The grotesque fraud of international pseudo-governmental bodies

Can someone explain what gives the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council any legal authority over Iran’s nuclear program? India developed nuclear weapons. Pakistan developed nuclear weapons. Israel developed nuclear weapons (though without publicly admitting it). North Korea developed nuclear weapons. I don’t remember that IAEA and the UN issuing lot of resolutions against those countries.

Of course I’m not saying that the Iranian nuclear weapons program is not a threat. I think it is a terrible threat, and I think that the only way the threat can be stopped is through the use of military force by the U.S. or Israel to destroy or degrade Iran’s nuclear program. But that’s not my point here. My point is, what gives the UN or the IAEA or the “international community” any legal power over Iran?

Below is a UN document that illustrates the UN’s (as it seems to me) illegitimate interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, as well as its impotence. In July 2006, after three years of expressing “concerns,” the Security Council finally declared that Iran would face diplomatic and economic sanctions if it did not suspend its nuclear enrichment related activities. Of course Iran did not suspend those activities, and of course the UN did nothing about it. And now, three years later, after many similar such warnings, and many similar refusals, there have still been no sanctions.

Resolution 1696 (2006) Adopted by Vote of 14—1 ( Qatar),

Iran Says Peaceful Programme No Threat, Council’s Consideration Unwarranted

The Security Council, seriously concerned that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was still unable to provide assurances about Iran’s undeclared nuclear material and activities after more than three years, today demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, and gave it one month to do so or face the possibility of economic and diplomatic sanctions to give effect to its decision. [cont.]

As I said, the UN’s demands on Iran are (as far as I can tell) without legitimate authority, and its warnings are an exercise in impotence. That’s because the UN is not a real political entity with real power and real accountability to any real people. Nor can it acquire such power unless it becomes sovereign, which would mean world government, which must never happen. Therefore the only way that a serious threat such as the development of Iranian nuclear weapons can be stopped is by a sovereign nation—or an alliance of such nations—acting in its own interests. Only a sovereign nation has the right to warn a potential aggressor that it must cease its aggression, and only an armed nation has the ability to make warnings that count.

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A. Zarkov writes:

Mr. Auster asks: “Can someone explain what gives the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council any legal authority over Iran’s nuclear program?” The short answer is Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The four countries not a party to the treaty are: Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Notice that Iran is a party to the treaty, and that’s what gives the UN some authority over Iran’s nuclear development program. Of course Iran is free to withdraw from the treaty, but I suspect they don’t want to because it confers some advantage to them to stay in it.

Note also that South Africa did not initially sign the treaty, and then developed nuclear weapons. In 1991 with black rule on the horizon, South Africa signed the treaty and then dismantled all their nuclear weapons. It’s clear that the whites in South Africa lost their nerve. With nuclear weapons and a close alliance with Israel, South Africa was in a good position to resist foreign interference. Countries want nuclear weapons for exactly that reason. Once you have such weapons you can be sure the U.S. Navy won’t be flying sorties into your country to change your government. The whites decided not to fight, and lost their country which is now an uncivilized hell hole where white people live in fear. The West, including the U.S., simply don’t care, they are to be sacrificed on the alter of multiculturalism. After all Bill Clinton once said that he looked forward to the demise of the white race. Many white liberals share his wish. I suppose their home are free of mirrors.

I remember in the 1980s when a U.S. satellite detected a flash over the Indian Ocean. I immediately thought—“South African nuclear weapon’s test.” The U.S. then put out disinformation saying the flash was caused by a micrometeorite. I laughed at that transparent effort to mislead us. Then I asked an expert as to whether a country could conduct an underwater nuclear test without us detecting the radioactive debris. He said “yes.” It seems that the U.S. looked for the debris. Strange behavior for something caused by a micrometeorite. After 1993 I found out that my suspicious were exactly right. One additional specualtion on my part: the test was joint between South Africa and Israel. One day I might find the answer.

LA replies:

Thanks for the information. So the UN and the IAEA do have legal authority to require Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, and to investigate it to make sure it’s not doing so. But unfortunately this doesn’t change the basic picture I outlined, since the UN lacks the will and ability to enforce the treaty. It doesn’t even seek to punish Iran by diplomatic and economic sanctions, even though Iran has been blatantly violating the treaty for years. The treaty therefore is meaningless. Nations may sign a treaty, and an international body like the UN may have paper authority to enforce it, but not real authority, because it’s not a real political entity. Indeed the ultimate goal of the movement of which the UN is the highest expression is to eliminate real political entities, nation-states, because nation-states exercise power and make all kind of discriminations that bring inequality and injustice into the world. The aim is a world of equality and peace, without separate nation-states and their mutual power struggles. But the problem is that without nations-states capable of waging power struggles, there is no power that can enforce treaties and combat aggression. Yes, the UN could become a world government. But a government constituted of member states that have turned themselves into non-entities in the act of forming that world government will still lack the ability to act. Even countries that are still sovereign will not act unless their interests are at stake. Let’s say that there was a central African country practicing genocide against a minority tribe. The UN calls on its member states to use force to stop this genocide. But where would the will to fight and die come from? UN soldiers from Canada or Jordan will no motive to kill and die to protect central Africans. Only actual national states representing actual people and having relevant concrete interests and responsibilities will have the will to enforce anything.

LA writes:

By way of partial excuse for my not knowing that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is what gives the “international community” the power to demand that Iran stop its nuclear weapon development, of perhaps hundreds of news and opinion articles I’ve read about the Iran nuclear issue over the last several years, I don’t remember one mentioning the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As we see with journalism generally, the underlying structural or legal information needed to understand an issue is not given; it’s assumed that everyone already knows about it—this, in a society where ignorance of the most basic matters is widespread and never judged! Or else it’s assumed that people simply don’t need to know.

Take for example the International Criminal Court. In many stories about how some accused war criminal has been arrested and transported to the Hague so that he can be tried by the ICC, I have never seen an explanation of how this mysterious ICC came into existence and what gives it the power to try anybody. How does an institution that is not part of a sovereign state have such power? Is the UN along with its peripheral institutions already a government with the power to arrest and imprison people? The ordinary reader of the news is not told. He has to do research on his own to find out this basic information without which the story is incomprehensible. And how many people have the disposition and time for that?

The further political power moves from the people, toward bureaucratic bodies on the national level, and then the transnational level, the more obscure, unaccountable, and inhuman it becomes. Apart from the racial and cultural destruction of the West by non-Western immigration, this is the specter that haunts me more than any other.

October 19

Ken Hechtman from Canada, VFR’s own window into the mind of the left, writes:

You wrote:

Let’s say that there was a central African country practicing genocide against a minority tribe. The UN calls on its member states to use force to stop this genocide. But where would the will to fight and die come from? UN soldiers from Canada or Jordan will no motive to kill and die to protect central Africans. Only actual national states representing actual people and having relevant concrete interests and responsibilities will have the will to enforce anything.

Touche and point taken. Rwanda wasn’t Canada’s finest hour. We’re working on that, though. We fought for Kosovo’s independence. That wasn’t nothing. We’re fighting an undeclared war now in Darfur to stop the genocide there, we’ve had soldiers killed in Darfur that we can’t admit to because we’re not officially doing anything over there.

We have advocates of the “Responsibility to Protect” working their way up. Obama got Samantha Power entrenched in the U.S. State Department. Michael Ignatieff is set to become the next prime minister of Canada. It’s not going to happen overnight but it’s going to happen.

LA replies:

By “it,” in “it’s going to happen,” I assume Mr. Hechtman means a true global army under the command of a true global government with the means and will to fight real wars against local oppressors. I don’t agree. I think the inherent problems of such an army will prevent its ever coming into being, though the left will keep trying.

Also, my comment was not meant as a criticism of Canada. I really was just using Canada as an illustration.

Ken Hechtman writes:

I don’t see a true global army happening any time soon. For the foreseeable future, the UN will need to borrow troops from national governments the same way it always has. What I think will change is that some national governments will become more willing to lend their troops to such missions. They won’t think of it as “acting outside their national interests.” They’re going to believe stopping genocides and state failures is in everyone’s national interest.

By the way, if you want a window into the minds of the people who actually work in and for world government, I recommend Samantha Power’s biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello “Chasing the Flame.”

October 20

Mark P. writes:

Ken Hechtman is smoking way too much of his medical marijuana if he thinks that “lending” military forces is somehow going to continue. Eventually, people will stop caring.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 18, 2009 04:11 PM | Send