From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: PAPER: "The Gulf Crisis and the United Nations"
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 21:24:06 GMT

    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.
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    "What was observed during the Gulf Crisis was not the functioning 
    of the Security Council as envisioned by its founders.  The 
    Security Council was virtually inoperative for at least the seven 
    month period from August 1990 to February 1991, inclusive. 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
    "What was 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 confrontation in the Gulf 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. ... 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. 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Topic 17        ARTICLE: The Gulf Crisis & the U.N.     3 responses 
harelb  oct.surprise     2:47 pm  Oct 13, 1992 
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*Date: 13 Oct 1992 16:55:01 -0400 (EDT) 
*From: GWELTY@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU 
*Subject: Here's pt. 1!  Are both parts readable?  Thanks. 
*To: harelb@math.cornell.edu 

Gordon Welty, "The Gulf Crisis and the United Nations"
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON REVIEW, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 75-85./1/ 

        ===================================================== 
                     > P A R T   I   O F   I I < 
        ===================================================== 

[/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."  
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