GWELTY@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU Tue Dec 1 18:46:09 1992 Gordon Welty "The Gulf Crisis and the United Nations" UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON REVIEW, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 75-85./1/ >PART I OF II< [/75] The full account of the events and the motives which led up to the United States' savage attack on Iraq remains to be told. And further evidence unfolds almost daily. A key actor in this story was U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie. The State Department "instructed" her to hold a "conversation" with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 21, 1991./2/ It must be emphasized that she was "instructed" not to give sworn testimony -- nor provide requested documents, diplomatic cables, etc. -- to the Foreign Relations Committee. At issue in that March "conversation" was an earlier July 1990 "conversation." Did Glaspie, under earlier "instructions," give Iraq the "green light" to invade Kuwait on August 2, 1990?/3/ During the recent "conversation," Glaspie acknowledged that at issue was her "credibility" versus Saddam Hussein's. Thus each time the United States seeks to "clarify" the events and motives preceding the savagery of Operation Desert Storm, it is more clear that the full account has yet to be told. Little wonder Glaspie was kept under wraps for all these months. We cannot give anything approaching a full account here. Instead, we will address two topics which must be a part of that full account. The first topic is the role of the United Nations Security Council in the developments leading to the Gulf War. How did this body, presumably dedicated to the pursuit of peace, become an instrument of savagery at the hands of the United States? The second topic is that of the interests served by the savagery. Who stood to gain by this destructive war? I. It has been said that the United Nations is finally func- tioning as it was designed to operate. In an address to a Joint Session of Congress on September 11, 1990, President George Bush claimed that "we're now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."/4/ This is an important topic to consider. If we review the United Nations Charter of June 1945, we find the following. First of all, the Charter holds in Article 2:4 that all members of the United Nations shall refrain from the use of force against the political independence of any other state. It is clear that Iraq violated this Principle when it invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990./5/ Next, the Charter indicates in Article 24:1 that the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security, and acts thereby on behalf of the entire United Nations./6/ The question emerges: how will the Security Council respond under the Charter to violations of peace and security? There seem to be several possibilities. The Charter stipulates in Article 33:1 that the parties to any dispute -- such as Iraq and Kuwait, or Iraq and the United States -- shall first of all seek a solution by negotiation, resort to regional agencies, or other peaceful means./7/ It is evident that the Bush Administration never sought negotiations after August 2./8/ Indeed, in one of his more statesmanlike moments, Bush [75/76] whined that Muhammad Ali had better access to Baghdad than Secretary of State James Baker. Nor did the Security Council call upon the parties to settle their dispute by peaceful means, as it is mandated to do by Article 33:2. Moreover, the Bush Administration deliberately sabotaged the workings of the Arab League and other regional agencies which might have pursued a diplomatic "Arab Solution to an Arab Problem."/9/ Thus the provisions of Article 33 were clearly not followed during the Gulf Crisis. Let us consider another possible Security Council response to the Iraqi aggression. Under some conditions laid out in Article 42, the Security Council may employ armed forces to maintain or restore peace and security. This is the article which one would suppose most obviously relevant to the Gulf Crisis. But there is a proviso, included in Article 46: plans for the application of armed force by the Security Council, including action of its members, shall be made by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee./10/ According to Article 47, this Committee consists of the Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces of the permanent members of the Security Council, and it is responsible for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Despite H.R. Resolution 372, introduced by Representative Charles Bennett (D-FL) on September 19, specifically calling for a "UN Command" in the Gulf Crisis, the provisions of these articles of the Charter were patently not followed during the Gulf Crisis. It had not been possible for the Security Council to enact these provisions during the earlier occasion they were invoked, the Korean Crisis of 1950. The Security Council, with the Soviet Union notably absent on July 7, 1950, established instead a Unified Command, under a United States general, of the several armed forces dedicated to the attack on North Korea./11/ In the current Gulf Crisis, there has been no reason to suspect that any of the other permanent members of the Security Council -- particularly given Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's decisive if dubious role in the formulation of the Soviet Union's foreign policy -- would have obstructed the enactment of the provisions of Article 47./12/ No, the current failure to follow the United Nations Charter can only be understood in terms of United States' intention not to permit the establishment of a precedent of successful Security Council enforcement action. Let us consider a third possible Security Council response to the Gulf Crisis under the United Nations Charter. The Charter stipulates in Article 51 that it was never intended to impair the right of "collective self-defense," during the time between an act of aggression and the point when the Security Council is able to take "necessary measures" to maintain peace and security. The right of collective self-defense is thus an interim role./13/ This role is to be taken while the Security Council is preparing to act under the provisions of Articles 40 thru 42 which establish a gradation of United Nations responses to aggression./14/ Thus the alternative response is for the United Nations members to act outside the Security Council framework, pending the Security Council's enforcement actions. Clearly the United States, Great Britain and several other states did act outside the Security Council framework, especially after January 16, 1991. But Article 51 continues that the exercise of the right of collective self-defense -- if we can stretch those terms to apply to Operation Desert Storm -- does not in turn impair the authority and responsibility of the Security Council to act [76/77] within the provisions of Articles 40 thru 42. The United States moved on several occasions to cut off Security Council consideration of possible diplomatic and other responses during this crucial period. Thus the provisions of Article 51 were clearly not followed during the Gulf Crisis either. There do not seem to be any other relevant Charter provisions. Hence we cannot agree that the United Nations has been operating during the Gulf Crisis as it was designed to operate. Rather it appears that the Security Council was virtually inoperative for at least the seven month period from August 1990 to February 1991, inclusive. As King Hussein of Jordan put it in a speech to his nation on February 6, 1991, "the United Nations was prevented from fulfilling its role."/15/ What was observed during this period was not the functioning of the Security Council as envisioned by its founders. Rather it was what former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark has rightly called "the fig-leaf of the United Nations." It became what King Hussein rightly called "war waged under the cloak of international legitimacy." We shall consider what this fig- leaf, what this cloak, was covering, in the second part of this paper. It should be alarming to supporters of the United Nations if it were indeed functionally inoperative during such a dangerous crisis. The confrontation between the United States and Iraq was indeed very dangerous. This was not because the confrontation was likely to trigger nuclear war, as some have suggested. It is well known that Iraq had no nuclear force, the United States and Israel had pledged no first use, etc./16/ Consider, however, that the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 45/58-J on December 4, 1990, which proscribed any military attack against nuclear facilities. When the United States began its savage bombing of Iraq a month later, nuclear facilities were among the first targets, as US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney proudly announced. Thus the United States had contravened this non-binding UN Resolution. The confrontation was dangerous because the United States was likely to spread radio-isotopes all over the Gulf Region. One of the stipulations of Resolution 45/58-J, however, is that the Security Council must act immediately if any nuclear facilities are attacked. Better for United States war objectives -- elastic as they were/17/ -- that the Security Council was inoperative; all the worse for the world. No, this confrontation was alarming because it established a new principle of international relations. That is: the leader of any Third World nation must strive to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and the appropriate delivery systems if he is to be responsible to his own people./18/ If Iraq had achieved nuclear parity with Israel in 1990, say, the United States would have been unable to visit the savagery of Operation Desert Storm upon the Iraqi people in 1991. The only defense in the present imperfect world against having "Assured Destruction" visited by the United States upon a people is the possibility of "Mutually Assured Destruction," and this is no less true at the regional level than it is at the global level./19/ Some might object to the enunciation of this new principle. Some believe that the risk of World War III exists because of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the arsenals of regional powers, that is to say because of nuclear proliferation. The savagery of Operation Desert Storm obliges this to be viewed somewhat differently. To argue that point will require that we review some of the background to the Gulf Crisis, and consider whose interests were served by the crisis and the war. [77/] NOTES to PART I. 1. I would like to thank Dr. James Dickinson for his assistance in this project; of course, I alone am responsible for any opinions expressed or any conclusions reached. 2. See Thomas Friedman "Envoy to Iraq Faulted in Crisis," New York Times (March 21, 1991). 3. According to the New York Times (September 23, 1991), after Saddam Hussein had stated that the "solution" to the "disagreement" between Iraq and Kuwait "must be found within an Arab framework and through direct bilateral relations," Glaspie replied "we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. [...] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods [...] All we hope is that these issues are solved quickly." As James Akins has put it, "statements made under instruction by our ambassador in Baghdad and by the assistant secretary of state [Thomas Kelley] in congressional testimony in late spring and summer almost certainly led Saddam Hussein to conclude that the United States would not object to Iraqi occupation of Kuwait;" see his "Heading towards War," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 20:3 (Spring 1991), p. 20. Iraq's grievances against Kuwait were many and varied. Some of them were summarized in Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz's Report to the Arab League (July 15, 1990); see Pierre Salinger Secret Dossier Harmondsworth: Penguin (1991), Appendix. 4. See the New York Times, (September 12, 1990); Secretary of State James Baker likewise testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "the current crisis is the first opportunity to [...] reinforce the standards for civilized behavior, found in the United Nations Charter" (September 4, 1990). 5. As L. Oppenheim and H. Lauterpacht note in their definitive treatise on international law, no positive obligations follow from this provision; see their International Law: A Treatise NY: McKay (1955), Vol. 1, pp. 405-406. This is clear when we recognize with Noam Chomsky that "the similarities between Iraqi aggression in Kuwait and U.S. aggression in Panama are hard to miss;" see his "Nefarious Aggression," Z Magazine (October 1990), pp. 19-20. 6. See Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 103-110 for the various powers available to the Security Council in this respect. 7. But cf. Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 99- 100, on the "two parallel and not easily reconcilable procedures" of peaceful settlement, including those stipulated in Article 33 and those of Article 35. 8. The Security Council condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and called for the two countries to begin negotiations in Resolution 660, passed on August 2, 1990. The Security Council was unable to respond to Iraq's call for comprehensive withdrawal from occupied territory in the Middle East; see "President Saddam Hussein's Initiatives for the Maintenance of Peace in the Middle East," Ministry of Information and Culture, Baghdad, (August 12, 1990.) See also Chomsky op. cit., p. 22; also Akins op. cit., p. 23. 9. See Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 117, on regional arrangements. 10. See Brian Urquhart "Learning from the Gulf" New York Review (March 7, 1991), p. 34; also Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 127, p. 173. 11. See Jon Halliday "Anti-Communism and the Korean War" in R. Miliband et al. (eds.) Socialist Register 1984 (London: Merlin, 1984), pp. 130-163; also Joyce Kolko and G. Kolko The Limits to Power (NY: Harper, 1972). Some of the parallels with Korea are drawn by Philip Agee "Gulf War Launches `New World Order'," Christic Institute Issues Brief, No. 3 (March 1991), pp. 5-9. 12. Bush acknowledged that the "East-West confrontation [no longer can] stymie concerted U.N. action against aggression," New York Times (September 12, 1990). 13. Oppenheim and Lauterpacht refer to this interim role as an "exceptional right," op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 156; see also Urquhart, op. cit., p. 34. 14. On this gradation of enforcement actions, see Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., pp. 168-169. 15. As presented by the Jordanian Press and Information Office, Washington, DC (February 6, 1991). Brian Urquhart speaks of a "divergence from the course of action set out in the UN Charter," op. cit., p. 34. 16. Richard Wilson "Nuclear Proliferation and the Case of Iraq" Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 20:3 (Spring 1991), pp. 5-15. 17. Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 225 on the ends or objectives of war. 18. As King Hassan II of Morocco expressed it, "if some have nuclear bombs, why should others be unarmed? Either everyone is prohibited or everyone is allowed; it is impossible to have double standards," Le Monde, (August 16, 1990). 19. As Oppenheim and Lauterpacht have noted, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 526, note (1): "in the absence of the restraining influence of fear of effective reprisals, belligerents have not hesitated to make use of the superiority of their air arm in a manner violative of the prohibition to bombard the civilian population."