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US has no moral authority to lecture UN

Stephen Zunes

The United States has attempted to justify its invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the Iraqi government has failed to fully comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions related to Iraqi disarmament. Indeed, President George W. Bush claimed that the credibility of the United Nations was at stake if the Security Council was not willing to enforce its resolutions by authorising an American-led invasion of Iraq that would topple the government of Saddam Hussein and replace it with one more to America�s liking.

What the American president failed to note, however, is that Iraq is not the only country currently in violation of UN Security Council resolutions nor is it the worst violator in the international community. Indeed, my research indicates that there are more than 90 UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by countries other than Iraq, the vast majority of which are allies of the United States that have received large-scale military, economic and diplomatic support from the US government.

I have taken a survey of the nearly 1500 resolutions passed by the UN Security Council since the founding of the United Nations. Most have been honoured or have since become defunct. I wanted to see how many resolutions that specifically proscribed a particular ongoing activity or future activity and/or called upon a government to implement a particular action that are currently being violated. My research did not include non-state actors, such as secessionist governments, rebel groups or terrorists, only recognised nation-states. I did not include those resolutions which simply criticised a particular action by a government.

Nor did I include resolutions where the language is ambiguous enough to make assertions of non-compliance debatable, such as UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 on the Arab-Israeli conflict that call upon Israel to withdraw from Arab territories seized in the 1967 war in return for security guarantees, also known as "land for peace." (One could make a strong case that, with the Arab League�s endorsement last year of the Abdullah Plan calling for peace with Israel and full diplomatic relations in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, the Israeli refusal to negotiate from this basis constitutes such a violation. The United States and Israel, however, have dramatically expanded the definition of security guarantees from ending the threat from neighbouring states to attack and overrun Israel to insuring the physical safety of every Israeli from attacks by opposition groups that no government can completely contain.)

Similarly, my research did not include broad resolutions calling for universal compliance to concerns that are not in reference to a particular conflict, particularly if there is not a clear definition of the question at hand. For example, in a resolution that proscribes the harbouring of terrorists, there is no clear definition for what constitutes a terrorist. A number of Middle Eastern governments have allowed individuals and organisations that have attacked civilian targets in Israel and elsewhere sanctuary in their countries. The United States sees them as �terrorists� while their host governments see them as �freedom fighters.� However, the Bush Administration has allowed individuals and organisations that have attacked civilian targets in Cuba and Nicaragua sanctuary in the United States, which a number of Latin American governments see as �terrorists� but the United States sees as �freedom fighters.�

Furthermore, this list does not include resolutions that were also violated for a number of years that are now defunct, such as those dealing with Indonesia's occupation of East Timor (24 years), South Africa's occupation of Namibia (21 years), and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon (22 years). If these were also included, the number of violations would double. In most of these cases, the United States played a key role in blocking enforcement of these resolutions as well.

Even using this conservative interpretation, the total of resolutions being violated by countries other than Iraq total more than ninety. This raises serious questions regarding the commitment of the US government to the enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions.

For example, in late 1975, the UN Security Council passed a series of resolutions demanding that Morocco withdraw its occupation forces from the country of Western Sahara and that Indonesia withdraw its occupation forces from East Timor. However, then-US ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan later bragged that, "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success."

East Timor finally won its freedom in 1999 after 24 years of US-backed occupation. Moroccan forces still occupy Western Sahara, however, with the Bush administration supporting Morocco's defiance of subsequent UN Security Council resolutions that simply call for an internationally supervised referendum for the Western Saharan population to determine the fate of their desert nation.

Meanwhile, Turkey remains in violation of UN Security Council resolution 353 and more than a dozen subsequent resolutions calling for its withdrawal from northern Cyprus, which this NATO ally of the United States has occupied since 1974.

Selective enforcement

The most extensive violator of UN Security Council resolutions is Israel, by far the largest recipient of US military and economic aid. These include resolutions 262 and 267 that demand Israel rescind its annexation of greater East Jerusalem, as well as the more than a dozen other resolutions demanding Israel cease its violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, such as deportations, demolitions of homes, collective punishment, and seizure of private property.

UN Security Council resolutions 446, 452 and 465 require that Israel evacuate all of its illegal settlements on occupied Arab lands. The United States, however, insists the fate of the settlements is a matter of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In fact, the Clinton Peace Plan of December 2000 would have allowed Israel to illegally annex most of these settlements and surrounding areas into Israel, dividing the West Bank into non-contiguous Palestinian cantons separated by expanded Israeli territory that the Palestinians would be required to recognize. Even more disturbing, the US decision to help fund Israel's construction of Jewish-only "bypass roads" in the occupied West Bank to connect the illegal settlements with Israel puts the United States in violation of Article 7 of resolution 465, which prohibits member states from facilitating Israel's colonisation drive.

Furthermore, the United States has successfully pressured the Security Council to pass resolutions dealing with its allies only under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which falls under �Pacific Settlement of Disputes,� which limit the Security Council�s ability to enforce them. By contrast, the United States has successfully insisted that resolutions dealing with Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran and other countries the United States does not like be passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, �Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression,� which provides for an array of possible enforcement mechanisms, including economic sanctions and military force.

As a result, there have been cases where relatively minor disputes � such as those involving extradition issues � have been placed under Chapter VII, whereas major acts of aggression in direct violation of the UN Charter � such as the invasion, occupation and annexation by one country of another � have been placed under Chapter VI.

In addition to the United States blocking the enforcement of such UN Security Council resolutions, the United States has used its veto power 30 times to protect Israel from demands that it end its violations of human rights and international law in the Occupied Territories and attacks against neighbouring states. The United States has also vetoed a score of other UN Security Council resolutions, including sanctions against apartheid South Africa, the reappointment of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a call for all nations to honour decisions of the International Court of Justice and the renewal of UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.

In fact, over the past 30 years, the United States has used its veto power more than all other member states of the United Nations Security Council have used their veto power during that same period combined. Such a veto threat has also weakened the language of a number of others that were allowed to pass. In addition, threats of a US veto have blocked scores of resolutions from even coming up to a vote. For example, in 2001, the United States threatened to veto a number of resolutions proposed by European governments regarding Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories if they even mentioned the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel�s illegal settlements, international law, or the principle of land-for-peace.

In other words, no country has done more to compromise the authority of the United Nations Security Council and its enforcement mechanisms than has the United States.

While the UN Security Council had a strong case to insist that Iraq be more fully compliant with its resolutions, the United States is the last country to claim the right to enforce alleged non-compliance militarily. Not only does the UN Charter and UN Security Council resolution 1441 explicitly recognise that only the Security Council as a whole � and not any single member � has the legal authority to enforce such resolutions militarily, but the United States is the last member of the world body to claim any kind of moral authority to do so.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is the Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism