Traveling without divisions, you don’t get no respect
Iran and Ahmadinejad have once again demonstrated the great and awesome power of the UN and their fear of its sanctions, in Iran’s continued defiance of the UN’s call for limitations on its nuclear program. Although Kofi Annan made a special trip to Iran to discuss these matters, the Iranian leader might very well have paraphrased Stalin (instead of the historical tyrant he usually prefers to channel, Hitler) and asked: how many divisions does Kofi Annan have?
The answer? Quite a few, but unfortunately they lack the ability to fight, being either unarmed or lightly armed and only allowed to fire in self-defense. And the UN’s proposed sanctions, hardly frightening in and of themselves, are likely to be blocked by Iran’s buddies Russia and China, as Iran is well aware.
As for Annan himself, he well might paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield and say: I don’t get no respect, despite (or perhaps because) of Iran’s praise for his visit as “good, suitable, and positive.” In other words: powerless, meaningless, and suiting Iran’s aims to place a cooperative face on its nuclear ambitions.
Annan made a small gesture of relative defiance by criticizing Iran’s nose-thumbing announcement of a conference devoted to the fact that the Holocaust was an “exaggeration,” as well as the mounting of an exhibit in Teheran of cartoons mocking said Holocaust (or, rather, un-Holocaust).
Annan’s statement of the Holocaust’s historical reality is okay as far as it goes, which isn’t all that far. It illustrates the tepid nature of the UN response–or the diplomatic response in general–when faced with evil. Annan is typical of those groups in trying to reason with the unreasonable, and to plead with the inhumane. Such reasoning and pleas are doomed to fall on deaf ears.
Wow, first?
Anyway, I developed an allergy to Kofi Anan. His job seems to be to pretend that he and the institution that he presides have any use. Talk, talk, talk. Talk about peace, about nuclear sanctions, about classifying Darfur as genocide or not, while terrible things go on happening in the real world, regardless of what is said there.
Anan became a farcical figure and – in the case that the UN cannot be scrapped altogether – should be substituted as soon as possible, just for the sake of change.
The UN, the New World Order of Evil, facing Evil? Nice setup.
The UN does more than talk, that’s the problem.
The U.N. is pathetic…yet we keep funding it. Why?!
I pray that once, just once, he gets pelted with eggs. I think I would pay thousands to see a clip of that.
In the end the USA will just do whatever the fuck it pleases.
People keep confusing the role the UN was designed to play in the world. It is not to dispense justice, liberate the oppressed, protect the innocent, enforce treaties, etc. Its goal simply is to maintain stability between and among member-states. It suggests compromise, any compromise, in lieu of *international* war, that is, war across borders.
Witness the recent compromise it has made between Israel and Hezbollah, whose identification has been upgraded from a terrorist group into a type of nation-state which can be a party to international treaties.
To assume the UN would do anything about Iran enforcement-wise is to misunderstand the very nature of that organization.
I always find it sadly amusing when, as soon as a decision in the UN goes any way other than that explicitely desired by the US, you creeps immediately start howling. However, with the American ‘cash-money’ approach to democracy I can see how you would fail to appreciate how great it is that a little group of dirty “2-strander” countries can disrupt your vast tyrannical “3-strand” hegemony.
I love the UN, they rock!
I love Kofi, 2001 Nobel Peace Laureate, too. He rocks!
If stability is supreme goal, UN activity makes sense. But if there is something more important, for example, real progress in resolving ubearable situation, you should seek another means than UN resolutions. No status quo can be maintained indefinitely long. History is unstoppable, and some problems simply have no peacefull solutions. So to think that UN can in principle (with Kofi Anan or otherwise) provide solution for every situation is utopian illusion.
When diplomacy failed, other measures must be considered and implemented. And I do not expect that UN approval need to be sought for going to war: these decisions are not under UN jurisdiction. Principle of national sovereignty has precedence of any UN resolutions.
scary,
Try to not be so like a troll. “Creeps” how last week. “Rocks”, how last month.
Here is the way that scary is using the term “hegemony”: “…a term used mostly by Marxist critics to delineate the web of dominant ideologies within a society.”
The term itself owes much to Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist.
Here is a less value laden definition:“preeminence of one group over others”
The UN has failed by any objective standard. It will continue to fail for reasons too tedious to discuss here. Currently, it is in the interest of the US to continue to use it to achieve foreign policy objectives while reserving the rights of a sovereign state. Full stop.
Far from “disruption”, the actions of the UN merely point out its futility. This is called “Realpolitik”, …foreign politics based on practical concerns rather than theory or ethics” Realpolitik, German for the politics of reality is the actual way that states act. The rest is simply window dressing. It’s idiocy to pretend otherwise.
For those who seriously want to understand the role of EU and UN in Iran nuclear crisis, I strongly advise to read the following:
http://www.steynonline.com/pageprint.cfm?edit_id=37
Sergey,
It’s not hard to fathom – I didn’t need to read the article (though I did). Lets even assume that a few of the countries that *should* know better do (France and Germany for two), the UN is still mostly Robert Mugabe’s voting what to do.
Of course they are going to condemn the US and Britain. It’s like asking the mafia if the police are doing right by locking down on protection schemes, bribing, money laundering, and other such crimes.
Add in that a certain percentage will *always* choose that side and you get the vast majority of world opinion is violent dictator friendly. Until dictators are not given the same vote as non-dictator (fat chance) or the hated police finally remove most of them the UN will always be that way. Mugabe or any of his like aren’t going to vote themselfs away and the non-confrontationals will always give in to them.
In old Russia there was a proverbial Yiddish saying on usefulness of formalities of law in dealing with those who do not respect law: “Scribe mit a Hund a Dogovor” (sign a treaty with a dog so it would not bite you). Better, pretend that you are picking up a stone from the ground: almost always the dog will turn tail. The only situation when this would not work is when the dog is rabid. In this case you need use a gun, and if you have not one, any suitable tool to kill it as quickly as you can.
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