CO - Editorials

April 2003

Dis-United Nations

THE EDITOR

"No real peace, most certainly not the longed-for peace of Christ, can exist unless the teaching, the commandments, the example of Christ are faithfully followed in public and private life."

Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei, 23 December 1922

One of the more risible features of the present Iraq controversy, along with the depiction of New Age syncretist Tony Blair as a "committed Christian," has been the insistence by many that a war waged against the murderous Iraqi regime without United Nations approval would be "immoral." Riddled with member nations run by Saddam-like tyrants, the idea that the UN has some kind of unique moral authority which could guarantee the propriety of military action is a real jaw-dropper. If, as scheduled, war has broken out by the time you read this, be assured that the morality or otherwise of the venture has nothing to do with UN approbation. Whatever one makes of the so-called Coalition of the Willing acting alone, failure to obtain a UN Seal of Moral Approval should not keep us awake at night.

We are talking here about an organisation at the very apex of the Culture of Death: a prime defender and promoter of coercive abortion and population control practices whose Fund for Population Activities publicly feted Communist China's Qian Xinzhong for having "implemented population policies on a massive scale." Those "policies," as is well known, involve the indescribably brutal and homicidal enforcement of one child per family. In keeping with their fervent support for this satanic regime and their own ruthless dissemination of abortion, contraceptives and abortifacients throughout the world, UN medical staff have been regularly accused over the years of violating the human rights of unsuspecting third world women, whom they have sterilised without their knowledge or consent under cover of vaccinating them from disease.

This is an organisation that perennially sat on its hands as Russia launched invasion after invasion with impunity and which looked on vacantly as monsters like Mao, Pol Pot and Idi Amin went about their mass-extermination of human beings. Indeed, as one writer recently noted:

The United Nations has not only done nothing to preserve peace, it has done just the opposite. It has sponsored genocidal maniacs, and helped them remain in power. Cases abound, but the story of Idi Amin is one of the foremost examples of UN idiocy and depravity. Though circumstance prevented him from being the greatest mass-murderer in history, Amin was perhaps one of the most satanic rulers of the twentieth century. A militant Moslem who came to rule Uganda by force in 1971, Amin murdered three-hundred-thousand Ugandans in the eight years he was in power. He personally murdered many Catholic priests; he murdered and dismembered his first wife. He was perhaps the only major ruler in the twentieth century who was a known ritual cannibal—his own son being one of his victims.

According to Paul Johnson's research in Modern Times, the refusal of the United Nations to take action against his regime cost the lives of 200,000 Ugandans. Not only did the United Nations refuse to take action against Amin, but four years into his regime, Amin was invited to speak at the United Nations, at which time he was given standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his speech. The following day, the UN Secretary-General gave a dinner in Amin's honor. All of this happened at a time when it was well-known that Amin was guilty of genocide. ["They Didn't Hit the Vatican", Charles Lamb, www.seattlecatholic.com]

Nothing has changed. The UN has just voted to award the chairmanship of its Human Rights Commission to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which is like putting Ali Baba in charge of the crown jewels. As one delighted Libyan diplomat put it: "By this appointment, the UN has demonstrated to the world that our human rights record is exemplary." And yet in 1999 the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture delivered a damning report on Libya's human rights record, despite leaving aside its role in blowing up the Lockerbie plane and the shooting of London WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Gaddafi's methods for dealing with dissidents were shown to include: "beatings on the soles of the feet, hanging by the wrists, from a ceiling or high window, or being suspended from a pole inserted between the knees and elbows, electric shocks, burning with cigarettes and being exposed to aggressive dogs resulting in bite wounds." On it goes, describing threats against the dissidents' families, especially "abuse" of "female relatives" and inhuman confinement in tiny rooms.

Further to that abomination, the UN has also elected Iraq to chair the May 12-June 27 session of the "disarmament" negotiating forum. Oh, and Iran will co-chair. Nice touch. Not that permanent members of the Security Council like China and Russia would blink at the mixed-messages evoked by such perverse arrangements, both being steeped in the blood of their own people. And in view of its rich tradition of saying "non" and "give peace a chance" when Adolf was on the rise, of butchery and torture in Algeria, of propping up African dictators (and still cavorting with Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe), of preferring Hutus against Tutsis, of attacks on Egypt and activities in Indo-China, the moralising French are hardly likely to demur either.

We could, of course, list many other leading nations, including America and Britain, who have buried their greedy snouts in the lucrative trough of arms dealing and suicidal horse-trading with tyrants, including Saddam Hussein himself. Russia and France, for instance, are desperate to protect around $12 billion in outstanding oil and arms contracts with Saddam. The fact is that they are all compromised to the gills in one way or another. The Iraq imbroglio has simply highlighted once again this seething mass of rampant complicity, hypocrisy, self-interest and contradiction which has finally, inevitably, returned to haunt us all.

UN as authoritative and decisive moral arbiter?

I can hear the reflexive cry that, despite all, the United Nations is still the best imperfect solution we have to managing international relations. It seems, however, too pat a response before a UN that has degenerated to an extent hardly thought possible even by its greatest sceptics at its inception over 50 years ago. Consider, for instance, how far it has fallen from this basic ethical requirement for a workable framework for international order, as proposed by a Catholic writer in the early 1940s:

"A club, with conditions of membership, expels those who flout the rules. The International Club, founded on the principles of national law as taught by the Church, would expel from membership a member that betrayed its trusteeship. The League [of Nations] Assembly, by contrast, admitted more than one member whose credentials were at least doubtful, and never resorted to an expulsion until the case arose of the Russian aggression in Finland - by which late date most of the virtue had gone out of the League itself. The higher the subscription the slower the growth. But at the same time, the firmer the growth. The good clubs in the long run never lack members; the bad clubs are always having to tout - and to lower the subscription… If what is wanted is faithful adherence to standards in international society, the International Community is better without the contamination of the unworthy."

As indicated above, could any notion be further removed from the mindset and practice of the UN? And as for the crippling disappearance of "virtue" from the League, it's successor has positively sprinted down the same path. We need only reflect on how wickedly it has departed from this fundamental programme set forth by Pope Benedict XV in his classic Peace Note of 1 August 1917:

"… the moral force of right should replace the material force of arms; hence, a just agreement between all for the simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments … to the extent necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of public order within each State; then in the place of armies, the establishment of arbitration, with its exalted peacemaking function … with sanctions to be settled against any State that should refuse either to submit international questions to arbitration or to accept its awards."

Is there a single one among the five permanent members of the Security Council who has attempted to promote and implement this wisdom in any but the most superficial, piecemeal, self-serving way? Yet Pius XII makes "diminution of armaments" a major pre-condition of peace:

"True peace will be established when the nations are freed from the heavy slavery of armaments and from the danger of that force, which, instead of protecting rights, becomes violent in its oppression. A peace which does not attribute fundamental importance to Disarmament, both organic and progressive, is bound to show inconsistency and lack of vitality." [Christmas Allocution, 1939]

So, just as the "interest" versus "obligation" conflict ruined the League of Nations, so too it has rendered the United Nations impotent as an instrument for "true peace," as flagged by the present Holy Father's regular condemnation of the relentless and massive trade in arms by all parties. It has ruined that prospect of mutual co-operation encouraged by Benedict XV, who declared that "It is much to be desired that all States, putting aside mutual suspicion, should unite in one league, or rather a sort of family of peoples, calculated both to maintain their own independence and to safeguard the order of human society." [Pacem Dei Munus, 23 May 1920]

On this score, leading Internationalists point accusing fingers at their bete noire, national sovereignty, as the wretched source of that self-interest forever scuppering their dream of transnational governance. The nub of the problem, however, is a far deeper theological and moral one, namely: the refusal to accept the natural law as the foundation and gold-standard reference point for international order. And that because it has been jettisoned by the very sovereign nations who constitute the UN. Materialism being their suicidal philosophy of choice, they dare not accept the natural law for fear of recognising its Author and His ultimate authority. And yet no international organisation can possibly function coherently, effectively and humanely without that recognition; without acknowledging that "Every civilised community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author" [Leo XIII, Immortale Dei].

Without that acknowledgement and acceptance of the moral absolutes which necessarily follow, the three general obligations which form the minimum moral basis for binding an organised international community - sincerity, justice and charity (benevolence) - can only ever remain empty pledges, and peace as 'the fruit of justice tempered by charity' a rootless, meaningless maxim.

Contrary to internationalist propaganda, therefore, sovereignty per se is not the cause of UN dysfunction. It is, rather, due to a false notion of an absolute sovereignty free to determine its own rights in isolation, without regard for the binding obligations of the natural moral law. This false conception of sovereignty fuels the cynical self-interest that not only ruins "mutual co-operation" among nations but threatens the welfare of the State itself, suppressing the natural law principle of subsidiarity which would protect the State from absorption by the centralised monolith touted by one world government ideologues. On the other hand, a UN consisting of nations bonded together by adherence to the precepts of natural law would readily be able to forge and enforce a body of commonly agreed conduct and obligations because no member would be required to consent to any moral canons that did not already limit their sovereignty in the normal course of events. "Neither peace treaties," said Pius XI in 1932, "nor the most solemn pacts, nor international meetings or conferences… will be enough, unless in the first place are recognised the sacred rights of natural and divine law."

As the following review article explains, however, the UN has been built instead upon the Masonic Kelsian philosophy which rejects the natural law and thus turns the Catholic concept of international relations on its head, with every notion of morality, religion, justice, sovereignty and personhood dissolved and swallowed up by an utterly amoral internationalism. Member nations having long discarded the natural law, Kelsian theory has easily filled the moral vacuum. Only the Vatican and a handful of supporters offer resistance to this godless UN juggernaut and its relentless push for world hegemony. "An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assaults," wrote US Ambassador Richard Gardner while explaining the role of GATT in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the powerful American Council of Foreign Relations. While Strobe Talbott boasted that "the case for world government" was "clinched" [Time, 20/7/92], which commentary won Talbott an award from the World Federalist Association, praise from Bill Clinton and promotion to Deputy Secretary of the US State Department. Hence, when UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan declares that transnational agencies such as the ominous International Criminal Court will represent the 'world's collective consciences,' we should be in no doubt as to what sort of amoral conscience he is referring to and where it is all heading.

We might therefore expect that the power elite will see the current Iraqi crisis and the circumvention of nuclear blackmail as a window of opportunity for furthering their agenda. In light of the typically shambolic UN response, they will doubtless return to their perennial panacea for the problem of sovereign self-interest - centralised world government backed up by military and legal enforcement of Kelsian amorality. "The UN is a political discussion club rather than an efficient mechanism for solving problems, challenges and threats," observed Poland's Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz on a recent visit to Australia. "It is difficult to find a single person who is satisfied with the quality and utility of the UN today." Both he and Australia's Foreign Minister have already delivered papers on the need for a drastic restructuring of the world body. But is it possible or even desirable to save the UN? Since any restructuring will merely tinker with externals while still ignoring the pivotal issues ever enunciated by the only global institution that matters - the Mystical Body of the Risen Christ - which alone can make a difference:

"The spirit of an organisation matters more than the machinery. Without a foundation of elementary ethical principles, clearly stated, and accepted by all parties concerned, no machinery or international constitution will be worth the time and labour spent in drafting it. … For the problem is fundamentally a problem of the will, and a moral and spiritual problem; and the Catholic Church claims to teach a moral code for the whole of mankind - a code venerable yet timeless, a code as applicable in detail to international life in the industrialised twentieth century as it was to the life of feudal communities in the tenth century and to that of the Roman Empire in the third." [The Catholic Church and International Order, A.C.F. Beales, 1941.]