The Role of the U.N.

As war with Iraq appears to grow more likely, the issues at stake in this morally questionable enterprise grow clearer. The issue under consideration here is the role of the United Nations and the weight it should be given by the United States.


(Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com and purchase his books by clicking here.)



I don't question the right of this country or any other to go it alone in its own defense if that becomes necessary. Whether such necessity currently exists in the case of Iraq is a separate issue that I set aside for now, noting only that I share the view that the case hasn't been made. But, to repeat, the question presently before the house is only this: Why should a superpower even bother with the U.N. in deciding whether to go to war?

One answer is appearances. Acting within a United Nations framework can provide an aura of legitimacy for pursuing national policy. This is a way of silencing catcalls about unilateralism, cowboy adventurism, and the like.

But there are other, better reasons.

Although conservatives, including Catholics, regularly disparage the international organization, it is significant that the Vatican has been a supporter from the start and is one now. Pope Paul VI addressed the General Assembly in 1965 and Pope John Paul II has spoken there twice, in 1979 and again in 1995. The Holy See maintains an observer mission at U.N. headquarters in New York and an official presence with U.N. bodies in Geneva. It routinely takes part in U.N. events.

It does these things, moreover, fully aware of the United Nations' faults. For instance, the UN, as the Vatican knows perfectly well, is a major proponent of population control and abortion through the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). The Holy See has fought tooth and nail against these and other anti-family policies at UN-sponsored conferences for years.

So why does the Vatican stick with it?

Ultimately, I believe, the answer can be found in Pacem in Terris, Blessed John XXIII's peace encyclical, whose 40th anniversary falls this year.

In one of its many remarkable passages, Pope John called for creation of a global “public authority” with “worldwide power and adequate means for achieving the universal common good.” Although he made it clear he didn't look for the elimination of national sovereignty, he plainly looked to a downsizing of its sometimes swollen claims.

Are those growls from the right I hear? Be that as it may, a downsizing of nationalism was a worthy goal in the dangerous 1960s (Pacem in Terris came out five months after the Cuban Missile Crisis) and remains one in today's hardly less dangerous world.

Pope John made something else clear. Although the United Nations as it existed in 1963 was not the ideal embodiment of his vision, it was an indispensable step. He expressed the “earnest wish” that the U.N. would “progressively…adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude of its tasks.”

And now? “The independence of states can no longer be understood apart from the concept of interdependence,” Pope John Paul II declared January 13 in his annual address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See. And the UN, with all its faults, is the best political instrument around for promoting the common good of interdependent states.

In a situation like the Iraq crisis, the alternative to acting within the U.N. framework is — as the Vatican foreign secretary, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, put it a while back — reversion to the “law of the jungle.” It would be deeply irresponsible of the United States to contribute to that.

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Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. He is the author of more than twenty books and previously served as secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference.

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