The Hindu : Vanishing U.N. jurisprudence

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Sunday, Apr 20, 2003

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Vanishing U.N. jurisprudence

By V. R. Krishna Iyer

Never in the history of wars in the world has any city suffered such horrendously heavy bombardment as Baghdad has during America's recent "Operation Shock and Awe". Never have so many civilians been slain, so many buildings blown to rubble and the magnificent Mesopotamian civilisation's cultural centres smashed to smithereens, so many palatial wonders obliterated and pillaged and so many hospitals strewn with limbless casualties without remedies because of barbaric incessantness of cluster bombs and murderous missiles sprayed with killer appetite as by yelling Yankee weaponry. Why this diabolic monstrosity? The U.S. President, George W. Bush, has the angry answer: "Wicked Saddam has secret weapons of mass destruction which are a sinister menace to mankind and so, on behalf of the world's defenceless humanity, I will attack Iraq's iron dictator, destroy him, his regime and his dastardly cache of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Who has the authority to use military force against Iraq, another sovereign country, a member of the United Nations, assuming its head to be a savage ruler? If the U.S. has WMD, as it undoubtedly has, having regard to its vast nuclear arsenal and its Hiroshima-Nagasaki record, can any fabricated coalition forces terrorise as Osama bin Laden did in infamous, infantile adventurism and bloodthirsty treachery? No, never. Why? Not because Almighty America is omnipotent but because world peace and supremacy of national sovereignty are the inviolable basic structure and inalienable warp and woof of international law and the U.N. is the only authority.

The purpose and principles of the U.N. obligate "effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression". Sovereign equality of all members is fundamental. The Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and the U.N. members agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council whose jurisdiction, in cases of international disputes, binds all U.N. members. Be you ever so high the U.N. is above you. If any issue or dispute between nations arises the Security Council is the sole functionary and unitive instrument to settle such a case.

Such being the anatomy of the World Legal Order guaranteed by the Charter, what has happened to justify the declaration of war by Mr. Bush unilaterally against Iraq, jettisoning the exclusive province of the Security Council? Two angry grounds, unilaterally propounded, have been urged by the U.S. President. Saddam Hussein is a sinister ruler keeping his people unfree and for the liberation of Iraqis from his oppressive regime Mr. Bush must use his imperial might and divine right. Far more importantly and cantankerously, the American President, by his unaccountable sixth sense and indisputable Yankee intelligence, holds that Saddam Hussein invisibly secretes

WMD and desiderates, as the chosen agent to save succeeding generations from the scourge of mass extinction, the immediate displacement of the menace from the Baghdad Palace.

Taking serious note of this implacable ukase, a U.N. team was deployed to investigate and invigilate the presence anywhere in Iraq of hidden WMD. This repetitive process by independent U.N. experts disclosed no such weapon despite U.S. persistence. Virtually, after the war, the Bush bluff was called and the charge against Saddam Hussein was proved mere baloney, an alibi invented to launch a war without provocation.

The U.N. and the Security Council would not approve armed American intervention since no WMD was found, no global ground to gore another sovereign nation existed. Voices of some powers were raised against the U.S. invasionary threat. But Mr. Bush would brook no opposition and asserted that he had information about WMD, that U.N. or no, the Security Council or its veto and votes would not deter the White House from declaring the pre-determined war on Iraq. The world's people protested, statesmen detested and within the U.S, hostile demonstrations erupted. One man, Mr. Blair, the British Prime Minister, within whose Labour Party vociferous dissent was expressed, militarily supported the lone Mr. Bush. The U.N. was made an impotent nincompoop. The Security Council was brazenly bypassed. The U.N. Charter was robbed of its paramountcy.

What are the spoils of this three-week investment in the invincible coalition forces' offensive? Victory in its trinity of triumphs: A. The control over the world's second largest oil resources. B. The biggest boost to America's vastest arms industry. C. Huge monopoly contracts for reconstruction of Iraq's utterly bankrupted economy.

The great political mileage gained by the Bush regime is a grave message to every sovereign member of the U.N. that whatever this world body brawls or resolves, whatever the Security Council bullies with vote or votes, the U.S. will have its way. The dogs may bark but the caravan will pass. Nay, more.

Now that Baghdad is a dead capital and Saddam Hussein is nowhere, where are the WMDs? There! where the nuclear arsenal is assembled enough to wipe out humanity several times over!

Then why is the U.N. cipherising the Security Council, giving in to this superpower syndrome? We have reached a point where international law is the vanishing point of U.N. jurisprudence.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/Like a Colossus; and we petty men/Walk under his huge legs, and peep about/To find ourselves dishonourable graves,/Men at some time are masters of their fates;/The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (Julius Caesar)

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