East Timor/United Nations

[Keaney Michael <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Penners

While I agree with Michael P.'s efforts to head off another retread argument
over the merits of "humanitarian intervention", I think there is some useful
new material to be discussed here, and that involves the evolving role and
position of the United Nations.

Putting my cards on the table, I stand with Rob in his assessment that
Gareth Evans is a major improvement on General Wiranto, and that the
intensely worrying events still unfolding in West Timor ought to be
attracting much wider attention than it ever has during this entire crisis.
This, despite Evans' own prior complicity in the actions of Wiranto and his
boss, Suharto, as he brokered the Timor Gap Treaty "entitling" Australian
companies a large share of the spoils of whatever oil was recovered from
East Timorese waters, effectively sealing the recognition of the illegal
occupation of East Timor by Indonesia that in 1975 was so casually dismissed
by the otherwise progressive Gough Whitlam as "an internal matter" for the
Indonesian government. This, despite the condemnation of the United Nations
(against the cynical efforts of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, warming the seat so
capably filled later by Jeane Kirkpatrick).

The crumbling of the Portuguese empire at this time led the Kissinger State
Department and the CIA to instigate some of the most disgusting "foreign
policy" ever perpetrated by the US, as civil wars were deliberately created
in Angola (with the creation of UNITA under the psychotic Jonas Savimbi) and
the MNR in Mozambique (assisted by Ian Smith's Rhodesia, eager to get at
Mugabe's Zanu-PF forces holed up there). The role of Vorster-led South
Africa was of crucial importance here, as anti-Communism took precedence
over such trifles as self-determination and basic human rights (the
flexibility of "freedom and democracy" knows no bounds). The same logic
sanctioned the Indonesians' incorporation of East Timor, thus cementing the
geopolitical barrier "containing" communist East Asia and "shielding"
Australia.

Evans, in his new guise as chief of the International Crisis Group (see
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03042.html) is presently conducting
a holding operation, trying to protect his Timor Gap Treaty in a clear
conflict of interest that is being undermined by the UN's own Peter
Galbraith. Of course you might expect Galbraith to be merely acting in the
interests of his ultimate US masters in bringing under their control the
spoils that would otherwise accrue to the Australians. However, it appears
that this is not the case. In fact, assuming the identity of US interests
and the UN ignores much of recent history and the frustration felt by some
of the most egregious imperialists in the US, such as Jesse Helms, who, very
helpfully and clearly, spelt out his "vision" of the UN as an arm of US
foreign policy as the only guarantee of it ever getting unequivocal US
political and financial support. Helms admits this is unlikely, for as long
as the UN is home to such "undemocratic" regimes as China and Cuba, who have
no business telling the US what to do. Come to that, no one, regardless of
their political circumstances, has any business telling the US what to do:

"Intervening in cases of widespread oppression and massive human rights
abuses is not a new concept for the United States. The American people have
a long history of doing so. During the 1980s, this policy was called the
"Reagan Doctrine". In some cases, America assisted freedom fighters around
the world who were seeking to overthrow corrupt regimes, providing them with
weaponry, training and intelligence. In other cases, the United States
intervened directly.In still others, such as in Central and Eastern Europe,
America supported peaceful opposition movements with moral, financial and
covert assistance. In each case, it was America's intention to help bring
down oppressive regimes. The dramatic expansion of freedom in the last
decade of the twentieth century has been a direct result of these policies.
        "In none of these instances, however, did the United States ask for
or receive the approval of the United Nations to 'legitimize' its actions.
And yet the secretary-general now declares that the United Nations Security
Council is the 'sole source of legitimacy on the use of force' in the world.
It is a fanciful notion that free peoples need to seek the approval of an
international body (a quarter of whose memberships are totalitarian
dictatorships, according to Freedom House's 1999/2000 _Freedom in the
World_) to lend support to nations struggling to break the chains of
tyranny. The United Nations has no power to grant or decline legitimacy to
such actions. They are _inherently_ legitimate ...
        "If the United Nations is to survive into the twenty-first century,
it must recognize its limitations. The demands of the United States have not
changed much since Henry Cabot Lodge laid out a set of conditions for
joining the League of Nations eighty years ago: We want to ensure that the
United States of America remains the sole judge of its own internal affairs,
that the United Nations is not allowed to restrict the individual rights of
U.S. citizens, and that the United States retains sole authority over the
deployment of U.S. forces around the world. This is what Americans ask of
the United Nations; it is what Americans _expect_ of the United Nations...
        "If the United Nations does not respect American sovereignty, if it
seeks to impose its presumed authority over the American people without
their consent, then it begs for confrontation and, more important, eventual
U.S. withdrawal."

--Jesse Helms, "American Sovereignty and the UN", The National Interest 62
(Winter 2000/01): 31-34.

So, when Louis Proyect writes...

Of course, now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, the United Nations
is more than ever a tool of territorial and economic ambitions by the USA
and its allies. Put in old-school Marxist terms, the UN is not an
expression of Empire but imperialism. Power grabs by big fish in the ocean
at the expense of smaller fish--rather than Kantian pieties--is the only
way to understand the United Nations.
(see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03491.html)

... we should bear in mind that many of a distinctly different political
persuasion, and at the very heart of US power, would disagree, precisely
because they regard the UN as out of control.

Now of course, thanks to Senator Jeffords, Senator Helms no longer sits from
on high throwing his cardboard thunderbolts at maps highlighting Cuba,
China, North Korea and Venezuela. But it's a safe bet that the largely
insulated (from Congressional scrutiny) process of foreign policy will
enable the noticeably unilateralist Bush administration carry on in Uncle
Jesse's fine tradition. And that tradition involves both circumventing and
undermining the credibility of the UN, precisely because it is not under the
sort of control that large sections of the United States power elite regards
as its divine right/manifest destiny. In recent times I have forwarded to
the list clear evidence that this is a longstanding element of US policy
under Clinton and continuing under Dubya, and predating them in the
Kissinger and Reagan eras. The first significant piece of evidence concerns
the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, cited by Brad as evidence of the
venality of Milosevic, but in fact sanctioned by the US in "collaboration"
with France and Germany as part of a deliberate policy to undermine the UN
(unable to guarantee its "safe havens" without US support) and therefore
provide a pretext for NATO's usurping of the UN's role. Thereby US
activities and motives would not be subject to the unpredictable,
uncontrollable and unwelcome scrutiny of its fellow UN partners. See
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg00579.html. The second piece of
evidence is the subsequent circumvention of UN protocol and international
law that was the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an absolutely criminal act of
cowardice and callous stupidity, but itself the outcome of a long process of
boxing in a regime that did not play by the rules of the "new world order".
The third piece of evidence is the recent announcement by NATO Secretary
General "Lord" George Robertson that NATO would now be focusing its efforts
on the "war on drugs", targeting specifically Afghanistan while "helping"
the regimes of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan to seal
its borders of the flow of opium coming from Afghanistan. This, despite the
Taliban's declaration of the un-Islamicness of opium and its almost complete
eradication within Taliban-controlled areas. See
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg00442.html, based on a long article
published by the Observer on 1 April. For Robertson's heartfelt concern and
a response, see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg02901.html
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03120.html The sheer coincidence
that Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea should have so much potential oil
deposits awaiting greedy western oil companies echoes points made by, among
others, Mark Jones (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg04003.html).

So, when Louis writes:

I am opposed to US intervention in principle. Period. Although I would have
supported Vietnam's intervention into Cambodia or Tanzania's into Uganda
against Idi Amin. There is a class difference.

... we can agree with both the sentiment and its practical implications. But
East Timor is not the Korean War, and the UN has long ceased to be
synonymous with US foreign policy. Just look at the reluctance with which
the "great powers" lifted their fingers to stop Wiranto and his masked
marauders from free-form genocide. Britain, while parading its newly
"ethical" foreign policy was still selling Hawk jets to Indonesia at this
point. Only because of the public outcry, partly fanned by the consistent
efforts of people like Chomsky and John Pilger to highlight what Indonesia's
regime had been doing in East Timor for 25 years did anything get done. And
of course what is happening now is that arrangements are being made for the
full incorporation of East Timor into the global capitalist system. That
itself is not a pretty sight. But it sure beats Wiranto's idea of full
incorporation.

Louis continues:

The only answer really is to overthrow the US government and send all the
criminals like Clinton, Bush Sr. and Jr. to prison. That's how world peace
will be achieved, not by providing left apologetics for their criminal
behavior.

Absolutely true, but, let's face it, a distant dream, however noble. At
least many East Timorese can now live to fight another day.

Michael K.