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Dealing with America
by John Langmore
Keynote address to the Victorian Association of Social Studies Teachers
21 April 2006
The United Nations
The Iraq War has created a momentous international dilemma. For as Kofi Annan said in September 2003 the doctrine that states have the right to use force pre-emptively 'represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last fifty-eight years', for it set a precedent for unilateral and lawless use of force. The international community has to choose whether to accept this deviation or to continue with the formerly 'agreed basis'.
Are countries going to use of the UN 'as its founders intended - to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to affirm faith in fundamental human rights, to establish the basic conditions for justice and the rule of law,' and to 'promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom'?
In Chapter VII of the UN Charter the use of force is prohibited unless authorised by the Security Council or in self-defence when armed attack occurs or is imminent. American neo-conservatives argued that states no longer act according to those limits. Charter rules governing the use of force in international affairs had been flouted ignored and circumvented so often, they said, that they have effectively ceased to form part of international law. However, as Sir Brian Barder, former British High Commissioner to Australia pointed out:
The idea that a law ceases to be a law if it is sufficiently often disobeyed seems oddly defeatist, not to say perilous... It is no doubt true that the US is now so uniquely powerful that it can do what it likes, however illegally, with impunity. But that's a far cry from saying that international law actually licences the United States ... to use force against another state whenever it feels so inclined and in complete disregard of its treaty obligations ... And to tell the rest of the world that we have got to 'recognise' this new American hegemony and 'the failure' of the whole UN experiment is surely outrageous.
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