The perils of the United Nations


Does the U.N. prevent peace when it intervenes? One writer says yes.
Amir Taheri does a masterful analysis of Ariel Sharon's impact on the Middle East. Buried in the article are a few paragraphs that are even more important.

As a professional soldier, Sharon saw that Israel had won all its wars with the Arabs in military terms, but failed to translate those victories into lasting political gains. At some point, he must have wondered why.

For a war to be won, it is not enough for one side to claim victory. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. Yet in the Arab-Israeli wars, the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory, while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat. Why? Because each time the United Nations had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.

This novel situation saw bizarre new concepts invented to prevent the normal mechanisms of war and peace from functioning. These include such concepts as "land for peace" and "peace with justice." Yet there is no instance in history in which the winner of a war has given the loser any land in exchange for peace. Nor is there a single instance in which justice and peace went together as Siamese twins. In every case, the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case, the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.

Thus for more than 50 years Israel and the Arabs were asked to achieve what no others had ever achieved in history.

And so Israel-Palestine became the only conflict to defy a resolution. Successive Israeli governments preferred to wait for a Palestinian partner that would accept the kind of peace Israel could offer. This was mirrored by the Palestinians, who were asked by their Arab brothers and others in the United Nations to wait until Israel offered a peace that they would like.

Sharon understood that if such a formula remained in force, there would never be peace. It was necessary for the victor to claim victory, regardless of what anyone else said. It was also necessary for the victor to take unilateral action, imposing the peace it could live with.

From that perspective, it certainly makes sense.

The implications, however, are frightening. Any peace imposed by a U.N. force will only prolong the struggle that caused the U.N. intervention to begin with. History certainly seems to bear that out. What effective role that the U.N. will develop is still in the air, but as a military, the United Nations only prevents peace.

The question of if the U.N. can become effective is still undecided. Transparency in accounting would be a good first step, but that hasn't happened yet. The U.N. will never be a paragovernment, even if it's current power structure isn't hopelessly corrupt.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - January 7, 2006 at 04:33 AM  Tag


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