My country, France, will oppose its veto to the United States in a few
days, or so it says. It bothers me a little.
Unanimity bothers me. While the French President
is a right-wing conservative, the socialists and communists support
him completely on this issue. The far-right, too, opposes the war. A
very large majority of the people have the same opinion. As far as I
know, only two politicians (including Bernard Kouchner, a former NGO leader) and a few intellectuals (not the ones you
would expect) support the war in France. One cannot say, as in Great
Britain or Spain, that the President does not express the will of the
nation.
It bothers me because I don't think the situation is clear enough
to justify such a unanimity. I think I am against the war, but I am
not completely sure. The Iraqi people have two problems today:
Saddam and the US embargo. A US war would put an end to both. On
the other hand, there is no 'good war': it's an oxymoron. So
I'm not sure. I'm probably against the war because most of the people
in my country are against it. I had a much harder military service than most
well-educated young men. The
U.S. know how to win a war, it has not shown in the last 50 years if
it still knew how to win a peace. I don't completely know what to
think.
In another writeup this morning I tried to explain that the
U.S. may or may not be right, but they cannot be so right as to justify
bombings and embargos without taking into account the opinion of the world. I must also ask myself whether my country can
be so right as to justify a veto against the majority of the Security
Council.
I don't think France should veto a decision of the Security
Council if the majority of the Council votes against it. Not because
the United States will overcome the opposition of France and act
alone: you don't preserve a power by not using it, a useless veto will
only reveal the weakness of the United Nations, not create it. What
bothers me here is that, if the majority of the Security Council
dissents from the French opinion, France does not represent enough in
the world today to have the legitimacy to oppose it. That's why I
think France should abstain from voting if the majority of the
Council disagrees with it. That's why I don't think my country should
have veto power in the Security Council.
Neither should Great Britain, which only merit over France is that
it always agree with the US while France only agrees 80% of the
time. Maybe the European Union should have that veto power. It would
probably be unable to use it since it cannot define a common foreign
policy, but this is not a problem: it would simply abstain when its
members disagree, and at least there would be no harm. Or maybe no
country should have the veto power: the U.S. are ready to go to war in
spite of another member's veto, so why should they have a right they
don't respect?
Of course, France has a moral superiority about the U.S.: even if it's
evil, it is much less powerful, and therefore cannot make as much harm
as the U.S. can. It cannot do as much good, either.