Eric Zuesse -- How the United States Has Virtually Destroyed the United Nations

How the United States Has Virtually Destroyed the United Nations

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, April 18, 2018

Strategic Culture Foundation 17 April 2018

Region: Middle East & North Africa

Theme: Media Disinformation, Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: SYRIA

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Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has basically eliminated the only real international authority the U.N. used to have. Here is how this was done:

The equivalent, in international law, to a domestic-law crime involving murder, rape, and theft, is an international invasion that’s purely for aggressive purposes and not at all authentically a defensive act against an authentic foreign threat that was coming from the invaded foreign country. Consequently, for the U.S. Government now to have removed the U.N. from any authority over international invasions, is, in domestic-law equivalency, like removing a national government from authority regarding murders, rapes, and thefts, which occur inside that nation. Such a ‘government’ is no government at all. But, tragically, this is what has happened; and, so, we are now careening into World War III, in this international “Wild West” world, which we live in (and may soon die in, as things thus head into WW III). 

The U.S. Government no longer even nominally cares whether or not the U.N. authorizes its invasions; but, as recently as 2003, it used to, even if only nominally, care. The U.S. has thus effectively discarded the U.N. altogether, whenever violating the U.N. is the only way to impose its will against a given target-country.

In late 2002 and early 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush nominally expressed a desire for the U.N. to authorize an invasion of Iraq, but failed to receive that authorization and then did the invasion anyway, along with only UK, Australia, and Poland, joining the U.S.-led gang, in this destruction of Iraq.

At a press conference on 6 March 2003, just 11 days before he (on March 17th) ordered the U.N. weapons-inspectors to leave Iraq, and then invaded Iraq on March 20th, Bush said:

Elizabeth.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. As you said, the Security Council faces a vote next week on a resolution implicitly authorizing an attack on Iraq. Will you call for a vote on that resolution, even if you aren’t sure you have the vote?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first, I don’t think — it basically says that he’s in defiance of 1441. That’s what the resolution says. And it’s hard to believe anybody is saying he isn’t in defiance of 1441, because 1441 said he must disarm. And, yes, we’ll call for a vote.

Q No matter what?

THE PRESIDENT: No matter what the whip count is, we’re calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It’s time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam.

Mark Knoller.

Q Mr. President, are you worried that the United States might be viewed as defiant of the United Nations if you went ahead with military action without specific and explicit authorization from the U.N.?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I’m not worried about that. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to say the United States is defiant about the United Nations, when I was the person that took the issue to the United Nations, September the 12th, 2002. We’ve been working with the United Nations. We’ve been working through the United Nations.

Subsequent U.S. Presidents haven’t been even that respectful of the U.N.’s authority; and current U.S. President Donald Trump is blatantly dismissive of it, so that he’s not even requesting U.N. authorization for his invasions.

Thus, the lesson that the U.S. Government learned from the Iraq invasion isn’t that the U.S. Government should never again lie about what the evidence actually shows, in order to invade a country, but instead that the U.S. Government should simply ignore the U.N. whenever the evidence doesn’t persuade other Governments that an invasion would be authentically defensive instead of purely an act of international aggression.

What might turn out to have been “The Most Important U.N. Security Council Vote Ever” was the 10 April 2018 U.N. Security Council’s failure to require the U.S. and its allies to provide evidence to prove that Syria’s Government had gassed its own people in Douma on April 7th as the U.S. and its allies alleged, before the U.S. and its allies could, with even just possible legal justification, launch a promised massive bombing of Syria as supposed punishment for the gas-attack that they were alleging. The question of whether or not the U.N. would authorize the American invasion wasn’t even being raised; the question was only whether the alleged gas-attack needed to be independently verified before an invasion might possibly legally be launched — and no proposal was passed. Unlike in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. never tried to win U.N. authorization to invade Syria in 2018, but simply invaded, casually ignoring all laws, and even denying the need for evidence to back up its allegations against Syria.

If the Russian Government’s proposal that the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must investigate the case and issue a report on its findings, before any action, such as an invasion, is done by any country, had passed the Security Council, then that would be applying standard legal and juridical practice (that no punishment be imposed unless and until guilt has been proven), and likely no invasion of Syria (such as occurred on April 14th) would have been done, at least until the OPCW’s report is issued. But the U.S. and its allies refused to adhere even to this, the minimal legal requirement in any democracy. They instead demanded, and won, a U.S.-and-allied international dictatorship — a lawless, might-makes-right, international world.

A U.N. like this is, essentially, no U.N. at all, just a talking-forum — and that’s what now exists: it’s a forum merely for the constituent Governments to present their respective propagandas to the world, but no longer actually to negotiate anything, since the U.N. has no military, and now the U.S. Government has become effectively whatever the U.S. military (including its armaments corporations such as General Dynamics) want it to be — and, “To hell with the U.N.!” The way now to buy the U.S. Government has become to buy those corporations’ weapons, and then the U.S. Government will ally itself with that country. This is purely transactional, in the interests of America’s armaments-firms, not in the interests of the invading public, and certainly destructive of the interests of the invaded public, no matter how profitable it may be for the owners of those armaments-firms. (One can talk instead about “Wall Street,” but they’re mainly the sellers of stock in America’s armaments-firms and associated products and services; so, they are middle-men who represent the interests of the aristocracy, not really themselves necessarily principals — people who are within the aristocracy.)

Among the contrary accounts regarding that alleged Douma gas-attack was “What really happened — Chemical Attack that lead to missile Strikes on #Syria”, presenting it as having been set up by the ‘rebels’ that the U.S. Government supports. But truth is irrelevant for people with power, especially if it runs contrary to the lies that they are pushing.

A Free Syrian Army trainer addresses fellow fighters as he conducts a demonstration on how to use anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons at a training camp in the northern countryside of Aleppo

President Trump came into office promising a rebirth of American manufacturing, but, so far, the vast majority of his boost to U.S. manufacturing has been only to the U.S. weapons-manufacturers — actually by far the largest international arms-sale in world history.

On 21 May 2017, I headlined it “U.S. $350 Billion Arms-Sale to Sauds Cements U.S.-Jihadist Alliance” and reported that the day before, “U.S. President Donald Trump and the Saud family inked an all-time record-high $350 billion ten-year arms-deal that not only will cement-in the Saud family’s position as the world’s largest foreign purchasers of U.S.-produced weaponry, but will make the Saud family, and America’s ruling families, become, in effect, one aristocracy over both nations, because neither side will be able to violate the will of the other. As the years roll on, their mutual dependency will deepen, each and every year.” That, sadly, has turned out to be true — and not only regarding America’s carrying the Sauds’ water (doing their bidding) in both Yemen and Syria, but in other ways as well. 

On 21 March 2018, CNBC bannered “Trump wants Saudi Arabia to buy more American-made weapons. Here are the ones the Saudis want”, and reported what Trump had just negotiated with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, which was a step-up in that $350 billion sale, to $400 billion. CNBC associated the Sauds’ arms-purchases with ‘investments’ in the U.S., so as to mislead their audience to think favorably of these sales, but if these sales were actually investments in anything, it was in the ability of the Saud family to join even more fully with America’s aristocracy so as for them jointly to impose their will upon any country where they both want “regime-change” — control by themselves, instead of by that invaded country’s local aristocracy. (Then, the U.S. Government issues economic sanctions against Russia for ‘interfering in our democracy’. But the Sauds, and their allies, Israel’s aristocracy, actually do precisely that, routinely, and very effectively!) So: CNBC said: “During the Oval Office talks, Trump touted a creation of 40,000 American jobs due to Saudi military sales. The president used several maps and charts of Saudi acquisitions to further make his point. The crown prince, likewise, added that last year’s Saudi pledge of $200 billion in investments will rise to approximately $400 billion and that a 10-year window to implement the deal was already under way.” That was a misleading statement about the amounts, too. Here is how Indian Express had headlined and reported on 18 May 2017: “Saudi Arabia to invest $200 billion in US, purchase arms worth $300 billion”:

“As President Donald Trump prepares for his first overseas trip, Saudi Arabia has announced to make a whopping USD 200 billion investment in the US and intends to purchase arms worth USD 300 billion from America, a senior administration official has said.”

There, too, the Saudi masters got their propagandists to refer to “investments” in relation to “purchase arms worth $300 billion,” which turned out, just two days later, on 20 May 2017, to be actually $350 billion — and which amount of arms-purchases now has risen instead to $400 billion, which will be paid, as listed in that CNBC news-report to: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, and Raytheon. When Trump campaigned for the Presidency, he had promised to be anything but a sales-person for America’s war-machine. But, he is so, and this is fascism: socialism for the rich, and ‘survival of the fittest’ for everyone else. Trump certainly isn’t a sales-person for the poor, anywhere. He’s what his fellow-fascists call a ‘populist’, in order to insult the public that they must appeal to for votes.

American ‘productivity’ thus will increase in the production of death and destruction; but, as economists view things, that is“productivity” and added “Gross National Product,” regardless of how much it actually immiserates the world (and, so, economic theory is part of the fraud that enables all of this, essentially, corruption). Thus, economic theory is as fraudulent as is the international ‘news’ that the propaganda-agencies spread to the public. It’s all a “pile of bull,” but lots of consumers are buying it, because it’s all that they know and it satisfies them — they’re not even looking for more than the myths.

Previously, the “Biggest Arms Deal in History” was between UK’s aristocracy and the Sauds, the Al-Yamamah deal, which boosted UK’s biggest weapons-maker, BAE, and in which the massive corruption became the subject of scandals and a Governmental inquiry, which Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud forced UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to close with no report being issued. And both the UK and U.S. claim to be ‘democracies’ — and both Governments accuse Russia of ‘interfering’ in their ‘democracy’!

If the reader wants to know why a web-search for the title of this article “How U.S. Has Virtually Destroyed U.N.” probably turns up no mainstream ‘news’media in the U.S.-allied world, and even very few “alternative news” sites, then the reason isn’t that they weren’t offered the article, because they all routinely receive the submission of each of my articles but routinely turn them down. The reason is instead that the most important truths are prohibited from publication in the U.S.-allied world — it’s a world dominated by lies. After all: we invaded and destroyed Iraq for no real defensive reason, and our Government has never apologized for that, much less been held accountable, at all, for it. And now, because of the U.S. Government, the U.N. isn’t even really a debating-forum, any more. It’s just a propaganda-forum, now.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Strategic Culture Foundation

Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Strategic Culture Foundation, 2018