2012/04/06

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: The Complicity of the UN

"Humanitarian" wars, especially under the guise of the "Responsibility to Protect", are a modern form of imperialism. The standard pattern that the United States and its allies use to execute them is one where genocide and ethnic cleansing are vociferously alleged by a coalition of governments, media organizations, and non-governmental front organizations. The allegations "often lurid and unfounded" then provide moral and diplomatic cover for a variety of sanctions that undermine and isolate the target country in question, and thereby pave the way for military intervention. This is the post-Cold War modus operandi of the US and NATO. In facilitating this neo-imperialism, the United Nations has been complicit in the hijacking of its own posts and offices by Washington. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has been appointed a "special peace envoy" with a mediating role in Syria. Yet, how can Annan be evaluated as an "honest broker" considering his past instrumental role in developing the doctrine of R2P, the very pretext that has served to facilitate several US/NATO criminal wars of aggression? Furthermore, the evidence attests that the US and its allies, despite mouthing support for Annan's supposed peace plan, are not interested in a mediated, peaceful solution in Syria. As the Cold War began to wind down in the late 1980s and early 1990s, NATO saw the opportunity that would arise from the geopolitical vacuum following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. Not only did NATO begin transforming from a defensive organization into an offensive military body, the US-led alliance began to embrace a 'supposed' humanitarian mandate for this purpose. It is through this purported embrace of humanitarianism that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was able to change into an offensive, interventionist military force, indeed the largest such force ever, in the history of the world!

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