Lebanon: Can the UN bring peace?

AFTER MUCH wrangling, a United Nations (UN) force has been assembled
to act as a ‘buffer’ in the 20-mile corridor between the Israel-Lebanon
border and the Litani River. Most people will probably breathe a sigh of
relief that the carnage which has been inflicted in Lebanon seems to
have ended. The hope is that now the prospect of war between Israel and
Lebanon will be banished, and the catastrophe of a wider Middle East war
avoided.

Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary

However, the Lebanese people, in their ‘greeting’ to UN secretary
general Kofi Annan, do not appear to share these illusions. He was met
with protests by the angry residents of Beirut’s devastated southern
suburbs, who were frustrated at the "UN’s seeming passivity in the face
of the destruction wreaked by the 34-day war between Israel and
Hezbollah" [the guardian].

A UN force (UNIFIL) existed before the war but did nothing to prevent
the Israeli murder machine.

In one notorious incident, 18 Lebanese were killed in a southern
Lebanese village by an Israeli air strike. The victims had demanded
sanctuary in a UN base but this was refused by the UN commander, worried
that there would be a repeat of the 1996 incident when 100 people were
killed who had taken refuge in a UN base, during Israel’s offensive
against Hezbollah of that year.

A resident of West Beirut summed up the general attitude towards the
UN: "They are not good. We do not trust them. They did not help the
civilians in the south. They are like an instrument in the hands of the
Americans."

However, illusions still exist in Britain and elsewhere, particularly
among idealistic workers and youth who look towards the UN and its
agencies as an ‘international’ solution to the problems of war and
conflict, of poverty and environmental disaster. But the term ‘United
Nations’, like that of ‘international community’, is a misnomer.

In reality, the UN brings together capitalist nations, in particular
the most powerful, who are ‘disunited’, especially when their
fundamental interests are at stake. Therefore the idea that the UN can
be ‘democratised’ is a bit like asking for the bosses’ organisation, the
CBI, to be democratised to allow workers a voice in running it.

Ineffectiveness

The origins and history of the UN, as with its forerunner the ‘League
of Nations’ prior to the Second World War, demonstrates this. The League
of Nations, Trotsky wrote, "is not an organisation of ‘peace’, but an
organisation of the violence of the imperialist minority over the
overwhelming majority of mankind". In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand pact also
purported to outlaw war, yet it was signed by every major belligerent in
the Second World War.

The UN occupied a similar role during the ‘Cold War’, a conflict in
the main between US imperialism and its allies on the one side,
representing capitalism, and the Stalinist regimes of Russia and Eastern
Europe, (bureaucratically planned economies but with authoritarian
one-party regimes). When it was convenient, the US would conduct
imperialist wars under the flag of the UN, such as in Korea.

On other occasions, it proclaimed its ‘unilateral’ right to
militarily intervene, as in the case of the Vietnam War. At best, the UN
was a forum for the settlement of secondary issues.

But with the advent of the George W Bush regime and its
neo-conservative cabal in the ascendancy, the world’s only superpower
resorted to a ‘pre-emptive’ and unilateralist policy. This naked
assertion of US interests, combined with the pushing aside and ignoring
of capitalist ‘international institutions’, brought it into collision
with European capitalism. When it did not get the necessary support for
the predetermined decision to attack Iraq, the US did not hesitate to go
outside the UN, organising the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, now
the ‘reluctant’.

With the disaster of Lebanon superimposed on the catastrophe of Iraq,
not to say the greatest domestic natural disaster in US history,
Hurricane Katrina, Bush has been forced to back-pedal. He now takes a
‘pragmatic’ position towards the UN, pushing Annan and sections of
European capitalism to intervene and rescue him from this quagmire.

However, even the unseemly clash over precisely how many troops each
nation would send to Lebanon – France promising big forces but only
coming up with 200 troops initially – has shown how capitalist national
interests take precedence over any other considerations.

France has been reluctant to take the lead of the UN force in Lebanon
because it previously clashed with Syria and Hezbollah which, according
to France, were implicated in the murder of the previous Lebanese prime
minister Hariri.

Romano Prodi, the new Italian prime minister, on the other hand, has
been positively enthusiastic about Italian troops ‘taking the lead’ in
Lebanon.

This provides a convenient ‘peacekeeping’ diversion from the
opposition of the Left to the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan
and for the precarious overall position of his government; ‘the love of
the distant’. Tony Blair is so discredited by his poodle-like support of
Bush, that he was not even consulted over possible answers to the
Lebanese imbroglio.

Lebanon 1982

However, engraved on the memories of the Lebanese is the brutal
experience of the past UN presence, which has not prevented the bloody
resumption of war. In 1982, after the last full-scale Israeli invasion,
a ‘multinational force’ was despatched to Lebanon. A few months later,
their barracks were blown up, killing 241 Americans and 58 French
servicemen. Hence the nervousness of the French this time towards
supplying troops.

US troops are completely unacceptable to the Lebanese, given their
role in backing Israel. The latter has stipulated that no ‘Muslim
troops’ should serve in the ‘peacekeeping’ force, a further assertion of
the national interests of the Israeli ruling class over any ‘peaceful’
intentions.

But it is not just in the Middle East that the ineffectiveness of the
UN has been ultimately demonstrated when determined armed combatants are
set on war.

Witness the catastrophic ethnic conflict in the Balkans. UN forces
were deployed to ‘hold the ring’ only after a period of exhaustion and
terrible bloodletting, yet the ethnic and national divisions remain.

Moreover, the UN force has subsequently become mired in corruption,
as well as notorious cases of sexual harassment, mirroring the social
diseases of the ‘civilised countries’ which deployed them in the first
place.

East Timor also exemplifies the total ineffectiveness of the UN when
confronted with serious conflicts. A minimum of 1,500 murders were
carried out by Indonesian soldiers and pro-Jakarta militias in the weeks
of August 1999’s vote for independence by the East Timorese. Despite UN
prosecutors identifying Indonesian generals, they have not been brought
to book.

In June this year, East Timor fractured once more, with the army and
police splitting and disintegrating, with machete-swinging ethnic gangs
burning down homes, looting, etc. All of this went on as ‘peacekeepers’
patrolled the streets.

A leading East Timor human rights activist commented: "I’m sure some
of the people who [have been] looting and burning houses are thinking,
‘if nothing can be done about the crimes of 1999, what can they do
against me?’"

These facts could be met with the argument that yes, the ‘UN is
imperfect’ but it can be improved to serve all the peoples of the world.
But the indisputable fact is that the UN is ultimately in the grip of
the US: "They [the US] built the UN because, for all its inevitable
flaws it serves American interests" [Philip Stevens, Financial Times,
16/6/06]. The US financially underpins the UN and withdraws funds when
this body does not do its bidding.

This is shown over the unseemly scramble for the ten elected seats on
the UN Security Council. An investigation by Harvard economists has
shown the "important benefit to Security Council membership: American
money" [Financial Times, 31/8/06]. Aid to countries in the neo-colonial
world from the US increases by 59% when they get a seat, "because their
votes are worth something"!

Iranian crisis

Given the colossal shift in hostility towards the US worldwide, Bush
and American imperialism now need the cover of the UN. This, however,
does not alter its character. The hypocrisy of the US, Britain and its
allies is shown over the conflict with Iran over nuclear weapons.

We oppose the acquisition of nuclear power and weapons by Iran or any
other country. But Iran is surrounded by countries armed to the teeth
with nuclear weapons: Israel, which threatens Iran repeatedly, has 100.
Moreover, the US gives its support and blessing to Pakistan, which has
nuclear weapons and is ruled by the dictator Musharraf, and,
particularly lately, India.

The Iranian president, a populist but still no friend of the working
class of Iran or elsewhere, was nevertheless right when he recently
stated: "In the Security Council, which is supposed to achieve peace and
security in the world, Britain and the United Stated have special rights
and concessions. If another nation is involved in a conflict with them
or is oppressed by them, there is no recourse for it. International
relations has reached a point where the Americans and the British are
imposing their will on more than 180 nations around the world." [the
Guardian, 30 August.]

As with all the other institutions of world capitalism, the UN is a
weapon in the hands of the rich, both in the US and worldwide. Moreover,
there is no ‘international community’, in the sense that Bush and Blair
argue, but a ‘community’ of the ruling classes of the world: in each
capitalist ‘community’ there are ‘two nations’, rich and poor.

Working people would not look to their bosses or the capitalists as a
whole, their governments or their parties, for solutions to their
problems on a national scale. Then why should this approach be abandoned
on the international plane?

Double book-keeping is adopted by even some who are socialists and
standing on the left, and yet enthusiastically support the UN. But
hard-headed capitalist commentators like former Tory foreign secretary
Douglas Hurd recognise that the shine is coming off their cherished
institution: "The UN possesses less magic than 50 years ago." [The
Independent.]

It is necessary for the labour movement to put an end to the charade
of the UN as an instrument of ‘progress’, a means of avoiding war and
famine. There are many well-meaning, dedicated people who work for the
UN and its agencies to help the poor, abolish disease and rid the planet
of the prospect of war. But their efforts, no matter how well-meaning,
are like taking a thimble to empty an ocean.

The growing army of the poor, an expression of naked neo-liberal
capitalism, attests to this. Conflicts, some of them of the most brutal
kind, as the recent carnage in Lebanon and Israel demonstrates,
multiply, as do UN troops on ‘peacekeeping missions’. In fact, with
increased demands for these troops – Darfur is the latest – not just the
US but the UN faces military ‘overstretch’.

Internationalism

Only one force is capable of ending this nightmare: the international
working class and its organisations. It is potentially the most powerful
‘superpower’ on the planet, stronger than any army or government.

The only ‘buffer’ which can provide a lasting solution to the
problems of the Middle East is the working class, in the first instance
in Lebanon and Israel.

All foreign troops – whether in blue helmets or not – should get out
of Lebanon. Let the Lebanese people decide their own fate in
collaboration with the Israeli workers and those in the Middle East as a
whole.

Why should a ‘buffer’ be established only on conquered Lebanese
territory? Why not on Israeli territory? And why is their no
‘international’ buffer between Israel and Gaza? The simple answer, of
course, is that in the latter case it serves the Israeli ruling class to
be given a free hand to continue to terrorise and imprison the
Palestinians of Gaza.

If, however, the independent movement of the working class of Israel
linked up with the Lebanese workers, and joined together with the
potentially powerful working class of the Middle East, the prospects for
another conflagration in the area would be banished once and for all.