Gordon L. Weil
Peace came close to a fatal failure this week.
The global effort against war suffered a possibly mortal
blow when Israel, a member of the United Nations, supposedly the world’s peacekeeper,
attacked U.N. outposts and tried to drive them away.
Just as Russia had unimaginably launched a European ground
war against Ukraine, Israel flagrantly attacked the multinational U.N. mission
monitoring its boundary with Lebanon.
In the fleeting glow of their World War II victory over Nazism,
Fascism and imperialism, the winners set out to create international
organizations with real power to step in to prevent conflict and provide a forum
for negotiated solutions.
The U.N. was the most ambitious, and it eventually came to
include almost all sovereign countries. Its
Security Council, dominated by the war’s leading powers, could mandate joint
peacekeeping measures.
But Security Council decisions could be vetoed by any one of
the five countries – China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and
the United States. China was soon taken
over by the Communists and the Soviet Union, later replaced by Russia, wasted
no time in reneging on its commitments and became the American rival. A flood of vetoes came.
The U.N. could perform some useful functions even as
peacekeeping efforts faltered. It has tried
to dodge the Security Council deadlock and use the General Assembly, including
all members, to pass non-binding resolutions. Groups of willing members could back
peacekeeping measures proposed in General Assembly resolutions.
Some peacekeeping operations have worked, because the U.N.’s
thin blue line was respected. Others
have struggled, including one in southern Lebanon, begun under a Security
Council order. It has now come under the
most serious attack ever by a U.N. member.
Contributors to the U.N. force insist they won’t budge, but Israel may
not be held accountable.
Regional groups also developed. In Europe, a new international organization was
formed, designed to interconnect nations so that Germany and France could never
again launch a world war. It grew into
the European Union. It was openly based on
supranationalism, authorizing EU agencies to overrule national sovereignty.
The effort was successful in creating a single trade area
with a single market. It was poised to
make Europe a major world power alongside the U.S. Then the demands of national sovereignty
overwhelmed the promise of supranationalism.
Unlike a truly federal nation like the U.S., the EU required
the unanimous vote of its then 28 members on many major issues. Hungary, a small country, has tried to block
decisions. The U.K., preferring its
sovereignty, Brexited from the EU. No common
foreign or defense policy could be agreed upon. European unity was half done, leaving it far
short of its original promise.
The U.N. and the EU, both common efforts to build working relations
among nations and reduce the chances for renewed warfare, did not accomplish
their purposes. Instead, the world relies
on military alliances whose strength might deter others from aggression and
war.
NATO is the prime example.
Equipped with a unified military command and responsive above all to the
U.S., its most powerful member, it served as a deterrent. But it grew weaker as it became more
successful. Only after Russian
aggression proved that NATO had let its guard down, did it renew itself.
In the Pacific region, China’s increasingly hostile moves
have led to new military cooperation.
AUKUS joins Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. in a cooperative agreement.
The Quad includes Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. in developing defenses
against China. The U.S. also has defense agreements with Australia, Japan, the
Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand.
As peacemaking gave way to deterrence, Donald Trump’s
administration was striking because it accepted neither. He quit three U.N. agencies and the Paris
agreement on the environment, threatened NATO and killed the deal slowing Iran’s
nuclear weapons development. His “America
First” policy alienated potential allies.
This isolationism was accompanied by his fawning over authoritarian
leaders. Did he appease such leaders in
hopes that he could trade concessions to them for a period of peace? Did he see agreeing with them as “the art of
the deal,” recalling his days developing real estate? Or did he merely enjoy being in a club with
leaders who answer to nobody?
Whatever the reason, he clearly believes his superior personal
ability to deal with Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, North Korea’s Kim, Hungary’s
Orban and even Israel’s Netanyahu is all that is required for a successful
policy. He now claims that he could
solve major conflicts with such autocrats in a single day, though inevitably
that would mean accepting their demands.
Trump’s policy is neither deterrence nor peacemaking. It is disengagement, even in the face of
aggressive actions by adversaries. Pursuing
this high-wire personal policy with any success would depend on the fading skills
of an aging man.
