“They have shown only arrogance, not sincerity.”
– Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong, July 19, 2012, United Nations Security Council
Following the first Persian Gulf War, in 1990-1991,
authorized by the United Nations Security Council with the adoption of Resolution 678,
permitting “all necessary means” to be used against Iraq ,
the United Nations
was often pejoratively referred to as “an annex of the United States Pentagon.”
Following the series of terrorist attacks against United Nations facilities in subsequent years,
Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations Special Envoy and former Foreign Minister of Algeria
explained this violent hostility against the United Nations in a press conference,
stating that the United Nations
was no longer regarded as impartial,
but was now perceived,
in many areas of global conflict,
as a party to the conflict.
On July 19, 2012, for the first time in United Nations history,
a third double veto was cast,
by Russia and China,
preventing the United Nations from becoming a party to the conflict in Syria,
and restoring legitimacy to the United Nations
as an independent and impartial international organization,
no longer an instrument beholden to and dominated by one member state.
Even more significantly,
the third Russian-Chinese veto
deprived the US-NATO forces of the possibility of claiming that their actions
were supported by the international community,
and denied any moral authority to subsequent US-NATO military action in Syria, and beyond,
unmasking such military action as naked aggression.
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