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The Weapon of Criticism
etc.
The
UN, Cuba and the Gulf War
The Talk Before the Storm
U.S. Hands
Off the Mideast, Cuba speaks out at the United Nations
Speeches by
Cuba's UN ambassador Ricardo Alarcon and Fidel Castro, and articles
from the Cuban government newspaper Granma, in August, September
and October 1990. (Pathfinder, New York, November 1990)
By R.M.
The United Nations played an essential role in the political preparations
for the West's rampage against Iraq. Cuba played a despicable part
in this by lending what is left of its prestige among people opposed
to U.S. aggression to cover up the fact that the UN is and always
has been a flag of convenience for imperialism. Castro's claim that
Cuba speaks with the voice "of the Third World" is all
the more disgusting because on the whole it added its yelp to the
barking of the big dogs of war.
The UN Security Council is the only UN body that counts. It was
established by the winners of World War 2, whose veto power over
any decision reflects their respective armed strength. Today, it
is made up of the four best-armed and H-bomb equipped imperialist
powers -- the U.S., Britain, France and the USSR, along with China.
(The U.S. puppet government of Chiang Kai-shek held China's UN Seat
until 1971.) In addition, there are 10 seats which go to the rest
of the 159 UN members on a rotating basis. All of the permanent
members and most of the rotating members backed the U.S.-led attack
coalition in this matter. Only Yemen and Cuba voted against any
of the twelve Security Council resolutions the U.S. and their allies
sought. Cuba, currently serving a two-year term, voted for six resolutions,
abstained on three and opposed three. On these grounds alone, you'd
have to say its stand was at best ambiguous. On examination, it
gets worse, as this book meant to defend Cuba inadvertently reveals.
These resolutions built up a chain of interlocking "condemnations"
of Iraq and "invitations to member states" to take escalating
measures until the inevitable consequence of the "will of the
world's nations" they expressed was war. This was to become
all the more plain when the pack of murderers led by the U.S. used
these resolutions first as an excuse to unleash the war and then
as an excuse not to accept Iraq's surrender until they has accomplished
what they considered a sufficient amount of UN-sponsored killing
and destruction. It cannot be argued, as Cuba tried, that the U.S.
twisted or took unfair advantage of these resolutions because not
one of them was innocent or neutral.
The UN's opening salvo was the August 2nd approval of U.S.-sponsored
Resolution 660 condemning Iraq's move into Kuwait and calling for
"further steps to ensure compliance with the present resolution".
These "steps" were giant strides towards aggression: the
U.S. was already sending out orders for its warships to head towards
the Gulf. It was especially important for the U.S. and its allies
that this resolution -- to be waved about as the "legal basis"
for the war -- be passed without opposition to disguise the fact
that they were simply enforcing a law they themselves had enacted.
Cuba's ambassador to the UN pointed out that the UN had never bothered
to call for a single step to enforce its hypocritical slaps on the
hand of Israel. Nevertheless, Cuba voted for this resolution.
Even Yemen went so far as to abstain.
The next measure was the imposition of a military blockade against
Iraq by UN Resolution 661. Despite its billing as an attempt to
avoid war, this blockade was a most aggressive act, involving the
biggest emplacement of troops, armour, aircraft and ships since
World War 2 with the express purpose of starving the Iraqi people
and the even more sinister though unspoken purpose of preparing
politically and militarily to invade. Though this time Cuba joined
Yemen in abstaining, Cuba's UN Ambassador Ricardo Alarcon explained
that "my government has taken the relevant steps to ensure
that our country too complies with it". Cuba later voted for
subsequent resolutions that affirmed Resolution 661. The moment
the tattered fax submitted by the U.S. as a draft resolution was
passed, the U.S. launched the "defensive" Operation Desert
Shield destined to become the openly offensive Desert Storm once
the equipment was in place. The blockade was further sanctioned
by Resolution 662 (with Cuba voting yes), a resolution that went
so far as to call for the restoration of the Kuwaiti monarchy in
whose name the U.S.-led forces were to fight.
This was followed by Resolution 664 appealing to countries to keep
their embassies in Kuwait City open. The resolution was in fact
a provocation, since its purpose was to give France and other countries
a pretext to escalate their military presence in order to "protect"
their embassy personal who had refused to leave the country. By
this time, August 18th, the U.S. had already set up its naval blockade
and had begun firing at Iraqi shipping. Cuba (and Yemen) approved
the resolution.
UN Resolution 665 on August 25th "call(ed) upon those member
states cooperating with the government of Kuwait which are deploying
maritime forces to the area to use such measures commensurate to
the specific circumstances as may be necessary to halt all inward
and outward maritime shipping". In other words, rather than
condemning the U.S. and other powers whose attacks on Iraqi shipping
constituted an act of piracy contrary to the very laws they claimed
to be enforcing, this UN resolution simply sanctioned the shooting
that had already begun. The resolution also "request(ed) the
states concerned to coordinate their actions in pursuit of the above
paragraphs" -- in short, to set up a military joint command,
in which the U.S. rather than the UN would call the shots. Again,
Cuba and Yemen abstained.
Cuba's first negative vote came on September 13th, when, citing
humanitarian grounds, it opposed Resolution 666 extending the blockade
to cut off all food and medicine to Iraq. By focussing its opposition
around the question of how tight the blockade should be, Cuba in
fact helped hide the fact that the blockade was never meant to be
anything but a prelude to war. Then, most significantly, Cuba supported
the subsequent Resolution 667 authorising "further concrete
measures as soon as possible", even though Cuban Ambassador
Alarcon piously warned that "some powers might use its provisions
to exacerbate the conflict and press on to military action."
Alarcon also voted in favour of Resolution 669, meant to strengthen
the embargo resolution Cuba had previously abstained on (this fact
is omitted from the Pathfinder book).
Resolution 670 in late September was presented as an even further
tightening of the blockade to include all civilian air travel, and
on this basis Cuba rose to oppose it all by itself. But this opposition
was not extended to the most important part of this resolution,
a paragraph threatening the Iraqi government and leadership from
top to bottom that they would be held responsible for violations
of the Geneva Convention (concerning the so-called rules of war).
This was a clear indication that the U.S. and its allies had no
intention of stopping once they forced Iraq to quit Kuwait but would
strive to claim the victors' right to dispose of governments as
it suited them. Ambassador Alarcon complained that his request for
a separate vote on the last paragraph had been turned down, and
that his government would have supported that paragraph had it been
presented by itself! This support for aggression was washed down
by a big draught of hypocrisy. Alarcon lamented that the final resolution
linked this paragraph to "clear threats that other measures
-- military measures, I presume -- will be used against Iraq."
But who did Alarcon think was going to hold Iraqis responsible,
if not the Western war criminals themselves? In a perfect imitation
of the Pope, Alarcon ended his speech by quoting the Bible: There
is "a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war and a
time of peace", and crying, "Give peace a chance".
But there was already not a chance that the West would be derailed
from its course. Such talk could only feed the illusions of those
who clung to the idea that the imperialist governments might yet
listen to "reason".
Shortly after, Fidel Castro gave a speech in Havana where he referred
to his country's "great struggle in the UN": "Now
they have approved an air embargo. Cuba voted against it, the only
country to do so! We had the honour and glory of being the only
country to vote 'no'! History will record the honour, the dignity,
and the courage with which Cuba acted during that moment of such
importance to the life of humanity. It was necessary to take a firm
position and we did not abstain -- we voted 'No'! And we will vote
against everything we do not agree with, even if we are the only
one." But his ambassador abstained on the very next
UN resolution on the Gulf, Resolution 674, which escalated the threats
against Iraq by demanding financial compensation for all claims
presented against it. Later U.S. spokesmen would float out the idea
that this resolution entitled them to occupy Iraqi oilfields for
years to ensure payment. But with this abstention the Pathfinder
book's account ends.
The UN, however, had not quite finished its work. On November 28th,
Alarcon cast his delegation's vote in favour of Resolution 677,
encharging the UN with protecting Kuwaiti population records. Even
this apparently least objectionable of the dozen UN resolutions
on the Gulf had reactionary content, since the purpose of Kuwait's
records of births, deaths, etc. is to deny all political rights
to the majority of the people in the country who are not Kuwaiti
citizens. The UN Security Council was quite aware of what kind of
society was represented by the Kuwaiti apartheid banner it placed
at the front of the aggressor coalition.
The following day, when the Security Council closed down its talk
shop with what was to be its last resolution on the Gulf, Cuba voted
against Resolution 678 which authorised the U.S. and its allies
to use "all necessary means" against Iraq starting January
15th. It was the only important Gulf resolution Cuba (or Yemen)
voted against -- and all it did was draw the logical conclusion
from all the preceding resolutions and give its blessing to the
date the U.S. had set three months earlier. Besides, it no longer
mattered. With this resolution, the UN chapter of war preparations
drew to a close. The imperialist powers deemed that it had exhausted
its usefulness. (This was the only resolution China failed to approve
-- it abstained in order to try and save some influence in the Third
World while refraining from using its veto power which might have
annoyed some imperialists.)
In short, during the period in which the U.S. and its allies were
working to build up the political framework for their invasion of
the Gulf, Cuba, like all the other governments represented on the
Security Council, went along with the programme in its most essential
aspects.
Of course, Cuba, being Cuba, and playing the role it does in world
affairs, also sought to distance itself from the war it was helping
to prepare. Its ambassador did some telling exposures of U.S. duplicity.
"Is it really the need to promote respect for the independence,
sovereignty and territorial integrity of states that motivates the
United States? Or is it the ambition of the United States to intervene
and dominate in the Middle East?" Alarcon demanded. He repeatedly
brought up the U.S.'s invasion of Panama, which the UN had chosen
to ignore. He pointed out that when George Bush was the U.S.'s ambassador
to the UN, he had gone before that body to defend the U.S.'s decision
not to respect the UN-imposed embargo on the apartheid regime in
Rhodesia. (These sanctions, like the rather leaky embargo against
South Africa the U.S., Britain, etc., mostly ignored, were voluntary,
since a military blockade against apartheid was unthinkable.) In
discussion of Resolution 664 demanding Iraq pay reparations Alarcon
remarked that the U.S. had ignored the World Court ruling ordering
it to pay compensation for mining Nicaragua's harbours. But that
didn't mean he voted against the resolution.
What did all Alarcon's talk at the UN amount to? His speeches read
like the worn, rote words of a very tired man. No one at the Security
Council was listening. It is a denunciation of some U.S. policies,
within the context of not getting too much in the U.S.'s way in
terms of its immediate needs at the UN. Further, this is coupled
with ugly efforts to woo European imperialism, especially France.
For instance, why did Cuba abstain on Resolution 665, which the
Cuban government newspaper Granma denounced as "legitimising
the piratical actions of the U.S. Navy"? Perhaps because it
was co-sponsored by the U.S., U.K. and France, and neither Alarcon
nor Granma saw fit to point out the piratical unilateral
actions of the navies of the latter two countries. When Alarcon
cast his vote in favour of Resolution 667, the key resolution in
terms of handing over the UN flag to the Allies' joint military
command, he explained that he was doing so "as an expression
of friendship and respect for France, Canada and other countries"
whose Kuwait City embassies were deprived of fresh water for their
swimming pools under Iraqi pressure. At the time of Alarcon's statement,
France had 13,000 troops and 13 warships in the Gulf, ready to take
"further concrete steps" of the kind referred to in the
resolution. In his luke-warm litany about UN protection for the
apartheid regime of South Africa, Alarcon neglected to mention that
France happened to be the power that ended up vetoing the proposed
expulsion of South Africa from the UN in 1974, just as it also used
its veto to protect the fascist Franco regime in Spain and Dutch
colonialism in Indonesia as well as its own in Indochina. Nor did
he mention the Canadian forces dispatched to the Gulf, though Canada
was ready to exhibit a special bloodthirstiness in order claim a
seat for itself at the big-power banquet when it came time for the
imperialists to feast on those who remained alive in the region.
The Soviet Union is never mentioned in these speeches and documents.
Yet it was Soviet willingness to go along with the U.S. that made
this war possible. Being entitled to a veto, the USSR was not permitted
the luxury of an ambiguous position like Cuba's. But Cuba's actions
during this crisis fit in quite well with the USSR's interests,
in covering up the imperialist collusion going on and the various
imperialist interests behind it. It may seem ironic, given Castro's
posturing, but especially since the collapse of the Soviet bloc
in Europe there is no country in today's world politically more
subservient to the USSR than Cuba. That reflects its continuing
economic domination by Soviet capital, a situation neither the USSR
nor Castro have done much to change. Did the coming renewal of Cuban-Soviet
trade agreements in early 1991 have anything to do with Cuba's behaviour?
This subservience to the USSR is a major reason why Cuba's ambassador,
for all his anti-U.S. comments, cannot expose imperialism, the system
that lies behind this rapacious scrambling for control of neocolonies
and the world control that rests on that foundation, nor even really
oppose the particular policies of the U.S. in this case. But it
is not only that constraint that inhibits Cuba; there is also a
reluctance to cast aside any possibility of a rapprochement between
Cuba and its former colonial master. This is what leads Castro to
declare his opposition to a war "that will even produce quite
negative consequences for the economies of the developed countries
and for the economy of the U.S." as well as lead to "$70
a barrel for oil" which would be "a catastrophe"
for Third World countries. As if this were what was wrong with it!
Never, in any of these speeches, despite all their rhetoric, is
it even mentioned that the war being prepared was an unjust war,
an imperialist war of plunder. Not only the word imperialism, but
the whole concept of struggle against it, is missing from the Cuban
government's words on this subject, and this in turn is a reflection
of its practical stand.
The United Nations is a club created by and for the imperialists,
and aggressively wielded by them. Cuba's role in all this was to
cover up for the UN. Again and again, Alarcon accuses the U.S. of
"misusing" UN resolutions and subverting the UN. He insists
on acting shocked that such a body could ever do anything that might
somehow fit in with U.S. aggression. Granma called the U.S.'s
assumption of the West's military command in the Gulf "a grave
violation and an unacceptable reinterpretation of the UN Charter",
when in fact Cuba hadn't even voted against Resolution 665 that
authorised the U.S. to do just that. Granma pretended to
be shocked: "it is truly astounding that a body that has never
before in the forty-five year history of the United Nations authorised
the use of force should do so now in such an irresponsible manner".
Here, even the Trotskyite publishers of this book had to add a footnote
referring to UN sponsorship of the U.S. invasion of Korea (approved
by the Security Council while the USSR was boycotting it in protest
over the UN's refusal to seat the People's Republic of China). But
the publishers managed to continue their defence of Castro under
difficult circumstances by botching the footnote numbering.
We could add a long list of imperialist crimes committed under the
UN banner, from the infamous massive UN intervention in Zaire that
ended the life of the nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba in 1964,
to the UN troops in Lebanon who were sent not to expel the Israeli
invaders but to protect them. We defy anyone to come up with a single
example of an intervention by UN troops that was not in the direct
service of imperialism, or a single example of any UN action, armed
or not, that hindered imperialism in the slightest. Even the distribution
of food in famine-stricken Ethiopia, for example, though a very,
very small part of the UN's work, was done in a way so as to ensure
the country's continued economic dependence, and it was part of
imperialist intrigue. (Not coincidentally, Ethiopia, also currently
sitting on the Security Council, went along without a peep on every
single vote.)
Of course, even if Cuba had cast its ballot against every single
one of the UN Security Council Resolutions it would not have stopped
the war. But that is precisely the point. The UN is utterly powerless
to do anything that imperialism is not disposed to permit. It is
not a body standing above the clash of classes and nations, but
an instrument of imperialism. It is a forum of contention between
imperialists at times (as it was when the U.S. and the USSR fought
over missiles in Cuba in 1962, or in 1956 when the U.S. opposed
a French and British attempt to grab Egypt), but at such times the
UN becomes irrelevant as the various powers use arms or the threat
of arms under their own flags to settle the question. The UN has
been most effective as a weapon on matters where various imperialist
powers are in some degree of collusion. It is part of the organised
structure of the present unjust "world order". China and
the USSR, when they were revolutionary countries, recognised this
fact, while refusing to let the imperialists have a monopoly on
this forum. Cuba is simply striving to become a member of the club
in good standing. Its attempts to be accepted as a "loyal opposition"
within the UN served to legitimise this imperialist-dominated institution
instead of exposing and opposing the whole UN sham.
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