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Reform of UN Security Council Seeks to Reinforce Imperialist System of Aggression and Plunder
Issued by the Office of the Chairperson
International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
14 September 2005
Among the issues to be taken up at the UN World Summit from September 14
to 16 in New York is reform of the UN Security Council. While talk of
reforming the Security Council has been going on since a long time ago,
it was only in 1992 that serious steps were taken with a resolution by
the Non-Aligned Movement calling for reform of the Security Council,
followed by a resolution of the General Assembly asking the Secretary
General to ask member states for written comments on Council reform. But
the US and the imperialist powers with veto power in the UN Security
Council and with financial control over the UN will allow only that of
kind of reform which reinforces and favors the interests of imperialism
against the people of the world and the client states.
Talk of reforming the UN Security Council has become louder precisely
because this has become more active since the 1990s with the end of the
Cold War and the decline in the use by permanent members of their veto
power. The Security Council has deployed more "peacekeeping operations"
since 1990 than during its first forty-five years. It has imposed more
economic sanctions. It has acted on a wide range of international
security issues, requiring almost daily sessions.
It is notable that such hyperactivity and common interest of the
permanent members have involved conflicts or crises internal to states
such as civil wars, all sorts of humanitarian crises and breakdown of
central governmental authority rather than disputes between states. The
Security Council has more than ever become an imperialist instrument of
some of the permanent members to further political and military
intervention in the internal affairs of weaker and smaller states in
violation of their sovereignty. Also notable is the recent practice of
the Security Council to "subcontract" enforcement of its resolutions to
military forces of permanent members with the token participation of
member states.
Events that have renewed and amplified the calls for reform of the
Security Council are the UN interventions in Iraq in 1990, specifically
the setting up of the inhuman sanctions regime that lasted almost until
the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the sanctions against Libya in the
aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and the UN mission to Somalia. Many
UN member states have questioned all these as going against the norms of
international law and the wishes of the majority of the UN member
states. Moreover, the United Nations and the Security Council have
failed or refused to deploy civilian personnel and resources on other
more urgent or unambiguous humanitarian cases, obviously maintaining
double standards, again to promote the geopolitical imperialist aims and
interests mainly of the US and some other permanent members.
The practice of "subcontracting" has often meant that the veto-wielding
Security Council members use Council resolutions merely to provide legal
cover for their own military operations against smaller or weaker
countries. Notable examples are the Gulf War, Somalia and Haiti in the
case of the United States. France and Russia have also resorted to the
same tactic against countries within their sphere of influence.
Permanent members contribute the least manpower to peacekeeping
operations (with the exception of France) and they do not want their
armed forces to be under direct UN command, with the US explicit in not
allowing its forces to be commanded except by a US national.
While it has intervened in numerous cases involving internal problems of
member states, the Security Council and the United Nations have chosen
to ignore the many outstanding inter-states disputes in practically all
continents. Thus while a world war like WW 1 or 2 has not happened,
contrary to what the founders of the UN feared, the world today is far
from having achieved the international peace and security envisioned in
the Charter of the United Nations. The issues or problems on which the
Security Council has chosen to act creates the impression that the only
problems of the world now are 'weak' states and civil wars and
humanitarian problems and that inter-state disputes rarely or no longer
occur.
The problem of being rendered inutile whenever a big power is an
interested party in an international dispute, continues to plague the
Security Council today. The Security Council failed to play any
significant role in ending the apartheid regime in South Africa, the
Suez crisis in the 50s, the US aggression and genocide in Vietnam in the
60s and 70s and the US military interventions in Nicaragua and El
Salvador and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s. The
intervention by NATO in Yugoslavia which resulted in its break up and
the recent invasion by the US of Iraq and the overthrow of the
government of Saddam Hussein on imaginary charges of possession of
weapons of mass destruction are the two latest examples of this problem.
Two major problems concerning international peace and security now
confront the world. One is the failure of the United Nations and the
Security Council to implement their resolutions on Palestine even after
sixty years. The silence of the UN World Summit on this major global and
historical problem of international peace and security renders ludicrous
all talk of reform of the United Nations and the Security Council. The
other is nuclear proliferation or more accurately the desire of the
United States to maintain nuclear monopoly to enable it to play the role
of globocop. This superpower is using the issue of nuclear proliferation
as pretext to blackmail and intervene in the internal affairs of Iran
and North Korea for example while allowing other states and itself to
maintain a nuclear stockpile.
Thus the problem of United States "unilateralism" on a host of issues,
from its invasion of Iraq to its refusal to sign the Rome Statutes of
the International Criminal Court to intransigence on international
measures to ease global pollution to its continuing insistence on the
Monroe doctrine of treating Central and Latin America as its own
backyard, including the continuing economic and military blockade of
Cuba, is one that the United Nations and the Security Council have to
face head on if they are to become democratic and effective instruments
for international peace and security and for strengthening the rule of
law in international affairs.
The Security Council and the United Nations have become the tools for
the intervention of imperialist powers in the affairs of other countries
under the pretext of undertaking humanitarian missions, protecting human
rights and effecting democratic regime change. It is currently using the
pretext of protecting children in armed conflict to justify economic
sanctions, military intervention and threats thereof. In this regard,
the proposed creation of a Human Rights Council to replace the Human
Rights Commission is futile while the imperialist states are not subject
to the same yardstick of human rights as the rest of the world. It
should be denounced as one more instrument for legitimizing the
violation of the national sovereignty of other countries by the
imperialist powers.
Reform of the Security Council that aggravates the unjust global
authoritarian order against the poor or underdeveloped countries while
it continues to allow the rich and powerful developed countries to flex
their economic, political and military muscles and do as they please,
subject only to the countervailing selfish interests of other powerful
countries, presided over by the United States as globocop, is clearly
unacceptable and should and will be resisted. Substantial reform of the
United Nations and the Security Council should make them truly
democratic, guaranteeing the rights of weaker states, allowing these to
exercise the same rights and privileges as the strong states and
countering the power of the imperialist states with the majority vote of
all states in the UN General Assembly.
Suggestions by Germany, Japan, India and Brazil or the so-called G-4 to
increase the number of permanent members would not necessarily make the
Security Council become less of a tool of US and other imperialist
powers. Neither would other reforms being considered, such as the
adoption of permanent standing rules to make the operations or
proceedings of the Council more transparent and reduce the undue
advantage of the permanent members. It is extremely anomalous that
permanent members engage in closed door meetings which do not have
minutes or formal reports. Resolutions proposed by any of the permanent
members are not circulated ahead of time but are presented as fait
accompli. The regular report to the General Assembly required of the
Council is often skimpy and incomplete. The resolutions of the Security
Council are not subject to review by the World Court and are beyond
check and balance.
Even if some reform of the Security Council were possible, it would not
reduce the power of the imperialist states. Neither would the United
Nations become an instrument for democracy and justice. The reform would
only be cosmetic. The political power of the imperialists in the UN
Security Council is meant to facilitate hegemony, aggression and
plunder. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World
Trade Organization will continue to squeeze the countries dominated by
imperialism. The havoc wrought on the people by these three institutions
in supposedly creating a global "neo-liberal" economic order has been
immeasurable. The call to strengthen the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) to eventually displace the overwhelming role of these three
institutions will amount to nothing more than a new package for the same
poisonous substance.
No reform can be expected to change the character of the United Nations
and its Security Council as instruments of imperialist power. A new and
better world is possible only through the relentless struggles of the
people of the world for national liberation, democracy and socialism.
Only thus will the oppressive and exploitative structures of the world
be replaced by new ones in the interest of the people.
The broad masses of the people and their forces for national and social
liberation must intensify their struggle against imperialism and achieve
greater victories in order to counter the use of the United Nations and
its Security Council and the IMF, World Bank and WTO as instruments of
imperialism and to build new international institutions for the benefit
of the people. As of now, the dominant institutions are being used by
the imperialist powers for repression, war and plunder. We need new
institutions for upholding, defending and promoting national
sovereignty, democracy, development, social justice and world peace. ###
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