Action without specific UN sanction would be unlawful anyway. The original
resolution did not give any right to use force as Bush and his running Brit
Bulldog Blair aver. In fact it would be aggression to be dealt with severely
by the UN if the UN were not simply a toothless instrument unless the strong
doggies use it to bite the weak.
A defeated resolution would just be embarassing to the leaders of the
pack.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
> Meanwhile the US adminstration has appeared increasingly distant from the
> search for a second resolution, which the hawks belittle as the 18th
> resolution. Unprecedentedly Annan has issued a partisan warning
effectively
> appealing to the willing allies to withdraw the resolution, on the ground
> that if it fails any military action could be unlawful.
>
> So the contradictions between the US and the UK have widened. The
strategic
> goal of taming US unilateralism (I thought Mandelson's article was in fact
> significant of Blair's thinking) now becomes almost unbridgeable in the
> face of the lurch to a multipolar world.
>
> British commentators at the UN repeat the suggestion that Blair's crisis
is
> not the UN's crisis. There is pressure to drop the search for a further
> resolution, despite Bush's bravado last week. This will leave Blair
stranded.
>
> But this is also a crisis of imperialism and global governance. The net
> result either way will be the acceleration of the global imposition of a
> liberal imperialism. But until the Bush administration falls, it will go
> its own way, with increasingly open challenges to its domination.
>
> Blair has never looked more vulnerable. This is because we are looking at
> an even more turbulent international situation, which may involve the fall
> of the US as a hyperpower, unless the economic dynamics go as favourably
as
> they hope the war will. Much more probably, they will turn into a vicious
> circle, and the fight will be on as to who bears the burden, in a world in
> which the US has lost its best apologist.
>
> Chris Burford
> London
>
