'Better Off against the Soviets'

"The worst thing about the Iraq war is that it sets the precedent for unilateral action by Washington and makes clear that there is nothing to stand in its way," says Venezuelan commentator Ignacio Avalos Gutiérrez. To avoid this sort of unilateral action in the future it is essential to rebuild the United Nations, he adds.

CARACAS - By making the most of the wonders of the Internet and entering the White House web site www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html one can begin to develop a better understanding of the war in Iraq and the collapse of the dictatorship.

The pieces start to fit together and pretexts dissipate. It is a matter of having enough patience to put up with a difficult writing style to read the "National Security Strategy for the United States of America". It is a set of ideas better known as the Bush Doctrine, which, if truth be told, is more the product of the neurons of those who make up the president's inner circle than of his own.

There encapsulated and blessed is the thesis of preemptive war, according to which -- and without the need for juridical adornment -- war is justified wherever and whenever the U.S. president decides that there is some threat to the interests of his country.

Many have said, with reason, that in practice this is the thesis for ongoing war against the rest of the planet. If they don't like us, at least they will fear us, thinks Bush, aping all of the empires that came before his in history.

Also suggested is that U.S. leadership is good for everyone, based as it is on the mixture of legitimate economic and political interests and its just intentions for the rest of the world.

The corollary is the need -- moral obligation? -- to propagate what is new and good about "the American way of life", a ready-to-use package with no need for cultural context, in function of a kind of Messianic evangelism which affords it a nod from God.

The current government of the United States believes, therefore, in the advantages of ideological cloning, thanks to which the world will become one, as the progressive acceptance of fast-food continues to demonstrate.

This holy (and oil) war against Iraq, disguised as a battle against a dictator who in other times was an indispensable U.S. ally, is just the second chapter in the book of war that began a short time ago with the episode in Afghanistan.

Many fear that the main casualty of this conflict will be the United Nations. Despite all its limitations and lack of efficiency in certain weighty cases, the world body has played a positive role. The U.S. trampling of the U.N. threatens to leave us without structures to arbitrate conflict. Just now, when globalization is multiplying the needs for mediation in major political, economic, environmental and cultural issues.

As far as serving as guarantor of international law, the U.N. has been pathetic throughout the current crisis. The worst thing about this war is that it sets the precedent for unilateral action by Washington and makes clear that there is nothing to stand in its way (It could be said, with some nostalgia, that under the threat of the former Soviet Union we were better off).

It seems we run the risk that, once the conflict in Iraq is over, the U.N. will languish until it becomes as useful as a Chinese vase, no matter how beautiful it is. Let's not rule out the possibility of "privatization", a phenomenon of this era of single-mindedness. Then only nations that pay a fee can have access to the services of an arbitration tribunal or the backing of a military force in the case of dispute.

The rebuilding of Iraq is an urgent matter (as well as a good business deal, they say), undoubtedly. But little is said, unfortunately, about the rebuilding of the U.N., which is an essential process to prevent the Bush Doctrine from replacing, as apparently is intended, existing international law.

If the U.N. is not reconstructed, it leaves the door open for each country to take military action, attending only to the size of armies and arsenals of missiles, without the need to cite any motive beyond the suspicion of the other's bad intentions.

We are, therefore, on the threshold of a major defeat for civilization, and any likeness to the jungle is pure coincidence.

* Ignacio Avalos Gutiérrez is a Venezuelan columnist, academic and former minister of science and technology. All rights reserved - Tierramérica.