POLITICS
Mrs Thatcher's improbable internationalism
NOEL MALCOLM
What has the United Nations Security Council got to do with the colossal accu- mulation of American forces in Saudi Arabia, or with the units of the Royal Air Force in that country, in Oman and in Bahrain? The answer is: nothing whatsoev- er. But you would not have guessed it from listening to the debates in the House of Commons last week, where the magic letters 'UN' cropped up almost as fre- quently as the word 'God' must have done in mediaeval debates on the crusades.
The biggest build-up of American forces in Asia since the Vietnam war has not yet been even discussed by the United Na- tions. The Security Council did not send the US Army to Saudi Arabia; it went there at the invitation of the Saudi govern- ment. And the same goes for the British forces stationed in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman at the request of those three states. In fact the only forces acting in any way under Security Council authorisation are the ships patrolling the Gulf and stopping merchant vessels from trading with Iraq. Their authorisation came in two stages: first with Resolution 661, which imposed sanctions and implied, therefore, that those sanctions should be enforced; and then with Resolution 665, which spelt out that implication a little more plainly. The rest of the military build-up in the Gulf states could have taken place without the Security Council representatives ever tak- ing a moment off from their holidays.
So why the mantra-like repetition of those magic letters in the House of Com- mons? Part of what was happening was a kind of competitive ventriloquism, with each side of the argument projecting its own voice into the more distant mouth- piece of the UN. The Tories know that the swift deployment of British forces was a popular move, that the Gulf issue takes people's minds off mortgage rates and the poll tax, that a military crisis will enhance Mrs Thatcher's public image, making her toughness seem an asset rather than a fault, and so on. All this is obvious, and it is equally obvious that it must not be admitted. In private, the more unbuttoned Conservatives will concede that they are hoping Saddam Hussein will help them win the next election; but in public even to be gung-ho for Britain (let alone gung-ho for the Tory Party) would, at this stage, be an error of taste and of judgment. So it has to be clause this, and resolution that, and all for the supremacy of international law.
On the Labour side the awkwardness is equally clear. They know that British commitment to the Gulf is too popular to be opposed; they can only hope that if everything is done in the name of the United Nations, the credit for any eventual success will also be marked down to the UN. At the start of the crisis the Labour foreign spokesman, Mr Kaufman, seemed to take the view that each successive military step should have the UN's explicit authorisation. Last week Mr Kinnock subt- ly modified that view, admitting that it was not a legal requirement, merely something desirable for the sake of appearance. Some would say that to go through all the palaver of obtaining legal authorisation, for form's sake, when you know it to be unnecessary, would be a piece of hypocrisy; but perhaps hypocrisy loses its sting when it has been confessed so openly in advance.
In the general hypocrisy stakes, howev- er, one might argue from first principles that Mrs Thatcher is several lengths ahead of Mr Kinnock where the UN is concerned. After all, as a socialist isn't he meant to believe in internationalism? And isn't she meant to be a 'narrow little nationalist' (as Mr Heath so gracefully put it), with an instinctual loathing for all high-minded international bodies which go round telling countries what to do? If she is brutish with Brussels and contemptuous of the Com- monwealth, why should she be unctuous towards the UN?
An attitude towards the UN of suspicion mingled with impatience is a familiar syn- drome of Right-of-Centre politics in the Western world. We all know how the argument goes: this Assembly is no fount of superior wisdom, no source of enlight- ened international legislation, but merely a gaggle of bickering countries, most of them more or less undemocratic, pursuing their own interests. The trouble with that argu- ment is simply this: it is so clearly true, that it may encourage us to assume unthinking- ly that the UN ought to be a fount of superior wisdom instead, legislating for us because it was more rational or better informed. Heaven help us if it tried to be such a thing. Mr Tony Benn gave us a foretaste of what that might involve when he argued in last week's debate that 'the real function of the United Nations is to act as the custodian of social justice', saying that its role should be to correct the
injustice of a world economy in which the United States has 2 per cent of the popula- tion and consumes 27 per cent of the resources. We may not live to see the day when UN forces descend on California to start confiscating fridge-freezers, but meanwhile let us not complain too much about the fact that the UN is a gaggle of countries pursuing their own interests — for that is the one way it represents the nature of the real world.
All that has happened over the last six weeks is that a majority of those countries — including, unusually, all the members of the Security Council — have decided that their interests coincide. And that is suffi- cient to remove the main taint of hypocrisy from Mrs Thatcher's invocations of the UN. Indeed, one has only to start compar- ing the UN with the Common Market to see how genuine her preference for the former must be. It is not just that Britain has a place at high table in the UN, or that Mrs Thatcher's favourite ally, the United States, plays a leading role there. The real point is that the UN is not designed to supersede national sovereignty; it has no programme of 'ever closer union' leading to world government. The Charter of the UN, which she now constantly invokes, declares the rights of independent coun- tries to govern themselves and defend themselves — and invite other indepen- dent countries to come to their aid.
In the phrase 'international law', the word 'law' can all too easily mislead. This is no product of higher authority; it is not handed down by legislators; it is merely a set of ground rules worked out by pru- dence, common sense, self-interest and consent. Mr Peter Archer, Labour's for- mer Solicitor General (who, as a lawyer, cannot be expected to understand such things), complained last week that Mrs Thatcher made too many references to 'our allies, partners and friends', and too few to enforcing legality for pure legality's sake. But the international law which Mrs Thatcher finds enshrined in the UN Char- ter merely permits us to defend the in- terests of Kuwait if we think it in our own interests to do so. So far, her use of the UN in her argument has stuck closely enough to that principle. The only danger, as perhaps she also realises, is that if we keep returning to the UN for more explicit permissions, the public may end up mistak- ing those permissions for commands.
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