Alec Gaines
United Nations Association, UK - Edinburgh Branch
In the days when Colonel Khadafi was seeking our support, he closed down Libya's attempt to become a nuclear (weapon) power and invited the IAEA to monitor Libya. Of course it worked the other way round as well; the tanks you saw rolling along on TV were not made in Libya.
At a Conference in the Scottish Parliament last November Vadim Mitrofanov, Head of the Foreign Policy Section at the Russian Embassy in London, pointed out that "a world without nuclear weapons was not today's world minus nuclear weapons". The recent Security Council Resolutions, the subsequent no fly zone over Libya and the military action are perhaps a demonstration of where we have to go.
Authoritarian regimes are not, in themselves, a cause for military action but the world - the UN - is no longer tolerating the breaking of International Law by any regime, anywhere, including those International Laws concerning Human Rights. This, I submit, is the real heart and justification of what the UN is attempting in Libya. And it is good. It provides a golden rule, a regulation that inhibits sloppy, hypocritical thinking in our future behaviour towards other countries. If all regimes accept that they have always to abide by International Law; if all regimes start to take it for granted that the Security Council can be expected to police breakages of International Law, then gradually individual national military forces can be scaled down, they are no longer essential for defence. The world becomes safer ("and no country will feel the need for nuclear weapons"). We will be moving towards Article VI of the NPT and its call for general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
I am not sure that this is what Vadim Mitrofanov was thinking about last November. His speech indicated a concern that NATO and Russia must sign up to limit their conventional arms (at the moment NATO appears to have more than Russia) before Russia would feel safe in agreeing to remove tactical nuclear weapons from Europe. This major topic demands continuous attention by the joint NATO-Russia Council.
"For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin."
Walt Whitman