This one will take some pondering, but I think this is one of the better explanations I’ve read for the rift between (roughly) the US and Europe over Iraq and UN resolutions: a difference of opinion as to what the purpose of the UN is for.
For the US (the author writes), the purpose of the UN is to ensure security. If it fails to do so, then it’s irrelevant at best, a danger itself at worst.
For the Europeans, the purpose of the UN is to quash nationalism, the bane of European history culminating in two World Wars in the 20th Century. By that point of view, acting in national interests outside of or against the UN is the greatest danger.
And they see the UN’s role now, in this dangerous time, as reining in America – not out of fundamental anti-Americanism but out of anti-nationalism. Sovereignty, in this way of looking at the UN’s purpose, must be constrained by transnational institutions. Unfettered sovereignty is dangerous, and the more powerful the country, the greater the danger. America is the most powerful country in the world, and its president is saying in so many words that America’s decisions regarding its security will not be limited by UN mandates and that in this matter we do not have to ask anyone’s permission to defend ourselves. This doesn’t sound unexceptionable to an American ear, but to a European who sees limiting nationalism as the UN’s sine qua non, it strikes at the heart of the entire UN project and all it embodies. America’s willingness to ignore UN wishes and UN procedures, if need be to protect itself, is not just pragmatism in this view. It’s almost blasphemous.
I think the situation is a bit more complex than that. Various European countries — France, ironically, in particular — have been more than willing to act unilaterally and in their own national interests, over the last 50 years, with or without UN approval. And there are many in the US for whom the UN, as a proto-world government, is, in fact, a great hope against nationalism, including (or especially) American nationalism.
Nonetheless, I think there’s a lot to chew on here.
(via SDB)