Whatever happened to the New World Order? In an article which first appeared in May, 2000, Jim Addington investigates.

The new world order promised by President Bush after the Gulf War has not yet materialised. After ten years the Middle East is still not at peace. While Israel flouts UN resolutions, Iraq is still treated as a pariah state, its people subjected to cruel and inhuman sanctions. France, Russia and others try to get sanctions lifted for humanitarian reasons, but Britain and America remain resolutely opposed to any genuine relaxation until the Iraqi leadership comes to heel.
For ten years Saddam Hussein has been persona non grata to what is described as the ‘international community.’ For a similar period Slobodan Milosevic, the elected president of a political coalition, has been declared a public enemy by members of NATO and the rest of Europe. The US Congress has offered a reward for his arrest. There has been no attempt to consider the way in which the countries of the Balkans or the Middle East might solve their own problems, without pressure or interference from major powers outside.

UN Charter breached

Last year the UN Security Council was unable to sanction punitive action against a sovereign state because two states threatened to use the veto. NATO decided to act on its own initiative in Kosovo - albeit in the name of the international community. The UN was by-passed by a group of nineteen member states which were all in breach of its Charter.
The stalemate over Iraq, frequently reminded by regular bombing by the US and Britain that they are now in control, has been duplicated by another in Kosovo. NATO forces, acting as UN peace-keepers, are stationed in Kosovo with a limited mandate. This is to keep the peace and facilitate the resettlement of the people who returned after the bombing. Neither the UN nor NATO has yet faced the question of the long-term future of Kosovo, and its predominantly Albanian-speaking population, which remains part of Yugoslavia.
NATO is a military alliance with no formal democratic organisation. It is not recognised as an international political institution. There is no legal basis for aggressive action taken without specific authority from the UN. When NATO ignored the United Nations in attacking Kosovo last year it challenged the authority of the sole international body charged with maintaining peace and security. The UN mandate derives from a legally-binding Charter signed by 188 independent states.
The United Nations Organisation (UNO), under the Charter the official custodian of peace and security, has no military organisation. In 1991 it had to recognise the United States’ capability and accept its willingness to lead a loose coalition of states against Iraq.
After committing what was in effect a major war crime by attacking a sovereign state, NATO was invited by the UN Security Council to police Kosovo. In a face-saving and damage limitation exercise the UN asked the aggressor to keep the peace over the very territory it had attacked.

Old world order revisited

Thus, the definition of the new world order is that there is no new world order. As some commentators have suggested, we merely have an old world order - revisited. The strongest nations, in military and economic terms, are in control. The UN Security Council, having no troops, has to contract out its peacekeeping and peace-making missions to countries whose actions are often far from peaceful and to a military alliance whose political structure is undemocratic. If Kosovo becomes a precedent there will be many more interventions, each taking the initiative on ‘humanitarian’ grounds. This frustrates the intentions of official international agreements made since the Second World War, especially the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. It will be remembered that Hitler claimed that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 was carried out on humanitarian grounds. He asserted that he was coming to the rescue of an allegedly ill-treated German minority within the Czech borders.

Helsinki

The Helsinki Final Act was unanimously agreed by 35 European and North American countries. It included a pledge that signatories would never breach another state’s borders, or threaten such action. Its principal purpose was to guarantee national borders in Europe which had been established or confirmed by the victors in the War some thirty years earlier. Many European states contain large minority groups with a perceived ethnic or language affinity with groups in neighbouring states. As the Second World War began with demands for changes in borders on behalf of a minority population, it was felt essential for the nations of Europe to prevent any repetition.
Yet barely fifteen years later, as Yugoslavia was about to break up, nobody recalled the Helsinki agreement. No attempt was made to maintain the borders of the Yugoslav Federation while encouraging greater self-government within its constituent republics. Croatia and Bosnia were violent stages on the way to the present impasse in Kosovo. Yet there are no proposals for a constitutional settlement which might bring peace and economic stability to the province, to other parts of Yugoslavia or neighbouring states. In a region which is economically and geographically independent, the progress of reconstruction is being held up by the deliberately punitive action by NATO and EU member states against Yugoslavia. The Danube, virtually the lifeline of the region, is still closed to the traditional river trade.

‘Partnership for peace’

It is ironic that it should be NATO that has brought the majority of eastern European countries together, either as members of NATO or putative members through the Partnership for Peace. Their first wish is to join the EU, and NATO, through its military community, has been perceived as the first stage of entry to membership; but while the costs of entry to NATO appear to be light, there is a requirement to invest heavily in modern arms to harmonise defence equipment, equipment to be provided by the older members of the alliance.
If there is to be a new world order it should not be one devised in the interests of military powers. The UN should be at the centre of any new structure established to keep the peace. A new attempt should be made to establish the Military Staff Committee, which was intended under the UN Charter to be the means by which the Security Council could, if desired, exercise its jurisdiction over erring states.
The NATO alliance is far larger than that required to meet any potential threat. It is top-heavy, as the United States possesses the bulk of the armaments and is able to mount an aggressive air war virtually without assistance from other members. For this reason the US itself has become a potential threat to peace which is likely to meet reciprocal action by other major world powers. NATO, collectively, is also a potential danger to peace, having undertaken aggressive military action without approval from the only legitimate international institution. It should wind down its military establishment, as many of its members have begun to do.