The World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York, moments before they collapsed in the 9/11 terror attack
Unfortunately, we, the people of the world, need to be reminded of the existence of the United Nations as world leaders arrive in New York for the annual General Assembly session, even as the United States undermines world peace by intensifying the Iran war and holding memorials to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
The main objective of the world body is to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Sadly, today the UN remains sidelined as the US war on Iran rages. This war brings disastrous consequences for the global community, particularly the poor and the vulnerable. Yet the UN is not to be seen as a mediator. What a shame.
Its role has been reduced to issuing statements. These statements lack significance.
The UN’s helplessness is most evident in conflicts involving big powers. When great powers are aggressors, the UN’s role is largely that of a venue provider for Security Council or General Assembly resolutions. This is not the UN the world’s population emerging from World War II envisioned.
In the early days after its establishment in 1945, the enthusiasm with which the UN moved to resolve global conflicts was praiseworthy. From ceasefires in the Arab-Israeli war and the India-Pakistan war of 1947-48 to the Congo crisis, multiple independence struggles in Africa, the Korean crisis, the Vietnam conflict, and finally the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, the UN played a key role in peace diplomacy.
During the US invasion of Iraq, then‑UN Secretary‑General Kofi Annan had the courage to publicly declare it illegal. When the UN office in Baghdad was bombed, allegedly by Al‑Qaeda, killing 22 people, including 15 UN staff, the organisation was more vocal in condemning the attack.
Then began the decline. In the past three years, when Israel raided and attacked UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) offices in Gaza and the West Bank, killed nearly 400 of its staff, and the Israeli Parliament declared UNRWA an unlawful body, the UN simply capitulated - issuing condemnations that hardly ruffled a feather in Israel. At the very least, in his final months in office, outgoing UN Secretary‑General António Guterres should have summoned the courage to publicly shame Israel and its partner in crime, the US, for their wrongdoings.
On September 22, the UN will lay out the red carpet for Donald Trump as he walks to the podium to deliver his speech. No matter how poorly he regards the UN, the Assembly Hall will be full for him. In his UN speech last year, he mocked the organisation for issuing “strongly worded letters” instead of solving conflicts and questioned the very purpose of the institution. He said the UN “wasn’t there” to help end wars he claimed to have resolved. This year, he is likely to add further insult to the UN.
As a safeguard against wars, the UN system has failed. Its undemocratic structure, which grants veto power to five major powers—all possessing nuclear weapons capable of ending life on earth—is its biggest flaw.
Exactly 20 years ago, addressing the UN General Assembly a day after the hawkish US president George W. Bush spoke, Venezuela’s socialist revolutionary and visionary President Hugo Chávez famously began his speech: Yesterday the devil came here. Right here. And it smells of sulphur still today.
His remarks were not so much an attack on Bush personally as on the US system. Bush upended the hope‑stirring pacifist world order that was emerging after the Cold War ended in 1991. The US was the sole superpower, and the rest of the world showed a tendency to rally behind it to create a UN‑centric international system—one where nations respected international law, resolved disputes through UN mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice, held crimes against humanity accountable, denounced wars and illegal occupations, and measured their status not in military might and domination but in their commitment to peace and justice.
Taking the world towards Eldorado, nations adopted the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court. The UN Human Rights Council was set up and promoted as a depoliticised body. Underscoring the importance of tackling climate change, nations also signed crucial agreements in Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto.
Expecting the US to give leadership as a responsible sole superpower to such a world order was too much, especially from a country that, according to the Congressional Research Service, has been militarily involved in 469 conflicts since 1798. The older the federation grows, the more hawkish it becomes, declare data maintained by warcosts.org, a free, open, data‑driven platform documenting every American war, military intervention, and covert operation.
Unmatched by any other country in world history, the figures reveal the ugly truth: the US has an enemy addiction. It simply could not cope with the withdrawal syndrome during the first ten years of the post‑Cold War, enemy‑less period. It wanted an enemy.
Enter 9/11. It put paid to global efforts to create a just world order. No sooner had the terror attack by Al-Qaeda hijackers on the United States occurred on September 11, 2001, than Washington launched a global war on terror that respected no international law. Not only did the US hunt Al‑Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, but it also named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as new enemies.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush declared that the three countries and their terrorist allies constituted an “axis of evil”, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
The Bush administration had been warned by top intelligence officials and friendly countries about 9/11. But Bush took little notice of the warnings and instead ordered his defence officials to concentrate on a plan for an Iraq war which he launched based on a lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
What followed 9/11 were wars, new bases, and military expansions—moves that fit the Project for a New American Century script prepared by neoconservatives. Along with truth, the dream of a justice‑ and peace‑based UN‑centric global order became the first casualty in this war on terror. Official accounts of how it happened were far from convincing.
Al‑Qaeda could not have carried out such a large‑scale operation without outside help. Too many coincidences are too strong to dismiss, implicating Israel, which benefited most from the attacks. The attacks served Israel’s objective of demonising Islam and Muslims to gather support in Europe for its aggression against Palestinians and other Arab nations. They also drew the US into war after war in the Muslim world—first Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Libya, then Syria, then Yemen, and now Iran.
This week, the Iran war escalated to a new level, with the US attacking at least ten Iranian tankers and Iran firing at US warships in the region as well as bases in Jordan. Meanwhile, the civil war in Yemen is raging out of control, threatening to draw Pakistan and Turkey into the conflict under the Mecca Defence Agreement, after pro‑Iranian Houthi forces in Yemen attacked Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemeni government forces. As long as Israel pursues its expansionist policy and calls the shots in Washington, the Middle East will see no end to wars.
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