From: orwell@erich.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
Subject: Re: A pacifist's call for conditional support for US action in Somalia
Date: 23 Dec 1992 00:22 PST
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: erich.triumf.ca
Summary: The U.N. is an instrument of U.S. (undemocratic) foreign policy
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Dec19.001649.16585@mtek.com>, bud@mtek.com (Bud Hovell)
commenting on Doug Foxvog's posting:

>... 
>Your unalloyed admiration of the intent of the Gen-Sec may need rather
>urgent re-examination if solutions by military action give you excessive
>heartburn. Turning our military into the world's police force is not
>transformed from a "bad idea" into a "good idea" merely because the
>decision to do so is made by U.N. politicians (whom none of us voted for),
>rather than own wretched government politicians who survived the last
>electoral farce.
> 
>Put another way: to whom is the *U.N.* really accountable in any mean-
>ingful way, if it creates another stupid quagmire, the outcome of which
>affects absolutely NO vital interest of the United States?
>-- 

Bud is misinterpreting the evidence here.  The United Nations was conceived
as an instrument for the foreign policy of the United States and for
much of its existence has served tolerably well in this role (e.g. as
a front for the U.S. invasion of South Korea) when it did not (e.g. was
being outvoted by 152 to 2 in the General Assembly over Star Wars) it was
simply ignored.  What *is* true is that the *foreign policy* of the
United States has **never been in the slightest regard an expression of
the democratic will of the citizens of the United States**, whatever one
thinks of the state of U.S. domestic democracy.  (BTW, this is true generally
of *all* the Western industrial democracies.) The redirection of the
antagonism of the U.S. population aware of this fact towards the
United Nations is a convenient "us versus them" ploy. 

The 1964 election of Lyndon Johnson is an excellent example of the
thesis; Johnson was elected by (I believe) the largest popular
majority in American history -- 2 to 1 -- over Barry Goldwater,
because Johnson presented himself as the responsible "peace"
candidate, even as he and his advisors were planning to massively step
up the American attack against South Vietnam. 

For my first assertion, see Gabriel Kolko's "The Politics of War: The World and
United States Foreign Policy, 1943-45" (originally 1968, reprinted 1990,
Pantheon Books, with a new preface and epilogue by the author. 
(Kolko's "Confronting the Third World: U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1980"
(Pantheon, 1988) is also excellent.)

To quote (pg. 279, 1990 Pantheon paperback edition -- Kolko further on devotes
a full chapter to the subject, "The United Nations and American Global
Interests"):

" ... By Yalta the United States was well on its way to creating moral
rhetoric around the United Nations that it used to set a standard of
conduct for others, but which only obfuscated America's own intentions
and the purposes of the organization.  Since the other Great Powers 
could hardly agree to work within the context of a world organization 
one nation so clearly controlled, they were left only with the 
alternative of working outside it, presumably for their uniquely 
selfish purposes.  Thus the United Nations, even before Yalta, assumed 
the role of an American moral bludgeon against others, but in the name 
of a world community that the United States was in fact to dominate
at the level of United Nations representation.  The belief that such a 
world system would succeed was sheer idealism only in the sense that 
it was unobtainable, and not in that it was selfless.  If Washington 
was about to declare the American century, the Russians and British 
would resist. ..."
[Gabriel Kolko]

[BTW, Kolko in the opening "Acknowledgements" of this book notes that he
uses the terms "United States", "Americans", "Washington",
"London", "Moscow"  "solely as a form of literary convenience ...
In fact what is meant is the leaders or rulers of these abstracted 
nations, the men who made decisions taken as a collective entity after 
they had settled their own differences.  Where a specific group, 
faction, or agency is involved, I so indicate, but in no case should 
it be thought I am referring to the entire people of a nation.  In the 
conduct of wartime grand diplomacy the people of all the major nations 
were the object of worried attention, manipulation, and, in many
places, physical restraint, but nowhere were they consulted on the 
contours of the policy of any state." [Kolko] ]

Ron Balden

Newsgroups: alt.activism.d