From Rome to Seoul, Johannesburg to Melbourne, people have been calling for peace. As part of a global protest on Saturday, the streets of 150 U.S. cities and an estimated 350 cities around the world were filled with demonstrations against war in Iraq. In Berlin, up to 500,000 protestors gathered in the city's center to support German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's calls for a peaceful solution. In London, 750,000 people marched against war, appealing to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to reconsider his support of the use of force to disarm Iraq. At the New York rally, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa declared, "Let America listen to the rest of the world -- and the rest of the world is saying, 'Give the inspectors time.'"
The world is saying no to war, but America isn't listening. Dissenting opinions voiced in the halls of the United Nations and in cities across the globe are falling on deaf ears as the United States sets a dangerous example for future superpowers that find themselves without equal on the world stage.
President Bush told the United Nations last Thursday that the organization must assist him to confront Saddam Hussein or "fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant, debating society" ("Bush urges U.N. to confront Iraq," The Associated Press, Feb. 13). If the United Nations ultimately proves toothless, it will be because the Bush administration's actions have made it so.
The efficacy and power of an international organization is only as strong as its members' willingness to honor their pledge, outlined in the U.N. Charter, to combine their strength and use it through methods and at times on which the body comes to agree.
President Bush has shown that his administration's willingness to cooperate and compromise dissipates when he can't convince other U.N. member states to see things his way. His determination to oust Hussein with force -- regardless of other U.N. member countries' wishes for alternative solutions -- will be what robs the United Nations of its teeth and will set a dangerous precedent for future unchallenged superpowers to follow.
This precedent is that when it comes down to it, a superpower should feel free to ignore the United Nations and act unilaterally, disregarding the protests of member states and their citizens. And they have a right to protest: When the United States wages war on Iraq, it will directly affect them. Economies of the world over will be beset with uncertainty; refugees from Iraq and surrounding nations pouring into neighboring states will cause social instability. Most important, the threat of biological and other types of warfare affect everyone -- the nations in the vicinity of the warfare and in its path, not just the nations actually making the war.
In this increasingly interdependent world, no country, and especially not the only superpower in the world, can make as momentous a move as declaring war without profoundly affecting other countries. The fact that countries share fates is particularly true when speaking of developed nations that share markets, cultures and even citizens. In this kind of a world, it would only be half-facetious of a Swedish citizen to suggest that he get a vote in America's presidential elections too. After all, whose decisions ultimately affect him more -- those of Sweden's president, or those of the American president?
In a way, Swedish citizens -- and others worldwide -- are supposed to have a vote in the United States's decisions, and that influence is supposed to be exercised through the United Nations.
Like it or not, the United States is part of a team, and as the world's lone superpower, it has to fight for the interests of all nations, not just its own. This charge takes more than the form of an unvoiced duty, a tacit expectation; it was pledged by the leaders of this nation just shy of 50 years ago. By signing the U.N. Charter, the United States pledged to fulfill the new body's goal of preventing war and promoting human rights. The United States agreed, along with other member states, to "unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest."
Most of the people and countries protesting the Bush administration's determination to bulldoze over everyone who doesn't agree with it in its march toward war aren't asking for the United States to ignore Hussein or stop its efforts to diminish the threat he poses. They're simply asking for time, for a chance for the U.N. inspectors to do their jobs and for what the inspectors find to be carefully considered by the United States and the United Nations. According to the precedent the United States is setting, in future configurations of international power, the United Nations and the world will speak, but the superpower will not listen. This precedent is dangerous in terms of what, under its auspices, a lone superpower has license to do: namely, whatever it pleases, at any cost to the nations whose fates are inextricably intertwined with its own.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
Read More
CASTAGNO: One year later — a local zoning ordinance proves its worth
By Conall Costagno | 20 hours agoIn its current situation, Charlottesville is an early adopter of the upzoning movement, giving the City the unique opportunity to act as a shining example of its benefits.
RASHID: Club exclusivity hurts the student body
By Muhammad Ali Rashid | 3 days agoWe need to reconsider how we think about extracurriculars — this hyper-competitive and exclusive culture which implicitly frames clubs as resume-padders must be stopped.
EDITORIAL: Reckon consistently with our history
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoUntil these bureaucracies have proven willing to commit to change outright, it is up to us, students and Charlottesville residents, to continue pushing for that change.
