Bush trashes the United Nations - Cover Story - George W. Bush

Progressive, The, April, 2003 by Matthew Rothschild

"If the U.N. Security Council had been behaving in the way it ought to, it should have been saying all along that the United States was carrying out illegal acts by threatening force," says Stephen Shalom, professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey. "The U.S. was in violation of the charter, and the council should have said so."

Bush's contempt for the United Nations may have many victims, especially those Iraqi civilians who would lose their lives in any U.S. assault. But one other victim is the entire edifice of the United Nations, which cannot long stand while Goliath keeps stomping his feet on its foundation.

"We're seeing the end of the international system as we've known it since the Second World War," says Ratner.

"This is the most dangerous and depressing moment in my life," says Richard Falk, a professor of international law and practice at Princeton. "The United States is undeterred and undeterrable in the current situation. It repudiates any willingness to allow the United Nations to act independently, and it refuses to accept a set of restraints derived from international law. This is a free-fall situation."

In late February and early March, Bush put the United Nations in an impossible bind. "He clearly has confronted the U.N. with an untenable dilemma of either being a rubber stamp for U.S. geopolitics or finding itself bypassed on a major threat to peace and security by the most important member of the institution," says Falk.

Using Corleone-style tactics, Bush pulled out all the stops to gain support of the council. "What's unique is the scale and the audacity of the bribing," says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the group's report "Coalition of the Willing or Coalition of the Coerced?" Almost every country faced "coercion, bullying, bribery, or the implied threat of U.S. action that would directly damage the interests of the country," the report says. Many nations may remember what the United States did to Yemen prior to the Gulf War in 1991. "When Yemen, the sole Arab country on the council, voted against the resolution authorizing war, a U.S. diplomat told the Yemeni ambassador, `That will be the most expensive no vote you ever cast.' Three days later, the U.S. cut its entire aid budget to Yemen," the report notes.

Still, the resistance many countries put up was remarkable. From Turkey to Chile to Mexico, governments that Washington could usually rely on bucked the pressure, at least for a while. That was because of the astonishing, unprecedented global peace movement that demanded, in country after country, that leaders not give in to Washington.

"The `coalition of the coerced' stands in direct conflict with democracy," the report adds. "In most nations, including those most closely allied to the United States, over 70 percent of the public opposes U.S. military action against Iraq."

Washington further sullied its image by spying on Security Council members, according to a story the London Observer broke. That paper obtained a copy of a National Security Agency memo outlining its snooping to obtain "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals to head off surprises."