| 25 Feb '04 |
SCOTTISH NATIONAL STANDARD BEARER:
Peter DowCertain global-reach organisations can actually help to defend Scottish independence when run properly as their founders envisaged (that doesn't always happen).
The United Nations (U.N.) is usually benign and indeed helpful but sometimes fails to act militarily because of excessive respect shown by UN officers to casual (I would say "unconstitutional") misuse of the veto powers of permanent members of the security council. That is not how I would interpret the UN constitution if I were a UN officer. If the Americans and the British left leadership to Kofi Annan, for example, Saddam Hussein would still be terrorising the people of Iraq, the region and the world. Thank goodness the Allies didn't.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (N.A.T.O.) The now retired Scottish NATO Secretary General, George Robertson (a plus for Scotland perhaps, but Scots should have been embarrassed by Lord Robertson entertaining European royalty as he did which runs contrary to NATO's best principles and didn't help the war on terrorism) has made way for the new secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Well, good luck to them both. Sadly, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is making Europe's royals just as welcome at NATO headquarters - he didn't take long to expose himself as insufficiently rigorously republican. As Robertson did, Scheffer is still allowing royalty to make a mockery of NATO's founding principles - and the world is not a safer place as a result.
NATO has sometimes shown the courage to act when the UN hasn't. However, recently, the officers of NATO have allowed disagreements with Chirac's France, backed up by Germany, (with the Russians happy to encourage the NATO split) to stymie robust NATO action over Saddam. It is time for NATO to rediscover its spine. Speaking as someone on the NATO left, I condemn my French left comrades who could not get their act together sufficiently to field a powerful candidate for the Presidency of France. However, French disarray should never be an excuse for NATO disarray.
Perhaps with the passing of the recent UN resolution on Iraq, NATO will also find a unified AND effective way forward?
The enemies: Other global-reach organisations pose regular episodic threats to our independence: Axis powers - defeated 1945; Warsaw Pact - cold war ended late 1980s; Europe-based ethnic-cleansing fascists - Milosevic, now on trial; Al Qaeda - now on the run although not yet defeated (see War on Terrorism). Therefore, we should be vigilant and be prepared. A policy of unilateral military disarmament is wrong-headed, naïve and invites aggression. Scots have a proud historical record of defending world freedom.
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