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Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 47 » here
Kick them out of the UN
One nation defies the UN repeatedly, and threatens to destroy it. There
is only one option in this situation: expel the US and subject the rogue nation to
economic sanctions
by Kevin Potvin
The Republic
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| Put Bush through this paddywhack! |
The Bush administration is not listening. International opinion has seldom found
as common a ground as it has now over the issue of Bush's determination to launch
a war on Iraq. There is near unanimity like never before: the plan is almost universally
condemned, and the only variation in opinion around the world is the degree to which
the condemnation is screamed.
China, Russia, Germany, Japan, and France do not support the plan. Among second-tier
countries of the world, the polling is exactly the same. Canada and Spain are against
it. All countries in the region of Iraq, from the closest of American friends to the
bitterest of enemies, are unified on this point (except for Israel). The Bush administration
hears none of it.
Domestically, the news is no less unsettling. All Democrats and a great number of
key Republicans have expressed their opposition to Bush's plan. American public
support for war on Iraq is lower today, at 53%, than it was in June of 2001, at 64%,
prior to the devastation of September 11. Even deep within the Bush administration,
there is severe consternation in the person of Colin Powell, the former Gulf War general,
and now Secretary of State. The Bush administration is not listening to any of this
either.
A surprisingly small number of people are driving this universally condemned and
exceedingly dangerous plan. There is Bush himself, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld,
National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General
John Ashcroft, and Chief of Defence Staff Paul Wolfowitz.
Saddam Hussein may or may not be assembling weapons of mass destruction (although
after months of intimidating American saber-rattling, he'd be remiss in his duties
if he weren't scrambling to assemble some form of defence). But if he is, the
world is either unconvinced of it, or not sufficiently alarmed by it to run the risks
to international order that an attack on Iraq would entail.
Ironically, most of the world outside the Western nations (and quite a bit of the
populations inside the Western nations) regard the US as the bigger threat.
In this, they are justified. The US has the world's largest inventory of weapons
of mass destruction, the world's biggest and most effective fleet of delivery
vehicles for them, and a demonstrated willingness to use them--the US remains
the only country ever to launch a nuclear weapon.
Rather than acknowledge and somehow accommodate the growing chorus of global condemnation,
by either making a stronger case for war on Iraq, backed by proof of its threat, or
by altering or abandoning the plan to attack the country, the Bush administration
has only added to the list of countries, now standing at 80, that it considers fair
game to attack, once Iraq is dealt with.
The equation Bush laid out for the world last October--"You are either with
us or with the terrorists"--only becomes increasingly lopsided in favour
of "None of the above." That small cabal in the White House is now isolated
against about 5.9 billion other people. What remains of the "With us" camp
has looked at the mounting opposition, and has only hardened its position as a result.
It seems clear now that no diplomacy, no arguments, no dire warnings, no weight of
consensus, no appeals to good sense, and no risk assessments, however sober, can change
their minds. The Bushies are going in, come hell or high water.
There is no question an Iraqi adventure by Bush will be whacked. Faced with assured
"regime change," Hussein has nothing to lose in putting up into the air
anything he may have. Israel, in the Arab algebra, is nothing more than surrogate
America, and sits there as close to the Iraqi desert as Penticton is to Vancouver.
Only one chemical-, biological-, or nuclear-tipped Iraqi Scud missile needs to drop
anywhere in Israel to earn a ferocious reply from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel
who has at his disposal a nuclear response.
Thus may begin the next Arab-Israeli war, which would likely bring into the fray
Pakistan, and as a result, India, followed by China, and even Russia, currently looking
for its opening back onto the world stage as the dominoes fall. All these countries
possess nuclear arms. In total, six and maybe seven nuclear-armed combatants may soon
be duking it out in the fog of war.
The world is today confronted with an aggressor nation run by a small group of religious
fanatics listening to no one and whose actions may well bring on the largest human
catastrophe in history by several orders of magnitude.
Fortunately, the community of world nations anticipated exactly this set of circumstances,
and formed a global institution through which the community of nations could effectively
respond to the threat. It is called the United Nations. Because every nation on Earth
belongs to the UN, the UN has one very powerful tool at its disposal: isolation of
the non-behaving member from all aspects of the global community--including diplomatic,
economic, educational, and military ostracization.
The UN may not be effective in militarily opposing aggressor nations, and in the
case of the US, this is obvious. But the following sanctions would together comprise
a powerful global response to the serious American threat: economic sanctions, including
cessation of all trade, freezing of all foreign accounts, and complete international
disinvestment; diplomatic sanctions, including the recall of all diplomatic missions,
cessation of all contact, and disbarment from all international organizations (including
the UN itself); educational sanctions, including the deportation of all students abroad
and the recall of all students from the aggressor nation, as well as the cessation
of all research and development activities involving the aggressor nation; and military
sanctions, including cessation of all joint military activities, and the banishment
of the aggressor nation from all foreign countries.
There is, as well, several successful models of how the UN can effectively begin
sanctions on a low level, with a timetable for increasing the pressure as time goes
on and as the aggressor nation continues to disregard the world's pronouncement
against its actions. The Bush apologists in the media have one thing right: appeasement
offered an aggressor comes through only as encouragement. The British appeased the
Germans and paid a dear price. The same mistake cannot be made again. America must
not be appeased.
Right now, Iraq feels the heat, but at least 80 other nations around the world know
they are somewhere on the "next" list, and they know that an American success
in Baghdad would only further embolden the Bushies, as Canadian Minister of Transport
David Collenette recently said. Nervous about being left to fend for themselves the
way Iraq is today, a large portion of the world's community of nations is bracing
for the inevitable and gearing up for their fate. Such a scenario can only bring on
irrational behaviour, and the closer America comes to attacking Iraq, the more unsettled
the world will become, with neighbours suspecting neighbours, and no one sure anymore
who is friend and who is foe.
The reassurance of the UN, representing every nation on Earth, including all but
one of the great powers, would, at this precise moment, provide a hugely calming effect
on a dangerously restless world as it moves through this crisis.
A UN position firmly and solidly against the US, with sanctions to back it, would
provide the world a much-needed safe haven between the two impossible positions the
US has counter-offered: with them, or with the terrorists.
Currently, all national leaders on earth (except the American and Israeli) are spraining
their tongues trying desperately and so far unsuccessfully to articulate a position
between the two choices Bush has put forward. Meanwhile, the UN option is hanging
out there, unspoken, but ready-made for just this type of situation.
The UN already has the script all world leaders are reaching for: it is filled with
negotiation, diplomacy, knowledge, intelligence, and community--all the things
everyone is trying to make the Bushies listen to. And it has sanctions which in fact
do work, and which will, most assuredly, get the Bushies' attention and make
them listen to reason.
The US is economically dependent upon the rest of the world like no other national
economy. A concerted currency sanction alone could back the Bushies off considerably.
The US has a monthly balance of trade deficit approaching $58 billion, and it remains
solvent only because there is approximately $58 billion flowing into the country as
foreign investment. One simple sanction--the banning of all new investment flows
into America (not even touching the investments already in place)--would in days
shatter America's economic spine, and likely its taste for war. And wide-spread
compliance with such an economic sanction wouldn't be necessary. Only Britain,
France, Germany, Japan, and Canada alone would have to agree before the Bush administration
would find itself stopped dead in its tracks.
Such a simple sanction would, in one stroke, save the world, and endear all its broken
parts to each other. Arab nations would sup with western nations, all of Asia would
wipe its brow happy it isn't left a glowing ruins and be ever grateful to the
leaders at the UN, and a new era of international cooperation would arise. It would
not, of course, mark the end of international competition nor international conflict.
But the UN and, more specifically, its leading members, are duty-bound to oppose the
one aggressor nation today that threatens to make of its lone conflict a global catastrophe.
Canada has traditionally exercised a role at the UN way above its weight-class, specifically
because it has shown faith in the mechanisms of the UN and invested much in making
of it an effective institution. Canada has also a special place in this current crisis,
being both the closest neighbour to the US, and the country most entwined in its economy.
No other country on Earth besides Canada is a more crucial economic partner for the
US.
The world is crying out for leadership, the solution to the crisis is at hand, and
Canada has been thrust by events and geography alone into the spotlight. The Prime
Minister, Jean Chrétien, has announced his retirement and is in search of a
lasting legacy by which he might be remembered. His moment has just arrived. Is saving
the world a big enough legacy?
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