A Telling Response

A story published yesterday by Patrick Goodenough of CNSNews.com paints an interesting picture of the shape of things in the international community. It seems that, in a move to try to persuade Iran from pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, England, France, and Germany, referred to as the EU3, have issued a proposal – endorsed by the United States – to the Islamic state that calls for it to provide guarantees that it is not using its nuclear energy program to develop such weapons. In exchange, the trio of European nations is offering economic and political cooperation to Iran. But a failure to provide such guarantees, the EU3 has warned, will result in referral to the United Nations Security Council, “a step that could result in the imposition of sanctions.”

And Iran doesn’t much seem to care.

Granted, it must be noted that all government institutions in Iran are currently in the hands of Anti-Western Islamic hardliners, and these can hardly be expected to enthusiastically embrace any Western proposals, particularly those that it might perceive as designed to prevent it from increasing its stature on the world stage. But the failure of the Iranian leadership to even bat an eye in response to the “threat” of U.N. sanctions may legitimately be interpreted as an indicator of the effectiveness of the world body, as currently administered.

As has been stated in this space before, in order for any weapon to be effective as a deterrent to unacceptable behavior, there has to be a belief on the part of the party to be deterred that the weapon will actually be used. A nation under leadership like that in Iran cannot be expected to cooperate with the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. or any perceived “Western Institution” out of the goodness of its heart. But it may be forced by reality to cooperate if it perceives a real and credible threat to its well-being for failure to do so. Obviously, the Iranian leadership perceives no such potential damage to its interests for failure to cooperate in this matter.

But, then, why should it? What has the United Nations done in recent years to convince anyone that referral to the Security Council is a step to be feared? The most notable example of UNSC “effectiveness” in the past fifteen years is that of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, against which seventeen separate UNSC resolutions were issued, threatening punitive action from the U.N. if that regime failed to clean up its act and fully disclose the status of its program to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, as all observers know, not only did the regime not suffer for its repeated failures to comply with the resolutions, it is now known that it actually prospered thanks to the dealings of corrupt officials within the U.N. Hardly the kind of thing that’s going to make other rogue nations develop a fear of making the bureaucrats on the east side angry.

Indeed, it wasn’t until a nation with the resources and the will to actually enforce the terms of the resolutions took action against the regime – action that was opposed by the very Security Council that issued the resolutions being enforced – that the regime was toppled and the world was confirmed to be safe from the whims of the tyrant that ran it. The vehement opposition of the U.N. to the Iraq war only furthered the perception that the world body itself is nothing to be feared by those who would thumb their noses at it.

It is not denied that the United Nations was a dream of an American President who, along with other world leaders of his day, saw it as a tool to enforce peace in the face of criminal regimes that might arise to rob the world of that peace. And it is not even denied that the organization could still be an effective tool in the pursuit of that goal. But as it currently stands, the United Nations continues to give the perception that it is more interested in its own comfort and self-perpetuation than it is in actually taking meaningful – and sometimes unpleasant – actions to solve some of the problems it was established to solve, making it look ever more like the failed League of Nations that preceded it. The flippant response of the Iranians to the EU3 proposal is just the latest example of this truth.