It is innacurate to include the UK in your 8, simply because Blair has signed an open letter. The vast majority of the Public do not support a war. Including Church leaders, Government Politicians and Army Commanders. This does not make us ‘ungrateful’ though I’m not sure that we should be, where was the support when we fought terrorism in NI? What is Bush saying about Sharon’s state sponsored terrorism, or China’s oppression and occupation of Tibet… Oh and wasn’t it Rumsfeldt who sold Saddam the weapons in the first place to use against Iran???

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled real world, where we’re on the verge of a second Cold War with the market socialists such as France and Germany. The UN was dysfunctional during the Cold War and only had a decade of functionality when the major powers could agree on a number of things.

The UN is GIGO, and we’ve returned to having trash with Security Council vetoes.

I continue to be completely befuddled at the bizarre attitudes that I find on the political right regarding the UN.
The UN, and the League of Nations before it, were institutions invented by the United States. We did so because some of us, yes it was eastern internationalist liberal types, wished to reorient the manner in which international diplomacy operated at a time when we understood that the United States was beginning to be, and was destined to remain, a major player on the global stage. The prevailing paradigm of international diplomacy was as dysfunctional as could be imagined - the two world wars give ample proof of that. We wished to create an international instituion that would serve as a forum for the resolution of international disputes in a manner that would reduce the likelihood of war, and that would allow Western liberal values to be given exposure in an international context.
Niether organizaton was ever concieved of as a world government. Neither was ever seen as an analogue of our Congress. Neither was ever seen as a black hole to suck up the soverignity of member states. They were both seen as glorified debating societies - not in the bad sense, but in a good sense, based on the perception that disputes between nations were almost always resolvalbe if the two parties could actually sit down and discuss the issues. The organizations were seen as merely being a venue for such actions.
The isolationist conservative parts of American society who didnt give a damn about the rest of the world went to great effort to demonize the League, and to falsly claim that it was an attempt to form a world government. As a result, the US, although we originated the idea, did not become a member. The League of nations failed because of our non-participation.
After WWII, we set up the UN, and were a founding member. We have always been the dominant force in the UN, although some who dont really pay much attention might not realize that. As a forum for discussion and debate, we get to hear all manner of seemingly strange perpsectives - and many thereby think that the UN is a force for the dissemination of some wierd political ideas.
But the UN is a FORUM, it IS a debating society, it IS a place where people and nations who are coming from left field, so to speak, are forced to listen to and react to everyone else. It is a messy and seemingly incoherent babble - but THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Think of your family get-togethers over Thanksgiving holidays - for how many years must the arguing and posturing and craziness go on until people start actually listening to each other, understanding each other, and feeling more like a family. It is a process, and a long and messy one at that, and the UN is a wonderful forum for that discussion to take place in a peaceful manner.

Along with paranoid fantasies of world domination, the right also tries to hold the UN up to some bizarre and inappropriate standard - as if it were a church, or a national legislature or some other institution that is meant to have a coherent plan of action. The UN does not have, or claim to have “moral authority” in terms of decisions reached. I think it is proper and moral to use the UN, to go there as opposed to carrying out disputes on the battlefield, but the institution does not determine outcomes, and should not be held repsonsible for outcomes -it is a “safe ground”, a meeting place for nations to use to resolve disputes. The outcomes achieved are wholly the responsibility of the nations themsleves.
When the US goes to the UN for a resolution, as in the Iraq situation, we are NOT going there for the permission of some higher authority. When we get a UN resolution, it is nothing more than a formal recognition of a successful diplomatic effort. It is not the UN which is granting the resolution, it is the member states that we negotiate with one on one. Failing to get a resolution, or failing of the “UN” enforcing its resolutions is simply the failure of our diplomacy and our leadership.
Once again, the UN is a FORUM, a VENUE for practicing diplomacy, and an incredibly valuable institution.

I’m pretty sure Adolf Hitler’s parents never envisioned him as a murderer of six million innocent people.

Institutions, like people, take on directions of their own once conceived, which can be diametrically opposed to the intentions of their progenitors.

It is easy (and unsurprising) to notice the absence of Germany and F***** on that list of signers.

But I was actually surprised this morning when Oliver North spoke about France’s Chirac likely being on the take, that there is good reasoning to suspect Saddam’s money is influencing the French Leadership.

Tried posting here b4, not sure this will work…

The reason Germany and France didn’t sign the letter, is because the weren’t asked!

The person responsible for the idea of the letter was Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, who is very pro-US.

In Spain this evening, Blair and Aznar are giving a joint presser

Cheers

First - it is great to know that some countries value the US position on the world stage and the contrarian behavior of our ex-allies.

Second - in response to a previous post stating “The prevailing paradigm of international diplomacy was as dysfunctional as could be imagined - the two world wars give ample proof of that. ” - rubbish. The two world wars only prove that stupid economic policies and the appeasement of tyrants do not work. Have you read Keynes? Try “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” and follow that road map from 1919 to 1939 (and beyond).

The UN was meant to serve as an international conflict-resolving and freedom-promoting body. The UN is supposed to be a watchdog for atrocities such as what happened in Rwanda, and attempt to negotiatiate peaceful solutions that make war unnecessary, such as by attempting to eliminate Saddam’s weapon’s program without a full regime change being neccesary. The problem is that in Rwanda the entire world stood by for weeks while all reports from that nation showed that there were thousands of people being killed. And in Iraq the weapon inspectors have no ability to force Iraq to cooperate. The most effective action of the UN was when it served as a forum for exposing the deception of the USSR by placing nuikes in Cuba. This brought international focus on the USSR. Because it was clear what Russia was doing, the US blockade of Cuba was globally accepted, and any physical opposition that Russia had to it would most likely spark an international embargo of the USSR. Any military action by the Soviet Union would be clear to the world as naked aggression. The USSR and the Eastern Bloc would be alone against the world. There would be no chance of winning any such war, and the USSR would lose more economically than it had to gain by continuing to hold its missiles in Cuba.
Today the UN has failed to be a deliberative body. It is fragmented by petty third-world governments, rampant with anti-democratic sentiment, and hostile to taking any real action. The Security Council needs to be restructured. The members of the SC should be democratic internationally-influential nations, with a strong tradition of libery and justice. The UN has lost focus by taking up too many resolutions and conferences, has become too fragmented, and needs to return to its core mission of democracy and international justice.

Well, if Nathaniel and I can agree, at least in principle, about what is wrong with the UN, where does that leave Tano?

Nathaniel,
I think you still misunderstand the nature of the UN. You speak of the institution as if it had any institutional weight, apart from what the leading members choose to use it for. Kofi Annan does not lead an army. He cannot do anything unless the SC authorizes him to. He is not an analogue to a US president in relation to the Congress. He has no independent base of authority. The UN does what the US wants it to do, nothing more, and sometimes less (if we cant get the other permananent SC members to agree).
People on the right would be the first to howl if the UN were to ever have any independent authority - and yet the right loves to criticize the UN for failing to act in a way that it only could if it had such independent authority. It is all a lot of hot air.

As for your interpretation of the Cuban Missile crisis, I dont think we can get into that debate here. I think you should realize the big picture though. The US put missiles on the Soviet border, in Turkey. The USSR responded with missiles in Cuba. We found that to be unacceptable and demanded their removal. The great media spin has it that the Soviets blinked and went home with their tails between their legs, but actually a deal was worked out. They removed their missiles, and we removed ours from Turkey.
And we agreed not to invade Cuba. So you tell me who won that round.

Tano:
I knew tat too. The missiles in Turkey were actually going to be phased out anyways and replaced by sub-based ones. My point is that if we had started a blockade without making it clear before the UN forum that we had good cause, the USSR might have tried a non-nuclear “conflict” to destroy the blockade. With most of the UN supporting the US, such a conflict would have at least led to UNresolutions for embargoes, which would probably have been followed by most western nations. It could also result in the USSR being voted out of the UN, as well as the Security Council assisting the US as in the Korean War. The Cuban missile crisis was a victory in diplomacy, because it was absolutely clear that the USSR would not win if it opposed the US blockade and the will of the UN. The missiles were removed by diplomatic agreement, not by force. I think the USSR was the loser in the Cuban Missile Crisis, because it could not get its nuclear-armed subs as close to America as we could to the USSR, which was why it was placing first-strike capable mssiles in Cuba in the first place. The problem with them doing that beyond the Cold War was that the Non-Proliferation Treaty specifically opposes basing nuclear weapons in other nations. The UN was a forum in which a global assembly could be organized in days rather than months.