A Second Resolution is Not Enough
Tariq Ali, The Guardian, February 21, 2003

The UN was created after the defeat of fascism. Its charter prohibits the violation of national sovereignty except in the case of "self- defense". However, the UN was unable to defend the newly independent Congo against Belgian and US intrigue in the 1960s, or to save the life of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. And in 1950 the security council authorized a US war in Korea.

Under the UN banner the western armies deliberately destroyed dams, power stations and the infrastructure of social life in North Korea, plainly in breach of international law. The UN was also unable to stop the war in Vietnam. Its paralysis over the occupation of Palestine has been visible for over three decades.

This inactivity was not restricted to western abuses. The UN was unable to act against the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956) or the Warsaw Pact's entry into Czechoslovakia (1968). Both Big Powers were allowed to get on with their business in clear breach of the UN charter. [...]

The world has changed so much over the last 20 years that the UN - the current deadlock notwithstanding - has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures.

Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali was sacked on Madeline Albright's insistence for challenging the imperial will: he had insisted that it was the Rwandan genocide that needed intervention. US interests required a presence in the Balkans. He was replaced by Kofi Annan, a weak placeman, whose sanctimonious speeches may sometimes deceive an innocent British public, but not himself. He knows who calls the shots. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:23 pm