‘US has been veto champion in UN for decades’ – Chomsky to RT
Published time: 26 Sep, 2015 03:10
As
the UN reaches its 70th anniversary, the US has accused Russia of
overusing its veto power and risking the legitimacy the Security
Council. However, as prominent American linguist Noam Chomsky tells RT,
the US has been “the veto champion” in the past, and has used its veto
just as often.
READ MORE: 70th UN General Assembly aims to ‘end catastrophic wars & explosive refugee crises’
On September 23, Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed that Russia’s veto power in the Security Council was endangering the body’s legitimacy.
“It’s a Darwinian universe here. If a particular body reveals itself to be dysfunctional, then people are going to go elsewhere,” Power told the Guardian this week. “And if that happened for more than Syria and Ukraine and you started to see across the board paralysis ... it would certainly jeopardize the Security Council’s status and credibility and its function as a go-to international security arbiter.”
Russia, along with China, has vetoed four Security Council resolutions on Syria. However, since 1991 when Russia took over the Soviet seat in the UN, it has not been Moscow taking the lead in exercising its veto power, but Washington – 13 versus 14 times.
“In the last couples of years Russia has caught up to the United States. They are roughly equal in the number of vetoes they have cast. But that is quite a recent development,” Chomsky, MIT Professor emeritus of linguistics and a renowned activist and philosopher, told RT.
While agreeing on the importance of the US in today’s world, Chomsky believes that the “UN in general” should not depend on “the particular needs and demands of the great powers.”
On September 23, Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed that Russia’s veto power in the Security Council was endangering the body’s legitimacy.
“It’s a Darwinian universe here. If a particular body reveals itself to be dysfunctional, then people are going to go elsewhere,” Power told the Guardian this week. “And if that happened for more than Syria and Ukraine and you started to see across the board paralysis ... it would certainly jeopardize the Security Council’s status and credibility and its function as a go-to international security arbiter.”
Russia, along with China, has vetoed four Security Council resolutions on Syria. However, since 1991 when Russia took over the Soviet seat in the UN, it has not been Moscow taking the lead in exercising its veto power, but Washington – 13 versus 14 times.
“In the last couples of years Russia has caught up to the United States. They are roughly equal in the number of vetoes they have cast. But that is quite a recent development,” Chomsky, MIT Professor emeritus of linguistics and a renowned activist and philosopher, told RT.
While agreeing on the importance of the US in today’s world, Chomsky believes that the “UN in general” should not depend on “the particular needs and demands of the great powers.”
Read More Here
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UN Security Council would lose relevance without Russia’s veto – Churkin
Without
Russia’s veto power, the United Nations Security Council would just be a
rubber stamp for decisions made by the US and other Western powers,
eliminating possibility for consensus on important international issues,
Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told RT.
“It
so happens that the political structure of the world is such that the
US and its allies almost always have nine votes to adopt a resolution.
And they almost always have seven votes to abstain and block a
resolution… without a veto,” Ambassador Churkin explained.
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“The Security Council will lose its relevance” if Russia were not able to exercise its veto power, he stressed. If Russia had no veto power “the UN Security Council will simply be rubberstamping decisions, which would be made in Washington, Paris, London, Brussels, you know, in Western capitals. It will lose its relevance. It won’t allow the UNSC to do the important work of bringing about consensus decisions,” the envoy said.
Churkin spoke exclusively to RT’s Anissa Naouai ahead of Vladimir Putin’s arrival at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York this weekend.
Read More Here
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