ted Nations Blue helmets for peace and justice?
Support for the United Nations is almost an article of faith for many socialists, especially on the Labour left. But, says PHIL HEARSE, the assumption that the United Nations, or the military forces it supports, represent an independent force for peace and justice is challenged by the basic facts about its history. The UN has always been dominated by the great powers and their interests, especially those of the United States.
The forerunner of the UN, the League of Nations founded in 1919, denounced by Lenin as a "den of thieves" was a hopeless failure. It drifted through the 1920s and '30s as a talking shop, while the rise of fascism, the Spanish civil war, the Stalinist purges went on around it. And of course it was incapable of stopping the Second World War.
After the war, in the flush of enthusiasm for the US-British collaboration with Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, the idea of the UN as a force which could actually police the world for the major powers took hold.
The basic flaws in the UN are to be found in its Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights - its founding documents. The Declaration of Human Rights is 98 percent acceptable to socialists (1). But the Charter makes it clear - and it is implicit in the name United Nations - that the UN is an organisation of states. By definition socialists have few common interest with most states in the post-war world. Moreover, the very structure of the UN, giving a veto on crucial questions to the 5 permanent members of the Security Council - the USA, France, Britain, the USSR and China -makes explicit the obvious fact that not all states are equal.
The Korean War (1950-53) disproved at one go that the UN was a force for peace. The war against North Korea, dominated by US forces, was waged in the name of the UN. Wearing the famous blue helmets of UN "peace-keeping" forces did not prevent this from being a war waged by imperialism.
In the 1950s the membership of the UN began to change. The process of *de Page 20
GULF SPECIAL colonisation* brought into existence dozens of new African and Asian states who took their seats in the UN. This created the powerful 'third world" bloc, which was able to exert considerable political influence - often against Western interests.
But the real force of this new bloc was only felt in the General Assembly. The Security Council maintained its monopoly of crucial decisions, and remained dominated by the big powers.
The UN did play a role in forcing Britain, France and Israel out of Egypt after the Suez invasion in 1956, but this was only possible because the United States chose, for its own reasons, to oppose this action.
In 1960 the "Belgian" Congo became independent. Its new government was led by radical nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. He soon found disfavour in the West. The US set out to destabilise his govemment. Katanga province, the centre of the country's huge mineral wealth, broke away aided by the US and Belgium. A bloody civil war broke out, and Belgium sent troops to defend Katanga. After an appeal by Lumumba, the UN sent contingents of Swedish, Irish, Nigerian and Indian troops to aid the central goverment. This decision was a highpoint of third world influence in the UN.
The motive of defeating the rebellion was a laudable one. But the UN force was defeated in this project by the sabotage of the Wester powers. CIA operatives, collaborating with the Belgians, openly worked against the UN forces. The CIA itself assassinated Patrice Lumumba. It was an example of the failure of a military intervention precisely because the US worked against it.
In the mid-1960s the UN was a helpless spectator during the Vietnam war. The warring sides fought the war, and ultimately negotiated, above the heads of the UN. Again, when the US and Soviet Union negotiated the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in 1971 - signalling a period of fairly stable peaceful coexistence' - the UN had no role to play.
Palestine: difficult Issue for US Like most major shifts in world politics, the UN was pushed to the background.
Throughout the 1970s and "80s the most difficult question for the Americans in the UN has been that of the Palestinians. Repeatedly, in order to maintain its system of alliances in the Middle East with reactionary Arab goverment, the US has been forced into making verbal concessions on the issue.
While many Security Council motions criticising Israel have been vetoed, nonetheless others - notably Resolution 242 demanding the end of the Israeli occupation of lands won in the 1967 and 1973 wars - have been passed. But as is obvious today, the United States has ensured that these resolutions remained simply well-intentioned demands with no intention to implement them.
The nadir of the UN has been the Gulf war. Soviet collaboration with US war aims, with pledges of US aid or credit, and Chinese acquiesence, and the shameless bribery of poorer nations have ensured that the UN has played the American game, creating the illusion of an international consensus on the issue.
Is the UN then simply a tool of US imperial interests? The reality is more complex. The United States has had to bow to some demands of third world countries. During the cold war it was confronted with Soviet vetoes in the Security Council. But it is clear that never has the UN been effectively mobilised in any cause which conflicted with fundamental US interests. Votes condemning US aggression against Nicaragua have been simply ignored.
Security Council vetoes are only part of the reason. Funding of the UN is another. Its apparatus is hugely expensive, and without American money it would collapse or be much SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 30, February 1991
showed Saddam some dirty
reduced in scale. Heavy hints that the UN might have to move out of New York have sent shivers down the spines of its well paid intemational bureaucrats. The US pulling the plug is a permanent threat to the UN's existence.
Of course the UN is not just political debate and military operations. It has a large network of cultural bodies like UNESCO; and economic development agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome and the World Health Organisation in Geneva. These are all characterised by two things. First, extreme problems when confronting established Western interests (which leads to automatic self-limitation); and second insufficient resources to accomplish really major changes in the lives of many people in the third world or elsewhere.
In the contemporary world it is not possible to establish an intemational organisation of states which will be willing and able to act as a major force for peace, justice, economic and cultural development and human rights, because all these worthy objectives are incompatible - in the last analysis - with the world order which the overwhelming majority of nation states support.
It is an obvious mistake to see each and every act of the UN and its agencies as the evil work of imperialism. There is no doubt that the UN can sponsor projects which can bring clean water to some villages in Africa or help fight malaria. Sometimes even its military operations, like the sending of troops to police the Israel-Lebanon border in 1978, Can provide a very temporary obstacle to reactionary interests. But the UN is incapable of doing anything fundamental about world hunger, or bringing justice to the Palestinians or even preventing the outbreak of major wars.
Internationalism. the international solidarity of peoples, is a central part - if not the central part - of socialism. But to become a reality it needs goverments which represent the interests of the majority - the thousands of millions of workers and peasants.
From time to time the voice of these interests is raised in the UN, at least in a partial way, by countries like Cuba and Nicaragua under the FSLN. But on all the questions which really matter, like war in the Gulf, those who pay the piper - and wield the Security Council veto - will call the tune.
Footnote
(1) Perhaps 98 per cent is pushing it. The Declaration contains strong clauses stressing the right to family life, without any reference to freedom of sexual orientation or women's rights; it also heavily stresses the right to property and the right not to have it expropriated! Despite its overall bourgeois democratic framework, in practice many of its provisions - like the right to work and a decent standard of living - cannot be met by capitalist or Stalinist governments. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 30, February 1991
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