At 18:06 11-03-03 -0800, Nick Arnett wrote:
The United States has gone to war a number of times without UN support. Why should this time be any different, if we do so? Aren't we taking the UN *more* seriously this time around, by working so hard to gain its consent? We're hardly acting as though it is irrelevant.
If the US would agree to abide by whatever the UNSC decides, then it would be taking the UN seriously. However, the statement that the US will go to war even if it doesn't get UN backing sends the message that the US is not really taking the UN seriously.
Jeroen "Make love, not war" van Baardwijk
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The US is taking the UN as seriously as the UN is taking itself.
Iraq has continually violated UN resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War. Funny how Hussein wasn't worried about complying with UN resolutions until the US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force along with the Royal Army and Air Force showed up on his front door.
Suppose the UN's consensus (sans the US obviously) should be against war, and in favor of aggressive inspections. Suppose also that the US bows to international opinion and retreats from the region. Then Hussein declares that the inspectors must go (as he had done in the past.) What would a UN resolution be worth then? We already know what can happen when the UN fails to act. Kosovo and Rwanda.
Let us see how a similar international body acted once upon a time:
In September 1931 Japan invades Manchuria. This is the first important challenge to the League of Nations and the concept of collective security. The only two powers situated to resist Japan, the US and Russia are not members of the League. Virtually no other nation, including Great Britain had no intention of taking military action. The League appoints a commission to study the situation, taking nearly a year to produce its report, condemning the use of force and recommending the withdrawal of the Japanese army. Not one nation called for Japan to be branded an aggressor nation, which would among other things, call for economic sanctions against Japan. The British Foreign Secretary stated to the cabinet that complaining about Japan's behavior might provoke Japanese resentment. When the League accepted the report of its own commission, in February 1933 (!), Japan resigned in protest. And stayed in Manchuria, eventually invading China, proper. (This can't have made the small and militarily weak nations of the world feel any safer.) The failure of the League of Nations to respond to such naked aggression makes it impotent in the following crises leading up to the Second World War.
QED
john
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