[Marxism] THE TROJAN HORSE

["Jay Bulworth" <jay.bulworth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

THE TROJAN HORSE
Jay Bulworth
http://www.dissent.com.au

Katharine Gun is a 29 year old English woman who spent a part of her formative 
years in North-east Asia. As a result, she is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She 
used to work as a translator at Britain?s super-secret GCHQ (Government 
Communications Headquarters), the signals intelligence agency that violates 
privacy every day by eavesdropping on phone calls, emails and other 
communications. Katharine exposed US espionage against member delegations at 
the UN Security Council in the lead-up to the war on Iraq. Espionage at the 
United Nations is prohibited under the Vienna conventions on diplomatic 
relations. When charged under the Official Secrets Act, she signalled her 
intention to argue the defence of ?necessity? ? the prevention of an illegal 
war involving the loss of thousands of lives. On Tuesday 24th February 2004, 
her legal team served documents demanding to see any advice given to ministers 
about the legality of the war. Two days later, all charges were dropped and 
Katharine
  Gun walked free.

It should be noted that the leaks showed a ?surge? in US espionage against 
member delegations. The US engages in such activity every day. What was unusual 
was the ?surge?, or increase, in surveillance as the US tried to manipulate the 
vote and obtain authorisation for its war on Iraq. There are people of goodwill 
who believe in the sanctity of international law, and who feel disturbed by 
this event, as they do about the US-led aggression against Iraq without UN 
authorisation.

This article is for those people. It is written in order to dispel illusions in 
the United Nations, which was created as an instrument of US foreign policy. 
Furthermore, the reader should understand that the US began spying on member 
delegations even before the UN existed.

As early as April 1945, when the United Nations was being constructed in San 
Francisco, the US conducted comprehensive surveillance against the delegates of 
all 46 countries that were in town to finalise the structure of the new 
organisation. Stephen Schlesinger?s recent book, Act of Creation: The Founding 
of the United Nations (Boulder, 2003), reminds us of how the US controlled the 
negotiating process from start to finish. In the US Army base known as the 
Presidio, which was only a few kilometres away from where the negotiations were 
being held, US military intelligence was intercepting communications by all the 
visiting delegates to their countries. In addition, the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation followed the delegates as they went about their business. The FBI 
also followed members of pro-democracy and anti-colonial lobby groups operating 
in San Francisco at the time. The intelligence was passed on to US Secretary of 
State Edward Stettinius, who had been sent by Presiden
 t Harry Truman to oversee the negotiations.

The archives relating to this episode have never been opened completely; much 
of the intelligence, which is nearly 60 years old, remains censored. But the 
episode illustrates the continuity of the US?s attitude to the UN.

The UN role in Iraq

Turning to the more specific case of post-1991 Iraq, the factual record is 
unambiguous: the UN has acted throughout as an instrument of US strategic 
policy. For more than a decade, the UN gave its legal authority to economic 
sanctions against Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a large number of Iraqis, 
most of whom were children.

UN Security Council Resolutions requiring Iraq to disarm after the 1991 war 
were deliberately framed in the negative: inspectors were required to certify 
that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. This meant that the 
inspections could ? and did ? go on indefinitely, because there was no way that 
Iraq could ever satisfy a negative test. Even Australia cannot prove it does 
not have weapons of mass destruction.

UN inspectors participated in the disarming of Iraq?s defences. The Security 
Council raised no serious objection to the Anglo-American bombing, which lasted 
for more than a decade. Those few UN officials who objected had no option other 
than to resign in protest. Several UN inspectors worked actively with the CIA, 
conducting searches at its behest and passing target data to US military 
planners. As the build-up to the invasion gained momentum, the UN did not 
condemn Washington?s war preparations. Until the very last minute of the US-led 
invasion, the UN focused its diplomatic efforts on pressuring Iraq to disarm 
even more. The US?s National Security Strategy, released in September 2002, 
confirmed what many analysts had been saying all along: that the Bush Doctrine 
was a ?highly voluntarist ?will to power? project, with four key concepts 
informing it: permanent war, unilateral action, international impunity and 
multiple war theatres? (Petras 2002). The US?s assertion that it w
 ould engage in preventive strikes was a clear expression of its intention to 
violate international law. Had another state issued such a proclamation, the UN 
Security Council ? led by the US ? would have condemned it as belligerent. 
Since it was the US that was acting in this manner, however, any condemnation 
by the UN was unthinkable. Predictably, the Security Council unanimously 
approved Resolution 1441, stating that Iraq was in material breach of its 
obligations and warning it of ?serious consequences? if it did not comply with 
an enhanced inspection regime.

On 7 December 2002, when Iraq submitted a 12,000 page declaration on its 
chemical, biological and nuclear activities, the US stepped in and confiscated 
large extracts of the document. The UN and its US-installed functionary, Kofi 
Annan, looked the other way. And finally, after a blatant war of aggression, 
the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the puppet assembly installed by 
the US. All 15 members of the Security Council supported the following 
declaration:

The Security Council, ... ?welcomes the positive response of the international 
community to the establishment of the broadly representative Governing 
Council?; ?supports the Governing Council?s efforts to mobilise the population 
of Iraq?; ?authorises a multinational force under unified command to take all 
measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq?; 
and ?requests the United States on behalf of the multinational force report to 
the Security Council on the efforts and progress of this force?.

There could be no clearer demonstration of the command that the US exerts over 
the UN.

Or could there? After the first colonial administration (led by retired US 
general Jay Garner) proved unsuccessful, a new governor was sent in. He was 
Paul Bremer, the former managing director of Kissinger Associates, a worldwide 
consulting firm started by Henry Kissinger. Bremer also ran into fierce 
opposition from a powerful resistance movement. These fighters were hitting 
back at their British and American occupiers as well as at the local Iraqi 
collaborators. The UN stepped in to take the heat out of the situation: Kofi 
Annan dispatched Sergio Vieira de Mello to work with Bremer and provide a fig 
leaf of respectability. De Mello was supposed to install a puppet junta (the 
so-called ?Governing Council?) that had no domestic legitimacy or credibility 
but would do the bidding of the US occupation forces.

De Mello was killed in the bombing of the UN building in Iraq in August 2003. 
It is obvious why the Iraqi resistance targeted the UN building just as it 
continues to target the occupying US force ? the former institution has acted 
for more than a decade as an instrument of the latter. There is every reason to 
expect this situation to continue for the foreseeable future.

Australia, the UN and Iraq

After the federal election later this year, the Australian government can be 
expected to deploy more troops to Iraq as part of the occupying forces. If 
Labor wins the election, it will come under intense US pressure to contribute 
even more Australian troops to the ongoing occupation. If its track record is 
any indication, Labor is sure to agree, but will ask for UN authorisation 
before it does so.

There are two reasons for this: the first is Labor?s diplomatic style. In 
December 1998, the Clinton administration undertook an operation called 
Operation Desert Fox. It included the use of cruise missiles and bombs in what 
the Australian foreign minister later described as ?a substantial bombing 
campaign of Iraq? (Downer 2003). Kofi Annan withdrew the UN inspectors in 
preparation for the US bombing. While this was going on, the Australian Labor 
Party raised no objection. Even on the eve of the 2003 invasion, the Labor 
leadership was concerned with the legality of the issue, not the flagrant 
imperialism on display. Its opposition was based on the lack of Security 
Council authorisation. By contrast, the Greens made their opposition to the 
invasion clear ? UN or no UN. .

The second reason is the Australian public?s opposition to unilateral US 
action. Labor?s calculation is that the public might be willing to acquiesce in 
a UN-backed deployment. This is because the UN has an aura of global 
togetherness; its rhetoric stresses the equality of all states and the harmony 
of all nations. It carries the seductive hint that one day the representatives 
of all the peoples of the world might interact in a meaningful fashion. The 
high ideals in the UN Charter inspire people who do not realise that they were 
the concoction of another member of the US delegation to San Francisco in April 
1945, Virginia Gildersleeve. Her soothing platitudes continue to cloak the UN 
in a garb of goodwill.

This has given the UN an indefinable but benign image: not of international 
equality ? for it operates quite openly as a bludgeon of the powerful; not of 
planetary justice ? for it regularly consigns these issues to the never-never 
land of review committees, study groups and General Assembly resolutions. 
Rather, it has an aura of inclusiveness, which is accentuated by its ethnically 
diverse mix of US marionettes. The public prefers an international framework of 
order to a world ruled by force. Although understandable, this preference can 
be highly misleading: it does not take into account the nature of contemporary 
international law, which is no more than the previous codes and conventions of 
the dominant states. International law has democratic legitimacy to the extent 
that it has popular input.  As it stands, international law has very little 
popular input. It should be understood that I am not rejecting international 
law per se. Instead, I am saying that we need not genufl
 ect before it until it has had popular input into its development.  
International law as practised by the various foreign and consular services is 
vastly different to international law (such as environmental legislation) that 
has arisen as a consequence of public pressure.

UN Reform?

Attempts at reform of the United Nations, while well-intentioned, should not be 
the primary focus for activists. Plans for UN reform are typically the focus of 
people who depend on UN-related positions for career purposes, and who see the 
peace movement as a stepping stone to a posting to New York or Geneva. They can 
frequently be found in the company of functionaries who trade on their 
?expertise? in UN procedures. This kind of clerical competence has its place, 
particularly when searching for scholarships and grants, but it should not be 
mistaken for progressive politics. A measure of realism about the UN and its 
assorted hangers-on is long overdue.

The UN has a limited but important role to play as an international forum where 
grievances can be aired and where disagreements can be discussed and resolved. 
It also has a limited but important role to play as a means of coordinating 
humanitarian relief efforts. Beyond that, extreme skepticism should be 
exercised. The UN is a grouping of the governments of the world, not the people 
of the world. It therefore ought to focus on accomplishing a limited range of 
core missions, and on fixing its serious management problems.

As it is actually constituted, the UN structure gives near-absolute power to 
the five permanent members when they act together.  Individually, they have 
near-absolute power to thwart any security initiative they do not like.  In the 
absence of a democratic structure, the UN lacks a genuinely principled source 
of authority because it does not represent the various nations of the world, 
weighted according to population size.  Until it does, we can hardly consider 
the UN to be a morally authoritative body for the formulation of international 
law.

In a representative global political order, we might accept the official 
representatives of the various states, regardless of their political content. 
Governments elected by corporate influence or imposed by dictatorial power 
might be objectionable, but they are a matter for the domestic forces in the 
relevant countries to deal with. In a representative global political order, 
internationalists could and should accept the wishes of the various nations. 
However, it is clear that the current structure of the UN does not resemble 
this situation in the slightest.

Reform of the United Nations or the creation of an alternative world 
institution is not a solution to the problem of US-led imperialism. That is 
something that might arise after the problem has been solved. But people of 
good will, who wish to change the world for the better, should not occupy 
themselves with these procedural blind alleys. For Australians, it is clear 
that referring an issue to the UN is one way for our governments to avoid 
dealing with a given issue, and to avoid taking a proper stand on it.  The UN 
serves as a kind of bolthole to which contentious issues can be consigned.  One 
can rail against the UN without having to do anything about a difficult issue.

The Supreme International Crime

What we are seeing at the UN today is the post-hoc approval of a war of 
aggression - what the Nuremberg Judgement called the ?supreme international 
crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself 
the accumulated evil of the whole?. Article 6(a) of the Charter of the 
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg defined crimes against peace as 
?planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war in violation of 
international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common 
plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing?.

As recriminations over pre-war intelligence gain in strength, Australians might 
wish to consider whether the actions of the Howard government fit the 
description of ?crime against peace?. Under current arrangements, there is no 
chance of the real aggressors being put on trial for this crime. Instead, the 
UN continues to provide a fig-leaf of legitimacy for the ongoing occupation. 
The peace movement should oppose the occupation of Iraq regardless of what the 
UN says. We might take our cue from President Bush?s 12th September 2002 
address to the General Assembly:

Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding [to save succeeding 
generations from the scourge of war], or will it be irrelevant?

Jay Bulworth

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Downer 20 March 2003, Reply to Question Without Notice 2:30 pm, House Hansard, 
Australian Parliament House.

Petras J November-December 2002, 9-11: One Year of Empire Building, Canadian 
Dimension Magazine, http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v36/v36_6jp.htm

Schlesinger S 2003, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, 
Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.

--
_____________________________________________________________
Web-based SMS services available at http://www.operamail.com.
>From your mailbox to local or overseas cell phones.

Powered by Outblaze

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism