Takis Fotopoulos - Iraq: the new criminal 'war' of the transnational elite

DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY

vol.9, no.2, (July 2003)

Iraq: the new criminal "war" of the transnational elite

Takis Fotopoulos

Abstract: The aims of this paper are fourfold. First, to show that the present invasion and occupation of Iraq is in fact the culmination of a campaign that began with the ‘war’ in the Gulf in 1991 and continued with over a decade of constant bombardment and embargo, with the overall aim of establishing a client regime in Iraq as a means of achieving a number of important economic and geopolitical aims. Second, to discuss the role of the UN in the New World Order and the change in its role between the ‘Clinton doctrine’ and the ‘Bush’ doctrine’. Third, to discuss the criminal invasion itself and the dubious character of the ‘victory’ claimed by the transnational elite,[1] all the members of which, directly or indirectly, took part in this campaign and, finally, to examine the role of the Left in relation to the ‘war.

“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators”

“Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors”

As I attempted to show elsewhere,[2] the next stage of the ‘war’ against ‘terrorism’ --after that against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the parallel suppression of the Palestinian movement at the hands of the transnational elite’s proxy in the area, the Zionist state of Israel-- involved the elimination of the ‘rogue’ regime in Iraq. However, as I will try to show in this article, the aim of overthrowing the Baathist regime (and not just the Saddam regime as the mass media of the transnational elite presented it) began being implemented in the last decade when it became obvious that, despite the ‘war’[3] in the Gulf in 1991, the criminal embargo and the constant bombardments, the overthrow of the regime from the inside ―through some form of pro-western coup that would establish a client regime― was impossible. In fact, the New York Times, perhaps the most authoritative organ of the transnational elite, accurately pointed out the causes, as well as the timing of the invasion, a year before it happened[4]:

The outrageous excuse used by the elite this time to justify the bloodbath was that the Iraqi regime had not implemented all of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and that it had developed chemical weapons of mass destruction—an excuse which, not only had hardly any connection to the war against terrorism (since no connection of Iraq to terrorism has ever been shown) , but also proved to be a ridiculous lie by the fact that the brutal (according to the transnational elite) regime preferred to fall rather than to use them! This is why the Americans sent their own team of ‘inspectors’ to Iraq (the Iraq Survey Group) to find (read: plant) the hidden weapons, bypassing not only the UN-appointed team, which apparently was not submissive enough to produce the right results, but even their own 75th Exploitation Task Force, the group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which, at the time of writing, ‘is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.’[5] All this, at the very moment when the transnational elite itself was fully aware of the fact that the embargo they have imposed (through the UNSC) on Iraq operated in breach of the UN covenants on human rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other international laws and that its client regime, the Zionist Israel, has contemptuously ignored all UNSC resolutions passed against it and, on top of this, possesses weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones.

As I will try to show in the following pages, there is no significant evidence to substantiate the propaganda of the transnational elite concerning the weapons of mass destruction supposedly possessed by the Iraqi regime. It is not therefore surprising that the transnational elite used every method available to it in order to preclude any independent assessment of the weapons of mass destruction supposedly possessed by Iraq, including an unprecedented coup to oust the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that enforces the chemical weapons convention who has proposed a peaceful solution to ‘the problem’. As Monbiot[6] pointed out at the time, ‘the coup will also shut down the peaceful options for dealing with the chemical weapons Iraq may possess, helping to ensure that war then becomes the only means of destroying them’

It is also indicative of the ‘democratic’ character of the ‘international community’ (i.e. the transnational elite) that the entire campaign was organised and launched despite its wide-world condemnation by millions of people who took to the streets to protest against the gangsters of the transnational elite and that even the polls in countries of the alliance like Britain and Spain showed that the majority of the population in those countries was against the ‘war’ and the actions of their own elites.[7] In this sense, the invasion, which would have been impossible had the decision to launch it been left to the peoples themselves rather than to their own elites, is also, in a sense, a very significant proof of the fact that representative ‘democracy’ is in fact a form of covert dictatorship by the elites.

The outcome of this criminal invasion was not unexpected either. Having killed and maimed thousands of Iraqis in a ‘war’ that involved the most effective murderous machine of mercenaries in human History against a Third World army which, as a result of the embargo and the constant bombings, had, according to military experts lost 50% of its potential, the victory of the ‘brave‘ mercenaries-- who never moved on the ground unless their unopposed B-52s and Tomahawk missiles had ‘cleared’ the ground first —was secure. However, it was not only the ‘victory’ that was predetermined. Equally anticipated was the huge deceit of the world public opinion through the stage-managed ‘welcomes’ for the invaders, culminating in the TV show of dismantling Saddam’s statue by ‘the people of Baghdad’, i.e. a couple of hundred or so supporters of the US stooge and president designate Chalabi. No wonder that a few days later (April 18) thousands of Iraqis (Sunnis and Shiites together), in a real massive demonstration through the streets of Baghdad, were demanding the immediate withdrawal of what they called the ‘occupiers’ (whom the transnational elite’s media called the ‘liberators’ of Iraq!), expressing their disdain against both the foreign elites of the invaders, as well as the discredited local elites.

The first two parts of this article will deal with the background of the invasion, i.e. the ‘war’ in the Gulf and the decade of embargo and bombings that followed it in relation to the aim of the present campaign, i.e. the establishment of a client regime in Iraq as a means of achieving a number of important economic and geopolitical aims. The third part will discuss the role of the UN in the New World Order and the change in its role between the ‘Clinton doctrine’ and the ‘Bush’ doctrine’. The fourth part will deal with the criminal invasion itself, the role of the ‘dissenting’ European members of the transnational elite and the dubious character of the ‘victory’ claimed by it at the end of the campaign, whereas the final part will examine the role of the Left in relation to the ‘war.

The transnational elite made it clear, as early as 1992 ―just a year after the end of the catastrophic ‘war in the Gulf’[8]― that this ‘war’ was only the initial step in its broader plans for the area. At that year, the UNSC, which after the collapse of the ‘actually existing socialism’ was under the complete control of the transnational elite, adopted a series of resolutions that were laying the foundations for a new conflict with Iraq. The declared aim was to force the Iraqi elite to accept the conditions of the embargo which, according to an authoritative analyst, meant “the loss of national sovereignty and the economic/political tutelage of the country”.[9] This, despite the fact that the Iraqi elite had already amply shown its willingness for compromise in accepting the terms for the destruction of its arsenals. All the same, the transnational elite rejected any compromise, exactly as it did in all of the ‘wars’ that it launched since then, clearly showing that a new state of permanent conflict with the Iraqi elite was the real aim of the Security Council resolutions, which it should be noted were passed unanimously by all members of the transnational elite and not just by the USA and UK.

As I will try to show here, the first war in 1991, the embargo and constant bombardments that followed it over a decade, as well as the present invasion, are parts of the same campaign which had a single fundamental aim : the destruction of the Ba’athist movement and the replacement of its regime with a client regime fully integrated into the New World Order. The reasons why the transnational elite wished to overthrow the Ba’athist regime had a geopolitical as well as an economic dimension to which I now turn .

Starting with the geopolitical aims we have to make a brief historical digression to understand the factors at work. The story starts almost 90 years ago, when the British elite, after invading Mesopotamia in 1914 and conquering the three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, welded them into the new state of Iraq, initially under British mandate and, after the Iraqi revolt against it in 1920 that was crushed by the British army, under monarchical rule[10]. In fact, the regime that is planned today by the Americans has some similarities to the one imposed by the British before the second world war. At that time, British stooges under king Faisal took over the administration from departing British officials and formed the backbone of the new Iraqi army. Charles Tripp[11] accurately describes the developments at the time:

If in the above quote one replaces "British" with "American" (the British, after losing the hegemony of the West in the aftermath of the second world war have since functioned as the junior partners of the Americans) and increases the number of bases from two to four[12] s/he will get a fair semblance of the planned regime in Iraq after the installation of ‘democracy’ in 2003! There are however some important differences as well. As we shall see below, the US control of the planned regime in Iraq will not have to be secured through direct interference in its affairs (as happened in the British case) but mainly through the workings of the free market economy and representative "democracy" (the cornerstones of the New World Order). This has the important advantage that the new regime might have better chances to avoid the fate of the regime imposed by the British in the prewar period.

Thus, on July 14 1958, after a series of popular revolts in the 1950s, nationalist elements in the army under Qasim captured Baghdad, overthrew the monarchy proclaiming a republic and declared in the provisional constitution which they introduced that Iraq formed an integral part "of the Arab nation" and that "Arabs and Kurds are considered partners in this homeland." However, this regime lasted only five years and, in February 1963, it was in turn overthrown (and Qasim was executed) by one faction of the army, in cooperation with an Arab nationalist group ―the Iraqi regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath ("Revivalist" or "Renaissance") Party― which consisted mainly of young activists who advocated Arab nationalism and socialism. However, the first rule of the Ba’athist party lasted little as internal friction among its leaders on the implementation of a transitional program of Arab socialism soon led to the collapse of the regime. The first Ba’athist regime was succeeded by a military backed regime under Arif who, in May 1964, introduced a new provisional constitution adopting the principles of Arab unity and socialism and leading to the nationalization (in July) of the banks and a number of the country's industries. The Arif regime was in turn overthrown in July 1968 by an army coup backed by the Ba’ath party (in which Saddam Hussein played a crucial role, although he did not rise to formal power for more than ten years, i.e. in July 1979) which allocated most Cabinet posts to party cadres.

The Ba’athist regime that effectively had controlled Iraq since then, i.e. for over thirty years, not only joined the Arab cause against the Zionist occupation of Palestine but had also developed a strong (relatively to the other Arab states) military machine. In this sense, it was an obvious target of Zionist Israel, as well as of the Zionist elements within the transnational elite. Furthermore, as Zionist Israel, since its creation in 1948, had always played the role of the western gendarme in the Middle East, controlling the politically "unstable" Arab populations, any threat against Israeli interests was also a threat against Western interests. No wonder that Iraq was always at the top of Israel’s list of enemies and, in 1981, the Israeli Zionists went as far as destroying ―with tacit Western approval― Iraq's nuclear plant. Also, it is not amazing that Bush Snr secured the Congress vote to launch his 1991 "war" against Iraq only thanks to the vote of pro-Israeli Democratic party members. Nor is it surprising that the negotiations proposed by the Iraqi regime on August 12, 1990 to avert the war through a withdrawal of the Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, were immediately rejected by the US elite, exactly because this proposal linked the (illegal) occupation of Kuwait with the (equally illegal!) occupation of Palestine. Finally, the same ‘Israeli connection’ could also explain why Israel, as early as December 5, 1990, was demanding not simply the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait but the removal of the Ba’athist regime from power as well—an aim that the transnational elite, for the reasons we shall see below, was not as yet ready to achieve at the time.

However, the geopolitical factors that motivated the transnational elite to campaign for the removal of the Iraqi Ba’athist regime did not simply refer to the threat it posed with respect to its Zionist Israel proxy. The regime represented an equally significant threat to the client regimes of the west in the Middle East (the protectorates in the Gulf, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt), not so because of its military strength but, mainly, because of its political influence in the Arab populations, given its consistently pro-Palestinian (and since 1990 anti-Western) stand. Clearly, this stand significantly increased the political instability of those regimes; particularly so as the Ba’athist regime was not based on Islamic fundamentalism, which did not appeal to several social strata in those countries, but on secular ideologies.

Western hostility to the Iraqi Ba’ahists did not start in 1990 when it invaded Kuwait –after it had received the green light by the Americans (as strong evidence[13] shows), who, perhaps, trapped the regime in order to set in motion the campaign that ended today with its overthrowing. This hostility began in the mid seventies when the Ba’athist regime embarked on a program of Arab socialism that culminated with the nationalization of oil. Still, the first moves for greater Iraqi control of oil took place in 1961 when Qasim opened negotiations with the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company to increase Iraq's royalties, but his demands were rejected. Not accidentally, the British at the same time granted full independence to Kuwait, in order to maintain part at least of their control over Iraqi oil in case Iraq nationalised it —as it did in the 1970s. This provoked Qasim to demand the reintegration of Kuwait to Iraq on the grounds, as he rightly stated at the time, that Kuwait has always been a single country (nationally, geographically and socially) with Iraq, from which it was artificially separated by Britain. In fact, the British had to land military forces in Kuwait at the time in order to avert an Iraqi invasion.

Thus, the Ba’athist party, seeking to achieve a form of economic independence to complement political independence, soon realized that it had to de-integrate Iraq’s economy from the capitalist market economy and minimize free enterprise on the means of production, with the ultimate objective to establish an Arab socialist society in which all citizens would enjoy the benefits of prosperity. This is why the five year economic plans of the 1970s aimed at reducing dependence on oil revenues as the primary source for development. Still, it was the nationalization of the oil industry that was rightly considered by Ba’athists as their greatest achievement. The nationalization process began with the conclusion of several agreements with the Soviet Union and others, between 1969 and 1972, to provide the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) with the capital and technical skills to exploit the oil fields. Then, in 1972, they started the operation of the oil-rich North Rumaylah field and created an Iraqi Oil Tankers Company for the delivery of oil to foreign countries. At the same time, they nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) and established a national company, the Iraqi Company for Oil Operations, to operate the fields. Finally, in 1973, when the fourth Arab-Israeli War broke out, the Ba’athist regime nationalized U.S. and Dutch companies, which were followed in 1975 by the nationalization of the remaining foreign interests in the Basra Petroleum Company.

These events created the background that constituted the economic dimension of the campaign, which started with the war in the Gulf in 1991. In other words, the main economic aim of this campaign was to return oil exploitation to the western powers and reintegrate the Iraqi economy into the world capitalist market. This aim was confirmed by recent reports according to which State Department blueprints, sent to Congress before the present invasion began, laid out a vision for Iraq's reconstruction that would move the country aggressively toward "self-managed economic prosperity, with a market-based economy and privately owned enterprises that operate in an environment governed by the rule of law."[14]

However, although the rationale for the campaign that began in 1990-91 was born in the 1970s, the West could not embark on such a campaign at the time because a new big threat to their interests had just emerged: the unexpected overthrowing, in 1979, by Islamic fundamentalists of their main client regime in the area, i.e. Shahs’ monarchy in Iran. The fact that Iraq, given the Shiite majority in it, was high on the Iranian list of countries whose governments was highly desirable to be replaced by a fundamentalist regime (particularly so since it was also a secular regime and therefore a perfect candidate for the implementation of Ayatollah Khomeini’s policy of "exporting the revolution,"), combined with some territorial disputes between the two countries, played well at the hands of western elites in encouraging the Iraqi elite to attack Iran and start a long war against it. It was during this war that, when Iraqi Kurds in the North collaborated with the Iranians against the regime, the latter used chemicals (provided by Western elites) against the Kurds in what has been exploited as the main Western propaganda weapon since 1990 ("Saddam used chemicals against his own people"). All this, despite the fact that Reagan strongly objected the attempts of the US Congress in July 1988 to impose economic sanctions on Iraq for the use of chemicals against the Kurds!

With massive help from western elites (the USA, for instance, supported Iraq, both diplomatically at the United Nations and militarily, by providing information about Iranian military movements in the Gulf area and, at least on two occasions, by attacking Iranian ships and oil platforms) the Iranian regime, at the end of the 1980s, was forced to accept an agreement to settle their differences. Needless to add that the long war was a perfect "gift" to the western elites which encouraged it, since, not only it exhausted financially and militarily two countries hostile to western and Zionist interests, but also cleared the ground for the campaign that started in 1991 to overthrow the Ba’athist regime in Iraq. Thus, when the corrupt prowestern elite in Kuwait continued, despite Iraqi protests, violating the OPEC agreement on oil quotas, pushing the price of oil down and considerably reducing Iraq's oil income (Iraq at the time had accumulated a war debt estimated at more than $80 billion), the conflict became inevitable. Particularly so, at a moment when the negotiations that had begun earlier between the Iraqi regime and the Kuwait emir to settle the border differences between the two countries had broken down, after advice by USA, UK and Egypt![15] In this connection, it is worth noting an important ‘collateral damage’ of the war as regards the democratic character of the Ba’athist regime. At the end of the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam promised to liberalize the regime and, in January 1989, announced that a committee had been appointed to draft a new constitution that would establish a multiparty system as well as freedom of the press. In fact, the draft constitution was approved by the National Assembly and was about to be submitted to a public plebiscite at the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

It should be noted here that the control of oil that interests the multinationals does not necessarily refer to the physical control of this basic source of energy on which the entire "growth economy" depends. What is of utmost interest to the multinationals is the price of oil given that in that it is cheap energy which, by keeping the cost of production low, maximises profits. This is particularly true for the Americans, for instance, who, when the first war in the Gulf was launched, they were consuming 25% of the world oil production, although they constituted only 2% of the world population. The long term solution for the transnational elite, which would secure keeping the price of oil as low as possible for as long as possible, presupposes the establishment of client regimes in the oil producing countries that would be willing to let the quantity produced, and consequently the price of oil, to be basically determined by the market forces, and exceptionally --when the market forces do not express the interests of the transnational elite-- directly by its dictates. This is the essence of neoliberal globalisation, which constitutes the cornerstone of the New World Order into which every country in the world has to be integrated today, either through economic means (i.e. the economic policies imposed on them by the world organisations controlled by the transnational elite, such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation-WTO) or, in the last resort, through military force as in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

The west, by supporting the client regimes in the Gulf, secured that the purchasing power of a barrel of oil was reduced by 50% between 1950 and 1970[16]. It was the same client regimes that prevented OPEC, the cartel of oil producing countries that was created in 1960 and functioned on the principle of unanimity, from effectively protecting its members by determining oil prices that would keep pace with world prices. Even the dramatic rise in the price of crude oil that OPEC achieved in the 1970s, due to mainly political events which were set in motion by the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, simply restored the oil price to the levels it would have achieved anyway had it followed the general trend of world prices in the post-war period. However, this development was only a temporary aberration and the price of oil continued falling in the 1980s, with the Iran-Iraq war (which, as we have seen, was induced by the West and further weakened OPEC) playing a crucial role in this. As a result of this downward trend in the price of oil, a barrel of crude oil had a lower purchasing power even during the occupation of Kuwait than in 1973, whereas in 1992, a year after the end of the war, the price of oil was less than half its pre-war price in September 1990!

The present invasion of Iraq has also the same aim of keeping the long-term price of oil as low as possible, as a prominent member of the transnational elite declared before its launching. Thus, Rupert Murdoch, owner of 175 papers (which, not accidentally supported a fanatical pro-war policy) selling 40 million copies a week in three continents, in a recent interview in the US magazine Fortune, was revealing: “I have a pretty optimistic medium and long-term view but things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else”. And, clarifying his comments further in a later interview for the Australian news magazine The Bulletin he stated: “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country”.[17]

Iraq, with 112bn barrels of proven reserves, is second only to Saudi Arabia, and has the potential to become a superpower in the oil industry. In fact, experts believe that with billions of dollars of investment in the nation's crippled infrastructure it could produce up to 6m barrels a day, within five or six years, to exploit the 200bn barrels of probable reserves. It seems therefore that the present occupation of Iraq and the subsequent establishment of a client regime in this country has the long-term aim of controlling, directly or indirectly, the entire Arab-Iran basin, which contains two thirds of the known stocks of world oil. Thus, the supranational elite hopes that the establishment of such a regime in Iraq would have a domino effect in Iran and Syria and will make the regimes in these countries much more accommodating to its wishes. This will also strengthen the client regime in Saudi Arabia, which has been threatened lately by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, as well as that in Kuwait. As regards Saudi Arabia in particular, as Anthony Sampson, the author of 'The Seven Sisters', pointed out before the present invasion, ‘If Saddam were toppled, the Western oil companies led by Exxon expect to have much readier access to those oil reserves, making them less dependent on Saudi oilfields and the future of the Saudi royal family’.[18] No wonder that a briefing to the Pentagon by the Rand Corporation, leaked last year, talked about Saudi Arabia as 'the kernel of evil' and proposed that Washington should have a showdown with its former ally, if necessary seizing its oilfields which have been crucial to America's energy’![19]

Irrespective, therefore, of whether the new regime in Iraq will eventually proceed to privatise the oil industry, the effect of the presently planned US management of the Iraqi oil industry would be to break OPEC and leave the price of oil to be dictated by the demands of the ‘world community’, i.e. the transnational elite. Thus, one of the first decisions announced by the US occupiers was of their plan to reorganise the state Iraqi oil industry like a US corporation, with an American as chairman of its management team (probably the former chief executive of the US division of Royal Dutch/Shell) who would play a similar role to the former oil minister and would represent Iraq at meetings of Opec.[20] Another indication of the occupiers’ plans to effectively steal Iraqi’s people oil wealth came in the form of the draft UNSC resolution they submitted on May 9 2003. This draft not only legitimises the illegal war and makes no mention at all of the weapons of mass destruction (which however were supposed to be the casus belli!) but goes on to give the occupiers exclusive control of Iraq’s oil revenues ‘for an initial period of 12 months; this jurisdiction would continue automatically unless the security council decided otherwise’. No wonder that the European Union's commissioner for aid and development, Poul, returning from a fact-finding mission to Iraq, accused the Americans of seeking to seize control of Iraq's vast oil wealth. As Nielsen told the Danish public service DR radio station, in a statement that not unexpectedly was immediately rebuked by the EU commission as not expressing the views of the European elites:[21]

It seems therefore that the time has come for Henry Kissinger’s brutally frank admission that “oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs"[22] to be justified!

The differentiating element between the Old Order and the New Order that is expressed by neoliberal globalisation and representative ‘democracy’ is not the aim which is the same, i.e. the reproduction of a system of concentrating economic and political power at the hands of various elites, but the means to achieve it. Whereas in the Old Order this aim was mainly achieved through political mechanisms, in the New Order the economic mechanisms created by neoliberal globalisation (free and open markets) are sufficient by themselves for the achievement of this aim. This , in combination with the collapse of the socialist project, has led to a general decline of the antisystemic movements in the South[23], despite the explosion of poverty, unemployment and inequality. The "democratisation" wave which swept the dictatorial regimes throughout the South in the last twenty years or so (with the encouragement of the transnational elite) could be partly explained by the decline of antisystemic movements but also by some "systemic" factors. Thus, the political complement of the economic globalization of open and free markets is the political globalization of representative ‘democracies’ that form the basis of the New Order pyramid, at the top of which is the transnational elite. The mechanism which brings about the concentration of economic power at the hands of the elites in a market economy is well known and has been analyzed both by orthodox and radical economic theory. As regards the mechanism which brings about the corresponding concentration of political power this consists not only of the process of continuous decline of the nation –state, in the context of neoliberal globalization, but also of the process of continuous transfer of political power from parliament to the executive and from it to small teams, think tanks etc around the president or the prime minister , while the electorates are manipulated by the mass media to vote for alternating elites with homogenised political programs expressing the neoliberal globalisation.

The exception to these trends was the Middle East where not only the full integration of the Arab regimes into the internationalised market economy was delayed but also the political globalisation, i.e. the spreading of representative ‘democracy’, was still not in the offing. This is not unrelated to the fact that the client regimes in the area , on the stability of which depends the growth economy of the North, were never threatened by socialist movements; instead, yesterday, they were under attack by Arab nationalism and, today, by Islamic fundamentalism. No wonder the transnational elite does not have any problem in ignoring the true nature of the authoritarian regimes in the area ―as long as they are of the client type― even when a rudimentary democracy, like the Algerian one, was destroyed for its own protection! But when the regimes themselves show unwillingness to play their client role, then, this elite does not hesitate to campaign against them for the sake of ‘democracy’, freedom and international law.

The successful invasion to Iraq however changes many things and brings much closer the full integration of the Middle East into the internationalized market economy. As an establishment analyst recently pointed out, the Middle East has more trade barriers than any other part of the world and, aside from Israel and Turkey, 8 of its 11 largest economies remain outside the World Trade Organization (WTO) whereas, last year, the entire Muslim world received barely more foreign investment than Sweden. The proposed cure by the same writer[24] is not surprising :

At the timing of writing, the American elite began already implementing such a strategy. Thus, Bush Jnr launched a 10-year effort to form a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area and promised to build on the victory in Iraq by increasing trade with the Arab world. This implies, of course, as a senior official added, that any country seeking an agreement with the United States would first have to meet all requirements for WTO membership. It is interesting, however, to note that Bush justified this plan, which he described as "a great goal for this nation," on the grounds that "across the globe, free markets and trade have helped defeat poverty and taught men and women the habits of liberty"[25]. All this, at the very moment that inequality and poverty have reached, within the context of neoliberal globalisation, unprecedented levels![26]

Throughout the last decade the constant bombings and the crippling embargo against Iraq (which was introduced immediately after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and before the Gulf war but, with various excuses, was renewed ever since) continued unabated. The aim of both was to force the people of Iraq to abandon the Ba’athist regime and replace it with a client one that would have been willing to submit to the transnational elite. It should be noted here that such a regime change was not feasible during the ‘war in the Gulf’. This was because such a change required the occupation of the entire country—exactly as it happened today after the criminal invasion. However, the 1991 ‘war’ relied on a specific Security Council resolution that was supported by a broad military coalition that had a single goal: the liberation of Kuwait. Furthermore, public opinion in the countries of the transnational elite had not been elaborately prepared, as at present, for such an adventure that could have led to serious casualties on their own side. Particularly so, as it seems that, unlike the present invasion, no deal had been struck at the time between the transnational elite and elements of the regime to minimize their resistance. As a postwar message by Saddam Hussein indicated,[27] the pathetic resistance of some elements within the army, which made the march to Baghdad by the ‘brave liberators’ a stroll, could easily be explained by such a deal. Finally, as the Kurdish and Shiite uprising at the end of the 1991 war showed, there was an immediate risk at the time of dismembering Iraq and enhancing the fundamentalist regime in Iran—the primary target of the transnational elite in the 1980s. This is why although, at the beginning, this elite encouraged the secessionist Kurds and Shias in order to use them, as they hoped, as a leverage in the overthrowing of the regime, when they found out that a coup, which was always the preferred safe solution, was impossible, they abandoned these movements to their fate.

Therefore, when the American and British elements of the transnational elite concluded at the end of the 1991 war that a regime change was impossible at the time, they embarked on a long-term plan of further weakening the regime and eroding it of its popular base, through the constant bombings and a crippling embargo, so that the conditions for regime change-- preferably from within but in the last resort from without—could be created. In fact, members of the transnational elite occasionally were frank about this aim, as when Malcolm Rifkind, the then British foreign secretary, declared in 1996 that “the lifting of the embargo is impossible as long as the present regime remains in power»[28]. In fact, by the time the transnational elite launched the heavy bombardments of 1998, they did not have any qualms about declaring their real intentions. Thus, the US Congress passed legislation at the time for the ‘liberation’ of Iraq and authorized military aid of 97 million dollars for that part of the Iraqi opposition which was groomed by the American elite for governing the ‘post-Saddam’ Iraq.

Finally, it should be noted that it was not just the ‘conservative’ elements of the transnational elite that carried out the criminal embargo/bombings campaign. The 1998 bombings for instance, the heaviest since the Gulf war, were not carried out by the ‘neoconservatives’ of the Republican party in the USA with the help of the conservative party in UK, but by the ‘progressive’ generation of the 1960s, i.e. the centre-left of Clinton-Blair, with the support of Schroeder’s socialdemocrats and Yoska Fishers’ Greens! Furthermore, the centre-left showed that it cared even less than the neo-conservatives on the legalities of its actions. Unlike the 1991 war campaign which was based on a UN resolution (even though it was, once more, the product of blackmails, deception and so on),[29] the bombing campaign of 1998 was a clear unilateral action by the US/UK parts of the transnational elite, without even a prior briefing of the Security Council members. Thus, a well known crook of professional politics like Clinton, who has amply shown that he would use any type of deception to save his political skin, in cooperation with a con artist of social democracy like Blair, did not hesitate to proceed to a senseless bloodletting, without any UN mandate, causing, according to the ex UN- coordinator in Iraq,[30] the death of 144 civilians and the injury of another 446

The intermediate aim of the constant bombings was the continuous degradation of the regime’s military machine whereas that of the crippling embargo (which, according to Sandy Berger, national security adviser in the 1990s, was unprecedented in History for its severity as well as its comprehensiveness) was to deprive the regime of any popular support and facilitate the regime change. The deadly effects of the embargo could easily be explained by the fact that Iraq is a country whose 70% of its needs for food, medical equipment and drugs were being met by imports at the time it was imposed.

Thus, as regards first the economic cost of the embargo it is enough to note that Iraq, in 1990, was a country with a per capita income about equal to that of Greece, as the World Bank country ranking showed [31]. Still, by 1994, i.e. after three years of embargo, the Iraqi per capita GNP was only 15% of the corresponding Greek one.[32] No wonder that , according to UN estimates, one million of Iraqis were in a state of hunger in the late 1990s—something that was unthinkable in the 1970s, or even the 1980s during the long Iran-Iraq war.[33] Second, as regards the human cost, the life expectancy of Iraqis was reduced from 63 years in 1990 to 57 in 1994 and the infant mortality rate which was 119 per 1000 births in 1960 and 65 in 1990, took off to 146 in 1994, as a result of the criminal embargo.[34] It was not therefore surprising that , according to a study by a Harvard university medical team, the number of embargo victims among children was 500,000, i.e. ten times more than those killed during the war in the Gulf[35]. Neither was it surprising that by 1998 Iraq was 107^th in the UN Human Development ranking (whereas Greece by then was ranked in the 25^th position)[36]

Naturally, western mass media hushed this effective genocide of the Iraqi people. At one point, it was estimated for instance that 99% of British TV coverage referred to the biochemical weapons and less that 1% to the embargo victims.[37] No wonder that the polls showed approval of the bombings/embargo campaign. In fact, the transnational elite was so impudent as to blame the Ba’athist regime for the effects of the embargo, which supposedly wasted the food for oil revenue in order to built new palaces for Saddam etc. This, at the very moment that the same elite put a myriad of obstacles to the import of medicine, cotton wool, ambulances, even pencils, on the grounds that they had dual military use![38]

Once the decision for the long-term campaign to oust the Ba’athist regime has been taken, the rest was a matter of organising the provision of some sort of legal ‘cover’ for this campaign through the Security Council, as we shall see in the next section. The declared by the transnational elite aims, which at the beginning did not mention the ultimate aim of regime change, were part of the huge campaign of deception that was set in motion in the early 1990s. Such aims were supposed to be:

To conclude, after more than a decade of embargo and constant bombardment of what was left of the Ba’athist regime’s military facilities, and following a huge brainwashing campaign in USA/UK, the conditions were judged by the transnational elite to be ripe for the invasion and occupation of Iraq that we shall consider next. However, before we consider the invasion itself we need to refer to the role of the UN in this process and in the New World Order (NWO) in general.

The decision-making body of the United Nations, i.e. the UN Security Council (UNSC) looked like an actor searching for a role in the NWO, which dawned since the emergence of neoliberal globalisation, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequent universalisation of representative ‘democracy’. Thus, at the beginning of last decade, when the new Russian elite was begging the transnational elite for financial aid to avert the total economic collapse brought about by the catastrophe of marketisation,[55]and the Chinese elite was anxious to integrate the country into the NWO (open its markets, join the WTO, attract foreign investment etc.), it seemed that the transnational elite would not have any problem in turning the UNSC into a mere pawn in its hands. Even as far as aggressive activities was concerned, like those launched in the Gulf war and later in Somalia where the ‘peace-keeping’ operation led to thousands of victims[56]. However, by the end of the decade, it became obvious that the tactical differences among members of the transnational elite on such issues as the war against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and finally the invasion in Iraq were jeopardizing the original role assigned to the UNSC by the ‘Clinton doctrine’ at the beginning of the decade. In fact, the ‘Bush doctrine’ at the beginning of the new millennium cast doubt on the very existence of the organization, at least in its present form.

The new role that was assigned to the UNSC at the beginning of the decade was summarized in ‘the Clinton doctrine’ that was formulated by the Democratic president himself on the occasion of the Somalia bombings. Thus, according to Clinton:[57]

As the above quote makes clear the transnational elite was assumed to have a unified will since, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no force to challenge its general interest determined by neoliberal globalization and its political complement. It is therefore obvious that it was the tactical differences that arose among members of the transnational elite at the end of last decade that broke this unified will --despite the common strategic aims--and led to the present impasse.

The pattern that seemed to be established at the beginning of last decade, in accordance with Clinton’s doctrine, was that whenever the transnational elite could easily show its authority and did not face any effective reaction from the object of its ‘peace-making’ mission, as in Somalia, then the leading power within this elite, the US, would have no hesitation to undertake aggressive military action through the UN. On the other hand, whenever the cost from aggressive action was assessed to be significant then the role assigned to the UN was mainly ‘regulative’ and if military action had to be taken, it had to be restricted to air raids, which are painless for the subject of the ‘peace-making’ activity (although not for its object), as in Bosnia.

A fundamental characteristic of the new UN role under this doctrine was that when aggressive action was to be taken, it was assigned in principle to the US, which carried it out on its behalf. This implied that the military forces which were responsible for this activity were not under the UN orders but those of the US Pentagon. In fact, this tactics was initiated in the Gulf war when the UN General Secretary was informed about the launching of the war from a TV news bulletin! Similarly, when the General Secretary dared to propose that the UN forces, which were assigned the mission to implement the Vans-Owen plan in Bosnia, should be under UN control, his proposal was unceremoniously set aside by the US elite[58]. Also, the force that was sent to (the then Yugoslavian) Macedonia was directly under US control. This was not of course accidental. Had the real aim of these missions been that UN should play a peacemaking role in the regional conflicts that emerged at the end of the Cold War, the international organisation should have had the exclusive control of an international military force that should have been put permanently under its mandate, as was formally proposed at the time by the UN General Secretary.[59]

In effect, under the Clinton doctrine the UN was called to play a similar role to the one that its predecessor, the League of Nations, used to play before the second world war, which was simply a permanent conference of colonial powers that expressed the pre-war international balance of power. The post-war establishment of the UN and the parallel creation of the world economic organizations (International Monetary Fund and World Bank) aimed at expressing the new balance of power. In fact, it was precisely this separation of economic from political/military functions that made possible the UN survival during the Cold War. Thus, when the West wanted to advance its world economic strategy it did not have to ask for the UNSC vote and face the Eastern bloc veto, nor the General Assembly vote where the Third World controlled the majority of votes, but could advance it instead through the world economic organizations under its absolute control. Today, this mechanism has been perfected; in the era of neoliberal globalization, the transnational elite’s economic control is done mostly ‘automatically’, through the workings of the market forces-- provided of course that these forces are left free to do their job (which invariably ends up favouring the stronger economic partners) through the freeing and opening of markets that was imposed in the first instance by the world economic organizations.

Still, bipolarism gave some leverage to the Third World elites in exploiting the conflict between the two poles, through organisations like the ‘non-aligned movement, the ‘Group of 77’ etc. This leverage has been lost in today’s unipolar world that the NWO established, as pointed out by a Western ambassador who stated at the time ‘the big Western powers (read: the transnational elite) ‘regained control’.[60] This is particularly so as regards the elites in the ex-Second World, as well as those of the Third World, which, by joining the neoliberal globalization, have left their development process to the market forces and have become completely dependent at the economic (as well as the political) level on the transnational elite for investment, loans and aid. Still, despite these built-in safety valves within the NWO, the transnational elite was in no mood in the last decade, when the issue of restructuring the UN came back in the agenda, to become in any way dependent on the vote of the South. This is why they were only prepared to grant the General Assembly some decision-making power that would be confined to issues like the protection of the environment, where their participation was necessary.

Thus, the post cold war UN role gave the opportunity to the transnational elite, and mainly its military branch in the US, to protect its general interest not through the traditional gunboat diplomacy, which would expose it as an imperialist power, but through the collective UN cover. This could explain the anxious effort of both Bush Snr and Bush Jnr to secure the vote of the UNSC (through the usual stick and carrot policy) in order to legitimise their criminal wars against Iraq, as well as the embargo and constant bombardments of the last decade. As regards the latter in particular, the 1993 air raid against Baghdad, on the pretext of the alleged involvement of the Iraqi elite in an assassination attempt against ex president Bush Snr during his visit to Kuwait, was particularly significant, as it set the scene for what was going to follow in today’s invasion of Iraq. Needless to add that the legality of the specific operation was, to say the least, dubious, since article 51 of the UN Charter, which was used to legitimize it, does not in fact cover ‘defensive’ action with respect to a suspected attack against persons, even if the person attacked happened to be an ex-president of a superpower --as Rosalyn Higgins, a professor of International Law at the London School of Economics, argued at the time![61] Particularly so, when one takes into account that, a few years earlier, a US president approved the bombings against Libya with the explicit aim of the elimination of another head of state. All this, not to mention that Brent Scowcroft,[62], the national security adviser of Bush Snr, did not hide the administration’s intentions to achieve in this way the desired regime change in Baghdad—a policy that was put into effect with no qualms at all during the present invasion!

However, the Baghdad attack was also important because it marked a new defence policy for the USA, which involved a significant restructuring of their military force to become capable of carrying out small wars.[63] Pentagon soon took the form of an imperial police force, similar to the one of the British army in the 19^th century, so that it could effectively carry out the role assigned to it by the Clinton doctrine as the ‘last resort’ executor of UN resolutions. This force was massively enhanced by the end of the decade, so that it would become capable of implementing the Bush doctrine. Today, the extent of America's power is unprecedented in human history, since, with the latest increases in its military spending announced by Bush Jr, US military spending will account to 40% of the worldwide total, putting the US military predominance miles ahead of any previous military empire - from the Roman to the British – which have never enjoyed anything like this preponderance, let alone America's global reach. As Gregg Easterbrook[64] put it, hardly disguising his joy, ‘no other military is even close to the United States.The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power‘. The target of this huge military power was made explicit by a report for the US Space Command in 2001, which, after celebrating the "synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority", which would come with missile defence and other projects to militarise space, drew the conclusion that this would “protect US interests and investment" in an era when globalisation was likely to produce a further "widening between haves and have-nots".[65]

As it was mentioned above, although the UN showed a high degree of adjustability to the NWO at the beginning of the last decade, towards the end of it the first problems arose, which culminated with the unprecedented friction within the transnational elite about the planned invasion against Iraq. Thus, first, securing UNSC cover for the planned attack against Yugoslavia was made impossible by the Russian threat to use its veto. This was not surprising of course given that the Russian elite was fully aware that a victory for the transnational elite would mean the loss of the last remnants of its historical influence in the Balkans and the parallel surrounding of its borders by NATOs bases ―as it did happen after the war.[66] The transnational elite, therefore, had to do the war by itself, with the support only of its vassals in NATO (Greece, Turkey etc). Second, the UN was completely bypassed in the war against Afghanistan, whose ‘legality’ was based on a dubious resolution passed immediately after the September 11 events—a resolution which in fact meant the end of collective action by the UN,[67] i.e. the end of its very raison d’ être. The same happened, as we shall see next, in the present war which, for the first time since the second world war, took the form of a preventive war followed by a full military occupation.

Formally, it all started with the events of 11/9 (although, as we have seen above, this was only the pretext for carrying out a war planned long ago) and the State of the Union address of Bush Jnr, when he gave the well known ‘axis of evil’ speech, which also contained the ‘Bush doctrine’, i.e. the doctrine that justified the launching of preventive wars. Thus, as Bush Jnr declared:

Donald Rumsfeld next day was even more explicit in clarifying the meaning of the ‘Bush doctrine’:[69]

In fact, as Ivo Daalder, a strategic analyst at the Brookings Institution, characterised the speech, "it was a virtual declaration of war; it enunciated a new doctrine, which says that people we declare bad, with weapons we declare bad, are basically the same as terrorists."[70] This new doctrine implied a radical change of the UN Charter or, at least, an equally radical re-interpretation of it to accommodate preventive wars. This new doctrine was first put into action with the invasion on Iraq.

The first step in this process was the unanimous passing of UNSC resolution 1441 in November 2002, which demanded the return of the UN inspectors by the end of February 2003. Their mandate was to look, under conditions of complete freedom of movement anywhere in the country, for the famous weapons of mass destruction, supposedly hidden by the regime. However, the demand for effective disarmament that this resolution expressed was, in fact, a code name for the transnational elites’ demand for regime change through war. Particularly so since the US/UK members of the transnational elite have made abundantly clear, both before and after the despatch of the UN inspectors, that they will neither accept a ‘no weapons found’ conclusion by the inspectors, nor an indefinite extension of the deadline until these weapons were found. Irrespective therefore of the legal issue whether this resolution constituted by itself an ultimatum or not—the point of dispute between the members of the transnational elite—it was clear that its unanimous passing opened the door for launching a preventive war against Iraq. Of course, the demand itself was completely illegitimate as it was put forward by regimes which not only were also in full possession of weapons of mass destruction, but have also used them extensively in the past; this was, for instance, the case with the British, who in one occasion used such weapons against the Iraqis themselves![71], as well as with the Americans, who used them on several occasions in the past (Japan, Vietnam etc.

The next step was the drafting of a resolution by the US/UK members of the transnational elite which would specifically authorise the launching of the preventive war at the expiration of a deadline—an undisputed ultimatum. The proposed resolution was accompanied by the explicit threat that a refusal to pass it would mean that the US/UK attack would take place anyway and that those refusing to pass it would be blamed for the consequent serious undermining of the UN status—if not its actual dissolution! The implicit threat --which particularly concerned the dissenting members of the transnational elite that threatened to use their veto power-- was that, in case the Anglo-American elites carried out the invasion with no help from the other members of the transnational elite, then, they will be exclusively responsible for the post-war administration of Iraq and therefore for the distribution of the war spoils in terms of the lucrative reconstruction contracts (to be financed by Iraqi oil revenue!) and the oil revenues themselves.

But let us see in more detail the procedure followed by the transnational elite in order to secure the necessary votes in the UNSC. At the outset, it should be noted that the US/UK members of the transnational elite delayed up to the very last moment the decision-making process not only in order to give more time to the other members of the elite, which faced serious problems in persuading their electorates about the need for war, but also in order to finish with the military preparations, which have been thrown into turmoil by the refusal of Turkish parliament –against the wishes of the Turkish elites--to allow the use of the US bases in Turkey for the attack against Iraq.

The present 15 members of the UNSC are the five permanent members with veto power (USA, UK, France, Russia and China) and the ten non-permanent members (Bulgaria, Spain, Chile, Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan Germany and Syria). Securing the votes of non-permanent members seemed an easy target for the US/UK members of the transnational elite. Spain and Mexico have already been in a process of growing integration into EU and NAFTA respectively, the two main economic blocks of the transnational elite. On top of this, Spain had just received US help ETA, in the form of access to its technical spying capabilities, to fight the Basque movement (after the invasion Spain was rewarded with the US classification of ETA as a terrorist organisation). As regards the other South-based non-permanent members of UNSC, the transnational elite hoped that the ‘Yemen lesson’ would concentrate their minds. Thus, when Yemen voted against attacking Iraq in 1990, the American government described its vote as "the most expensive 'no' in history". Although Yemen was a member of the UNSC, supposedly having an equal vote as any other member of it, it soon discovered that with a per capita income of around 2% of that of the USA, its diplomatic rights were no match for the dollar's might. Following its refusal to back the first Gulf war, America cut off aid and pushed to make Yemen a virtual pariah state.

The US/UK members of the transnational elite followed the familiar ‘stick and carrot’ policy to secure the votes of the non-permanent members. Parts of the carrot offered, in the form of financial packets, were made public,[72] confirming suspicions regarding the way decisions are taken in the UNSC to fit the interests of the transnational elite.[73] Even worse (for the transnational elite), the pressures themselves against the non-permanent members came to the limelight when it was reported that “smaller countries, such as Chile, came out of a UNSC meeting protesting about the attitude of the US and Britain, which have been piling on pressure on the six undecided countries - Chile, Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Angola, and Pakistan” and that “diplomats described a terrible atmosphere within the council after it met behind closed doors for four hours”.[74] No wonder that, at the end, there were signs that some of these countries began to wilt under the pressure, with Pakistan expressing openly its will to abstain. The rest formed a front asking for a brief extension of the US/UK deadline. However, the Anglo-American elites, being sure of their ‘victory’-- perhaps as a result of their secret deals with some Iraqi generals who later surrendered Baghdad to the invaders almost with no fight-- were not in a position to grant even this small concession.

As regards the permanent members, the US/UK members of the transnational elite had several reasons to hope for their vote. The French (as well as the German) elites are select members of the transnational elite and also fervently wish to keep the price of oil as low as possible—the main economic ‘benefit’ of the invasion and occupation. They only differ from the US/UK members of the elite on the tactics to be pursued in achieving this aim rather than on the aim itself. The differences in tactics were in turn due to the much stronger internal pressure the European members of the elite faced (mainly as a result of the traditional power of the Left in these countries) compared to the Anglo-American elites, but also to their traditional stronger ties with the Arabs which they did not wish to disturb, jeopardising their export share in the significant Arab market. At the same time, some at least of the European multinationals and particularly those involved in the oil industry were concerned that the oil contracts would be given by the Americans to US-based oil multinationals such as Exxon Mobil. In fact, even the British elite was worried that the Americans might not share the spoils with them, prompting Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, to warn the Americans, a few months before the invasion, not to carve up Iraq for their own oil companies.[75] It is for the same reason that the European elites unanimously pressed, in the aftermath of the invasion, for a UN administration of Iraq whereas the Americans, as Colin Powel stated , considered it as their right (since they fought the war and suffered the corresponding consequences) to undertake the administration of the occupied country –and earn the spoils which go with it!

It seems that, at the end, the specific interests of the oil and construction industries in France and Germany, geopolitical factors, as well as the expressed wish of the French and German elites to create an independent from NATO defence and foreign policy, prevailed over their general interest and did not support the US/UK ultimatum. However, one could expect that this was only a temporary aberration from the rule that the general interest of the transnational elite is more important than the specific interests of some industries. No wonder that both the French and German elites are already involved in a frantic effort to repair relations with their American counterparts, despite the fact that the latter threaten to punish them, particularly the French, for their stand during the war.

Equally difficult seemed for the transnational elite to secure the vote of the Russian elite and, less so, that of the Chinese elite. The latter , in its effort to integrate the Chinese economy into the internationalised market economy, in the last Communist party Congress in November 2002, abandoned even the pretext that it was the avant-garde of the proletariat. It is therefore clear that the visit in January 2003 of US undersecretary of state James Kelly, who reminded China that long-term gains from improved trade with America are more important than short-term political point-scoring (i.e. ‘aberrations’ on the issue of invasion) aimed at securing an abstention vote. Such a vote was never ruled out by the Chinese elite and might well have been its final stand at the UNSC had the matter finally come to a vote.

As far as the Russian elite is concerned, the US elite made several offers to secure a vote of abstention. As it is well known, Russian oil companies have made several multibillion dollar contracts to develop Iraqi wells and they have been reasonably concerned that a post-Saddam US-controlled regime would not honour these contracts. As a Russian official stated a few months before the invasion, 'the concern of my government is that the concessions agreed between Baghdad and numerous enterprises will be reneged upon, and that US companies will enter to take the greatest share of those existing contracts’.[76] No wonder therefore that both Bush and Blair repeatedly said in public, in the few months before the crucial UNSC vote, that they will honour Russia's interests. Furthermore, they agreed to blacklist three Chechen rebel groups. However, these offers presumably did not prove sufficient enough to change the mind of the Russian elite, which eventually took a hostile stand in the UN.

In view of the failure of the UNSC to play the role assigned to it by both the Clinton and Bush doctrines, it is not surprising that a significant part of the US elite is now thinking in terms of permanently bypassing the UN whom they would prefer to play simply a decorative role, i.e. to undertake humanitarian missions and the like, rather than to collectively protect security ― as it was its mandate when it was established, immediately after the second world war. Thus, as