BY STEVE CLARK  
(First of two parts)

Opponents of the U.S. government's escalating war drive against Iraq now have an important tool to use in their antiwar efforts. Pathfinder has just published a new pamphlet entitled U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations: Fidel Castro and Ricardo Alarcón on the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and Washington's War Moves.

A campaign in coming weeks to get this pamphlet into the hands of as many people as possible is an important part of the international effort to mobilize opposition to Washington's war preparations. The 82-page pamphlet will also be an aid to everyone who seeks to expose and condemn Washington's criminal blockade of food and medicine to all those living in Iraq and Kuwait.

The booklet rolled off the presses just a few days before the October 20 demonstrations against the U.S. military buildup, and many copies were sold at these protest actions. A Spanish-language edition will be available in mid-November. Excerpts will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of the French-language quarterly Lutte ouvrière.

The central political themes documented and discussed in the pamphlet are explained in the opening paragraphs of the introduction by Mary-Alice Waters:

"The U.S. government is preparing on a massive scale for war against Iraq.

"It is using the unanimous votes of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to give cover to unilateral U.S. acts of aggression.

"Washington's response to the August 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was not motivated by support for national sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity. It was an opportunity seized by the U.S. government to advance its imperialist interests.

"Working people the world over are already paying dearly for the U.S.-organized war buildup. The cost in lives and economic well-being will be incalculable if efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict continue to be blocked by Washington."  
 
Big stakes for working people
Whether the U.S. rulers unleash their massive arsenal against the people of Iraq, or choose to try to achieve their ends short of a military onslaught, Washington's war preparations in the Mideast are at the center of world politics today. There will soon be nearly 250,000 U.S. troops on land and sea in the region, in addition to tens of thousands of troops from Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and some 20 other countries. Altogether there are several heavy armored divisions--equipped with more than a thousand modern tanks--on the ground in Saudi Arabia; more than 850 aircraft from the U.S. and allied governments; and some 100 warships, including two U.S. aircraft carrier groups.

This is not only the largest U.S. military operation since the Vietnam War. It is also the largest French military mobilization since the 1954–62 Algerian War and the largest British military action since its war against Argentina to reconquer the Malvinas Islands in 1982. Japan's capitalist rulers are seeking to take advantage of the war buildup to deploy "noncombatant" troops to the Middle East, thus breaking the post-World War II political limits on their use of military power abroad; Germany's rulers are closely following the outcome of Tokyo's initiative with an eye to busting through the ban on their own deployment of military forces beyond their borders.

The stakes in halting the U.S. war drive are very high for working people--especially young workers, farmers, and students--in the United States, the Middle East, and around the world. U.S.-organized aggression would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, as well as heavy losses for young people in the uniforms of the U.S. armed forces and those of other armies that make up Washington's fragile coalition.

A war would have disastrous consequences for the economic and social conditions of working people the world over, striking with particular vengeance at those in oppressed nations throughout Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

As Cuban president Fidel Castro warned in the September 28 speech included in the pamphlet, a U.S. war against Iraq "will not only cost many lives on the battlefield there. Such a war would also be a catastrophe for the world economy.... For every life lost on the battlefields of the Arab-Persian Gulf, a thousand persons will die of hunger in the Third World."

The structure of the pamphlet--built around documents and speeches from the UN Security Council--derives from a prominent aspect of the U.S. government's war moves.

The Security Council resolutions initiated by Washington as pretexts for its military buildup have had unanimous backing from the council's four other permanent members--the governments of Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. The collaboration of these five governments has provided cover for Washington to act as if its imperialist goals somehow represent the will of the majority of humanity--vaguely equated with what is called the United Nations.

As the history of the 20th century amply confirms, the U.S. government is quite prepared to defend its strategic interests by force of arms--in the Middle East, or anywhere else--without the fig leaf of international cooperation. But the pretense that the military moves against Iraq are UN actions, not unilateral U.S. aggression, is not primarily for Washington's benefit.

Above all, it provides indispensable cover for the governments of the Soviet Union and various Arab countries to join in the U.S. rulers' reactionary crusade. Thus, the collaboration of the five permanent members of the Security Council is playing a prominent role in the unfolding crisis.

The Pathfinder pamphlet contains each Security Council resolution on the Iraq-Kuwait crisis adopted in August and September, together with the statements related to these measures, by Cuba's permanent representative to the UN, Ricardo Alarcón, as well as by Castro. As Waters explains in the introduction, "The government of Cuba, now serving a two-year term on the Security Council, has been the sole voice in the UN to speak out clearly and consistently against the [Bush] administration's war preparations, which are backed by the bipartisan Democratic and Republican coalition in Congress."

By publishing the statements of Cuban government representatives on Wash-ington's war moves, the pamphlet helps break the embargo that the big-business media has imposed on this persuasive voice of opposition. The course of the Cuban government since the outset of the Middle East crisis is powerful testimony to the principled revolutionary internationalism that has been a hallmark of its foreign policy for more than 30 years.

What is most significant about the materials collected in this pamphlet, however, is not who said them, but what they say. The speeches and statements by Castro and Alarcón explain Washington's military buildup and--in clear, powerful, and reasoned terms--rebut each of the U.S. government's pretexts and rationalizations.

Castro and Alarcón emphasize the Cuban government's commitment to the principles of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries, of rejection of military force, and of respect for national independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. They condemn the August 2 Iraqi government invasion of Kuwait, as well as its annexation of that sovereign country and attacks on the rights of foreign nationals working in or visiting Iraq and Kuwait.  
 
Washington uses UN cover

At the same time, Cuba's representatives have exposed and denounced each one of Washington's efforts to drape its war moves in the mantle of the UN. As the pamphlet's introduction explains, "Cuba refused to vote for economic sanctions against Iraq or to endorse military steps to force compliance with the trade embargo. Cuba denounced as inhuman--and as an unconscionable violation of fundamental human rights--the measures denying food and medicine to the people living in Iraq and Kuwait. Cuba was the only member of the Security Council to vote against an air embargo on Iraq."

Castro and Alarcón point to the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, which has repeatedly vetoed proposed Security Council measures against its own military intervention in Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere during the 45-year history of the UN. Cuba's representatives detail the flagrant U.S. double standard in world affairs:

• Washington's demand that the Security Council enforce an embargo against Iraq, while blocking sanctions against Israel for its occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories;

• The U.S. rulers' unilateral breach of UN trade sanctions against the racist regimes in Southern Rhodesia--today Zimbabwe--and South Africa;

• Washington's condemnation of the Iraqi regime's hostile actions against diplomatic personnel in Iraq and Kuwait, conveniently ignoring its own aggression against embassies and embassy staffs of other countries as recently as the U.S. invasion of Panama; and many others.

Events since August 2 have placed a spotlight on the political reality of the UN, which, despite the fine words of its charter, is not and has never been an instrument to advance world peace, sovereignty, or national self-determination.

In truth, the very term "the United Nations" is a misnomer. No such thing exists. What does exist is a complex of buildings in New York City, the capital of the imperialist world, where representatives of more than 150 governments gather to present their positions on various world events. Only five governments, however, have any say over what is actually done in the name of the UN.

The UN's executive powers are monopolized by the five permanent members of the Security Council. The Council's remaining 10 seats rotate for two-year terms among the other UN-member governments. These five permanent members, and only these five, exercise what Castro--in one of the items printed in the pamphlet--calls the "anachronistic, unfair, and undemocratic veto privilege." That is, each one of the U.S., British, French, Soviet, and Chinese delegations--on the basis of its veto alone--can block action by the Security Council on any substantive question. Or, when these five governments agree among themselves, that settles the matter.

On the other hand, the UN General Assembly, in which each member country casts an equal vote, has no powers of implementation. What's more, a two-thirds vote is required to adopt resolutions on many questions, including those related to "international peace and security." Thus, General Assembly votes largely register the state of world public opinion at a given time.

"In the General Assembly, we shout and we condemn, and it doesn't matter," Yemen's UN ambassador Abdalla Saleh Al-Ashtal told journalist John Newhouse recently. Moreover, Newhouse added in the October 8 issue of the New Yorker, Al-Ashtal and "other experienced diplomats agree that the UN was set up to allow the five permanent members of the Security Council--the major world powers--to more or less call the shots."

The UN response to the U.S. invasion of Panama last December is a case in point. The General Assembly adopted a resolution by a big majority vote of 75-to-20 "strongly deploring" the invasion. No action was taken against Washington, however, since the U.S., British, and French delegations vetoed even a resolution of condemnation in the Security Council.

The UN's reactionary structure is even more important for the U.S. rulers today than when it was established in San Francisco in April 1945. The composition and character of the General Assembly and UN bodies under its purview have evolved substantially over the past 45 years.

The UN's founding conference came just at the outset of the post-World War II upsurge of the colonial revolution, which over the next several decades resulted in political independence for the big majority of colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. There were only 51 members of the UN at that time. Most were either imperialist allies of the U.S. rulers or neocolonial governments tightly under the thumb of Washington, especially in Latin America.

Between 1945 and 1953, for example, the U.S. delegation was defeated on fewer than 3 percent of 800 General Assembly resolutions. Only two U.S.-backed measures failed.

This situation began to change by the early 1960s, as one former colony after another won political independence and was admitted to the UN. Washington no longer found it so easy always getting its way in the General Assembly--especially on matters related to anticolonial struggles, racism, and inequitable economic and trade relations imposed on the world market by a handful of the strongest capitalist ruling classes.

In light of this evolution, revolutionists and fighters for national liberation and social justice began to view the General Assembly as one platform from which to win greater world knowledge of and support for struggles by the oppressed and exploited. Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, leaders of the victorious Cuban revolution, traveled to New York City to speak before the General Assembly and--as Guevara put it in 1964--to help "this assembly shake itself out of complacency" and block imperialism's efforts "to turn this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament."

Fighters against the racist and colonial policies of the apartheid regime in South Africa, such as the African National Congress and Namibia's South West Africa People's Organisation, won observer status at the UN, as did the Palestine Liberation Organization and other national liberation movements. Puerto Rican independence fighters took their case before UN committees, as did American Indian organizations. Malcolm X sought to get the question of the racist oppression of Blacks in the United States placed on the agenda of the General Assembly.

While supporters of struggles for national liberation and socialism could and did take advantage of this international rostrum, however, the UN's evolving membership did not alter the political character of the United Nations as the instrument of imperialist policy it was created to be. From the start, the degree of the UN's usefulness to Washington depended on the collaboration it was able to get at a given time from the Soviet government through the mechanism of the Security Council.

Thus, the "history" of the UN is nothing but the history of the shifting relations between the U.S. imperialist rulers and the bureaucratic caste that has held the government of the Soviet workers' state in its death grip since the triumph of Stalin some 60 years ago.

(Next week: Korea and the Congo, the UN's true face.)
 
 
Other articles from the ISR:
Communists and the struggle against imperialism today
Speakers weigh revolutionary traditions, political opportunities
Socialist workers in unions discuss campaign against imperialism and its war drive
Anti-imperialist struggles by the peoples of Afghanistan and surrounding countries  
 
 
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