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

Progressive, The, April, 2003 by Matthew Rothschild

"We should support the U.N. and international law for the same reasons we support democracy and other values," says Chomsky. "The fact that they are trampled to dust and treated with contempt by power centers does not mean that these values and institutions should be tossed into the ashcan of history."

Chomsky and other observers take note of the one hopeful sign in recent months: the rise of the massive international peace movement. "We should never rest hopes in institutions," says Chomsky. "I have to admit that the basic truth of the matter appeared in the lead paragraphs of a front-page story in my favorite newspaper, The New York Times, a couple of days after the demos: The Times reported that there are now two superpowers on the planet, the U.S. and world opinion. Our hopes should rest in the second superpower."

Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies says this second superpower can find a home at the United Nations. "People throughout the world are looking at the U.N. as part of this global anti-war movement." More hopeful than most, she believes Bush already may ironically be pushing the United Nations to assume a new, more powerful role. "He's trying to do enormous damage," she says. "But the ferocity of his attack has had exactly the opposite result. Right now, the United Nations is not only more relevant but is gaining more backbone because of Bush's blatant actions. The United Nations has a somewhat new identity as the centerpiece of the global movement against the U.S. empire. It's exactly where the U.N. belongs: organizing the defiance of the world against the superpower."

There will come a day when the United States is no longer king of the hill, when other powers arise to challenge Washington for dominance. The Roman Empire lasted 500 years. The British Empire lasted almost 400 years. The Soviet Empire vanished within seventy-five years. The 1,000 Year Reich lasted barely more than a single decade. The American Empire will fade, as well. At such a time, it would be in the interest of the United States to have still standing an institution that can act as a buffer against war.

But Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld can't imagine that day, and so they can't imagine that need. They foresee, explicitly in their new strategic doctrine, indefinite U.S. military preeminence, and they are eager to go to war "preemptively" whenever another nation attempts to vie for power against the United States.

The founders of the United Nations, in the words of the charter, created an institution to save succeeding generations from "the scourge of war." But Bush does not consider war a "scourge." He uses it as a favorite tool to ensure the predominance of the United States, and thus he denies the basic purpose of the United Nations.

Matthew Rothschild is Editor of The Progressive.