MB Civic

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0511/p09s01-coop.html
Published on Thursday, May 11, 2006 by the Christian Science Monitor
The Original Aim of the UN: Peaceful Conflict Resolution
Many   Americans have forgotten that war is always a harmful scourge.
by Helena Cobban
What has happened to Americans? Why have we allowed our government
to act with such reckless disregard for the survival of the global system
that for the past 61 years has successfully prevented the outbreak of
worldwide war while it has also allowed numerous nations – including the
United States – to prosper?
Back in 1945, in the last days of World War II, President Harry  Truman
invited his allies to a conference in San Francisco where they established
the United Nations. The very first words in the UN’s Charter were, “We,
the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has
brought untold sorrow to mankind….”
In recent years, have we forgotten the wisdom of those words? Have we
forgotten about the visionary way in which Mr. Truman and his cabinet
members – men who had lived through two World Wars, as well as the dire
economic depression between them – set about rebuilding the world?
In 1945, US power stood astride the world. That was not just the  power
of US armies, though that was huge. It was also the power of a humming
American economy and much-admired US ideals. Europe and Asia were in
tatters in 1945, their great nations pulverized and spent by the battles
that had raged across them. Truman and his colleagues could have designed
just about any “world order” that they pleased. The one they chose was
marked by considerable American self-restraint. They established a
rules-based global order that was also linked – as it had to be then, to
be effective at all – to US leadership, quietly asserted.
The global system that Truman established in 1945 has brought many
benefits to Americans. It also allowed Japan and the war-ravaged nations
of Europe to get back on their feet. And in more recent years, it has
allowed China and India to rise – peacefully – to the status of major
global powers.
But along the way, many Americans, politicians and citizens alike,
forgot important portions of the “lessons of 1945.” They forgot that
warfare – even when waged for a goal as laudable as bringing an end to
Nazism and Japanese militarist expansion – is always a harmful scourge.
They came to think that wars could be fought and won easily – that some
combination of “precision” weaponry, high-tech battle-management, and
planning for humani- tarian crises could make wars less damaging to
civilians, more rapidly win- nable, and therefore easily justifiable.
Many Americans forgot important things about the UN, too. After the
collapse of the Soviet Union, American military power once again stood
unchallenged astride most of the world. But this time – under President
Bill Clinton and now even more so under President Bush – the strategic
self-restraint and basic wisdom that marked Truman’s approach to world
affairs were missing. Sometime in 2002, Mr. Bush decided he was prepared
to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein by force – and that he would do so even
if he failed to win the UN Security Council’s backing. While he was
thumbing his nose at the UN this way, Bush was also actively opposing
other key international agreements such as the Kyoto Agreement on the
environment and the Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court.
We should remember that after Sept. 11, 2001, people and governments
around the world expressed unprecedented solidarity with America in its
time of woe. Sadly, Bush squandered all that goodwill – particularly when
he proceeded with the invasion of Iraq and then showed that his
administration had no idea how to administer or rebuild that country. Far
from being an action that caused little damage to civilians and was
rapidly winnable, the invasion turned out to be – as many of us had
predicted – a tragic quagmire that has brought great suffering to
Americans and especially to Iraqis.
Now, it is time to rethink the degree of support that so many
Americans have given to the idea that fighting wars can ever resolve our
nation’s (or anyone’s) problems. And it is time, too, to seek a government
in Washington that will recommit to the idea of a rules-based
international order – an order in which the same set of rules applies to
all, no exceptions.
Iraq remains a damaging quagmire. If the US military is ever to
disengage from there without a regionwide conflagration erupting as they
leave, Washington will need the help of the UN. If the present tensions
between the US and Iran are to be contained and (hopefully) ramped down,
the two sides will also need the help of the UN.
So let’s return to the spirit of 1945. We know now, in 2006, that  war
is a damaging scourge – even when launched with excellent intentions.
Let’s use the UN for deescalation and farsighted problem-solving, rather
than trying to use it to build a coalition for another unwinnable war.
Nonviolent resolution of conflicts was, after all, the main thing the UN’s
founders intended it to do. They knew well that war is a “scourge.”
Helena Cobban is writing a book on violence and its legacies.
© 2006 The Christian Science Monitor
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“A war of aggression is the supreme international crime.” — Robert Jackson,
former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor