TWO ROUTES TO DISASTER
Prevarication at the United Nations' Security Council maps out not one but two routes to disaster. The collapse of the Western alliance might - just might - provide a breathing space for Iraqis. The alternative to war is not freedom, but only a continuation of Iraq's status as vassal state. Opponents of war take heart from the restraint that France, Germany, Russia and China have placed upon American power. But a multi-polar world favoured by these nations would only institutionalise the instability that has sentenced much of the developing world to conflict and uncertainty.
Chirac, Schroeder, Putin and Jiang Zemin all see themselves as connecting with a wave of anti-war sentiment manifested in recent mass demonstrations. By contrast, the leaders of the pro-war states in Europe, Blair, Berlusconi and Aznar stand isolated from public opinion. But the Security Council critics are buying popularity at a considerable cost. The underlying sentiments of the anti-war demonstrations is fundamentally similar to those of other recent expressions of public disquiet, from the British petrol protests and anti-hunting demos, to the Belgian Coca-Cola panic of 2001. The driving force behind the anti-war movement is a generalised cynicism about mainstream politics that only takes the war, as the most striking feature of the official discourse, as its target.
Disaffection with mainstream politics could be for the good, if there were any force in society capable of turning it in a positive direction. But the effective collapse of oppositional political forces leaves the anti-war movement more of a rejection of all politics than a political alternative. A victory for the anti-war movement over Iraq would succeed in dislocating the mainstream, but offers no positive option in its stead.
In a perverse way the Bush administration understands some of what is at stake in the debate on the UN Security Council. They see the West's failure to act as corrosive of its own coherence - and so it is. But the underlying failure of western civilisation is all-too evident in the grotesque price it demands. A moral mission that can only find its fulfilment mounting human sacrifices around the world is already bankrupt. Far from warding it off, the proposed war would embody the failure of the West's mission.
-- James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/james1.htm