Unilateral Power -- By Any Other Name -- Fair

To get the Good War-Making Seal of Approval from the United Nations, the Bush administration handed out major plums while flexing Uncle Sam's muscles. You wouldn't know key pertinent facts from the drooling coverage that has saturated American news outlets.

"Backroom deals with France and Russia regarding oil contracts in a postwar Iraq were a big part of the picture," Phyllis Bennis writes in The Nation. "And the impoverished nation of Mauritius emerged as the latest poster child for U.S. pressure at the U.N. The ambassador, Jagdish Koonjul, was recalled by his government for failing to support the original U.S. draft resolution on Iraq. Why? Because Mauritius receives significant U.S. aid, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act requires that a recipient of U.S. assistance 'does not engage in activities that undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.'"

The Mauritius episode tracked with broader patterns. InterPress Service reported that nations on the Security Council "voted under heavy diplomatic and economic pressure from the United States." As recipients of aid from Washington, non-permanent members of the Council "were seemingly aware of the fact that in 1990 the United States almost overnight cut about $70 million in aid to Yemen immediately following its negative vote against a U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution to militarily oust Iraq from Kuwait."

In the British magazine The New Statesman, author John Pilger has recalled some sordid details of that pre-Gulf-War object lesson in superpower payback. "Minutes after Yemen voted against the resolution to attack Iraq, a senior American diplomat told the Yemeni ambassador: 'That was the most expensive No vote you ever cast.' Within three days, a U.S. aid program of $70 million to one of the world's poorest countries was stopped. Yemen suddenly had problems with the World Bank and the IMF; and 800,000 Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia."