizens who place our trust in the UN are just a bunch of fools. Since it would be too difficult in Australia to do an Anne Coulter and charge us with treason neocons such as Albrechtsen have to argue their case. To her credit this is what does. She argues against liberal internationalism. Her case is that the UN is a fundamentally flawed body. (I will spell it out because the links will go).
Albrechtsen says:
"We have ourselves to blame for the UN's crippling credibility problem. The UN was a grand vision of nation states adhering to an objective body of international law. This vision was unrealistic. More than that, it was a dangerous delusion."
Albrechtsen then sets out the position of the liberal internationalists who support the UN.
"The UN's founders pre-supposed that nation states would set aside self-interest for universal values. An international community would emerge. World citizenship would replace national sovereignty. And they assumed countries would agree on what collective security meant and how it should be maintained. They also assumed Article 43 of the UN Charter, which gives the UN "teeth" – the ability to use force – would ensure the UN succeeded where the League of Nations failed."
Albrechtsen's criticism of this liberal internationalist /cosmopolitan position is then outlined:
"Each assumption proved not only wrong but dangerous. It lured the world into a false sense of security. Iraq shows that the UN's utopian idealism is easily manipulated by the world's most oppressive regimes."
Her argument for the structural flaws of the UN has several prongs. Firstly,
"When countries enter UN headquarters, they do not leave national interest at the door. And so the UN is driven not by common interests but by each member's self-interest."
Secondly,
"Article 43 is not the UN's saviour. Iraq has exposed how the UN's power to use force to maintain international security is meaningless when countries fail to agree on when and how to uphold that security."
Thirdly, consensus is difficult since:
"Even smaller groups of countries have problems reaching agreement."
Albrechtsen draws these together to say that "the UN's structural flaws often translate into paralysis. The UN's politics of inclusiveness mean it would rather avoid offending than expose evil."
Now, Albrechtsen does concede that the "UN has a useful role in humanitarian work, peacekeeping (once others have created a peace to keep) and providing a forum to exchange views." But she quickly adds, the UN "can't guarantee world peace. The UN's prevarication over Iraq shows how it can hardly become more than its members permit."
She finishes by saying: "Yet still most Australians defer to the UN. Go figure."
It is easy to figure. Albrechtsen's neocon argument does not allow for the UN, as an institution of global governance to act as form of constraint on, or regulation of, national self-interest and hegemonic political power. Though the UN is committed to universal human rights and the duties that go with those democratic rights, it can be seen as a way to provide some checks and balances to the primacy of the West in international affairs. Of course, Albrechtsen would not accept that the West should be constrained.
Be that as it may. What is crystal clear is that Australian citizenshave trust in the UN. As the East Timor intervention indicated, Australians are committed to the global humanitarian project: we intervened in East Timor in order to protect the rights of the powerless East Timorese in response to the intimidation, violence, oppression and terror by the Indonesian military and its client militia.
Liberal internationalism may be deeply flawed--I for one think that it is and so stand on the ground of the nation-state against the world citizenship ideas of the cosmopolitans. But I accept that the conduct of nation-states should be checked and balanced through global governance.
|
Even though the UN could be an institution of global governance to restrict hegemonic whatever, it isn't and it doesn't. I believe that is the point here. 57 countries voted for Libya to be the head of the Human Rights Commission. Iraq and Iran are currently sharing the chairmanship of the disarmament committee. Can anyone take the UN seriously? I sure hope not, they are not only incompetent, they are a joke. They are simply not doing the responsible things you say they should or could or perhaps you think they are doing. And this is nothing new, this has been going on for years.