It's the USA, Not the U.N.

newsmax.com ^ | 9/6/02 | John L. Perry

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It's the USA, Not the U.N.

John L. Perry

Much is made of Iraq's non-compliance with United Nations resolutions, missing the larger point: The security of the United States is threatened. That's what matters.

It is not the United Nations that is responsible – legally or any other way – for the security of the United States, or of any other nation.

National security is exactly what those words connote: The security of an individual nation.

Security Requires Sovereignty

That, in turn, is fundamentally what national sovereignty is about.

In the watery eyes of globalists, who yearn for elimination of all national sovereignty and its replacement by a universal super-government, the United Nations is but an interim instrumentality of worldwide authority, a transitory forerunner of Hillary Clinton's "global village" with ubiquitous claws and limitless wealth of taxation.

Anything that limits, erodes or demeans any individual nation's sovereignty is, to them, all to the good, a step nearer nirvana.

Boondoggle in Manhattan

The reality is that the United Nations' 185 member nations are nothing more, and frequently a lot less, than a spiffy international debating society, gaudy in costumes, Babelic in languages and ostentatious in limousines but as toothless as a confederacy of crotchety crones.

Indeed, that was how it was created at the end of World War II. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt's dream – and even he had reservations – that the wartime Big Three unity among the victorious United States, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics might be continued into the postwar recovery period.

That it might also serve as a major-powers bulwark against a recurrence of international aggression was dream, even wispier.

Anachronism of the Veto

In recognition of that, the Big Three gave each other a veto power, which soon became an absurdity and is today an operational aardvark.

The U.N. General Assembly, where each of the 185 member nations has a seat, is still merely a place to get in out of the rain while debating. Its resolutions are utterly powerless.

What little clout the United Nations possesses resides with the 15 member nations composing the Security Council, five of which are permanent members: Great Britain, France, the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the United States.

How the Veto Works

To enact a resolution on a substantive matter takes nine affirmative votes of the 15 in the Security Council, of which five must be the votes of all five permanent members.

In other words, one negative vote among the Big Five means the resolution is dead.

Even if a substantive resolution is adopted, there is no practical means of enforcement unless the United States, as the world's only superpower, acts to enforce it. If the United States doesn't lend its muscle, nothing gets enforced. If only the United States acts to enforce, it will get enforced.

Of No Earthly Use

So who needs the United Nations? There are two answers to that question:

Answer 1: Every other nation on Earth except the United States thinks it needs the United Nations – but only so long as the United States acts to enforce a Security Council resolution and pay most of the freight.

Answer 2: The United States does not need the United Nations for anything, for it is the only nation with enough power to enforce any Security Council resolution.

Power, in this sense, includes not merely military force. It includes also economic resources. The United States is the only nation with enough wealth to finance enforcement.

Our Worthless Dependent

Even in the non-enforcement arena, the United States is critical to the day-to-day life of the United Nations. Were the United States to withhold its dues, the United Nations would collapse.

So all this talk about the United States' having to kowtow to the United Nations before it can take military action against Iraq is a lot of hooey.

Even the United Nations, global-gaga as it is, recognizes in its charter that every member state has the right to exercise its own sovereign power as it sees fit to protect its own vital national interests.

Right of Self-Defense

If the United States feels that Saddam Hussein's assembly of weapons of mass destruction is a threat to American security, it has the sovereign right to do whatever it thinks it must do to remove that threat.

And the same right has to be accorded to Iraq. If it feels it must engage in the production of mass-destruction weapons, that's its prerogative. There is nothing in the doctrine of national sovereignty that says a nation has no right to act with stupidity and self-destruction. Saddam Hussein might consult Adolf Hitler.

Is it bad that Iraq has flouted all those Security Council resolutions these many years? Of course it is – not because the Security Council has been ignored but because, in the process, Iraq has become a greater and greater threat to American security.

The Reason to Act

That's why the United States should go after Iraq, destroy those stockpiled weapons, remove Saddam Hussein and his outlaw regime and liberate that country for re-entry into the world community as a nation based on democratic principles.

If the United Nations General Assembly wants to spit in George W. Bush's face when he addresses its annual opening session shortly, so be it. If it wants to pay polite attention to what he has to say, that's nice.

If the United Nations General Assembly wants to register a veto vote on a resolution of support for war with Iraq, so be it. If it wants to adopt such a resolution, that's nice.

Getting Priorities Straight

The reality is the United Nations is as irrelevant to the world as mammary glands are to a boar hog.

The No. 1 business of the United States of America is to look out for the business of the United States of America. And No.1 on that agenda is the security of the American people.

There's nothing shameful about that, and President Bush need make no apologies to members of the United Nations. It is they who owe the United States of America, which has repeatedly come to their rescue – United Nations or no United Nations.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

Other Columns by John L. Perry

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