Sunday Times 2
When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – Jim Matthis a former Defence Secretary in the Trump administration quotes a Marine Corps dictum in a recently-released book titled “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead”.
“When you’re going to a gun fight” he advises, “bring all your friends with guns.”
Having fought many times in coalitions, says the retired US Marine Corps General, “I believe that we need every ally we can bring to the fight – from imaginative military solutions to their country’s vote in the UN, the more allies the better.”
Saudi defence ministry spokesman Colonel Turki bin Saleh al-Malki displays pieces of what he said were Iranian cruise missiles and drones recovered from the attack site that targeted Saudi Aramco's facilities, during a press conference in Riyadh on September 18. AFP
But how many of the UN’s big powers armed with big guns, including Britain, France, Russia and China, are willing join the US as it prepares for an attack on Iran?
Or even give its blessings to a Trump administration which has treated the UN with contempt by abandoning multilateralism, withdrawing from international treaties and drastically reducing funds to UN agencies?
And now it is turning to the UN for help — even as it plans to lobby member states whose leaders will be attending high level summit meetings in New York next week.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has set the stage when he accused Iran of carrying out an “act of war”— the strongest condemnation so far from any American official on Iran.
In a September 19 front-page story headlined “White House seeks allies at UN to press Iran on Saudi oil attack,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) says the British UN ambassador Karen Pierce has already said responsibility hadn’t been determined as to who was behind the attacks on the Saudi oil fields while Japan and France have also signalled they aren’t convinced that Iran was behind the attacks.
Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the Security Council who are close allies of Iran, are unlikely to support any UN resolution authorising an attack on Iran.
But the Trump administration is apparently trying to raise a “coalition of the willing” – as did President George W Bush’s administration when it invaded Iraq in March 2003.
The San Francisco University’s Politics and International Studies Professor, Stephen Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the UN Security Council, told IPS the United States, as with the invasion of Iraq, might be able to assemble a “coalition of the willing,” this time consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other right-wing allies from the region and launch an illegal war without UN authorisation.”
He pointed out it would be no easier for the US to garner allies at the UN for an attack on Iran based on false claims than it was to garner allies for an attack on Iraq based on false claims.
“This is particularly true given that the Trump administration, like the Bush administration, has repeatedly attacked the United Nations and longtime US allies for not supporting their unilateralist agenda and Washington’s willingness to violate the UN Charter and other international legal principles,” said Zunes who also serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.
The WSJ quotes Trump as telling the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in a bygone era: “the UN is not a friend of democracy, not a friend of freedom and not even a friend of the United States”
The US is building up a case against Tehran for the recent aerial strikes on Saudi oil fields which sent oil prices skyrocketing.
But Iran has vehemently denied the attacks while the Houthis in Yemen admit they are responsible for the drone and cruise missile attacks.
Trump is now turning to the UN to support him on a possible attack against Iran.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the invasion as “illegal” because it did not have the blessings of the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC), the only institution in the world body with the power to declare war and peace.
But the administration of President George W. Bush went after him for challenging its decision to unilaterally declare war against Iraq: an attack by one member state against another for no legally-justifiable reason.
The weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), reportedly in Iraq’s military arsenal, which was one of the primary reasons for the invasion, were never found.