U.N. Addresses Global Security Issues-Some preemptive strikes are legitima

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-reform25nov25.story

U.N. Addresses Global Security Issues
Some preemptive strikes are legitimate, the report says, but the Security Council must have final word. It also offers proposals for expanding the panel.
By Maggie Farley Times Staff Writer November 25, 2004

ENTEBBE, Uganda — A report by 16 prominent world figures on reforming the United Nations and improving the way its members respond to global threats says that preemptive military strikes for self-defense are legitimate, but that any final decision on such action rests with the Security Council.

The report, commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, also upholds the international community's duty to intervene in any state where the government is unable or unwilling to protect its people, and offers two proposals for expanding the Security Council.

Annan asked the high-level panel to examine issues of collective security in September 2003, after the United States led an invasion of Iraq without the Security Council's blessing. In a speech to the General Assembly then, he said the United Nations was in a crisis and needed to be radically reformed to remain the main theater for multilateral security. <snip>

In the section expected to be the most controversial, the report tries to set benchmarks for judging the legitimacy of using force preemptively or preventively for self-defense. <snip>

The report says that force is legitimate if an endangered state, backed by the Security Council, decides that a threat is serious and imminent; every nonmilitary option has been explored; the state has assessed the means, duration and scale of the strike needed to meet the threat and has no hidden agenda; and the military moves would not create consequences that are worse than the threatened action.
<snip>

[Deja Q]

1. Where's that doomsday clock again? I think it's 11:58:04...

The US created this pre-emptive policy.

North Korea has repeated it back to our own face, in a tone that should (in theory) get people to think, except they thought wrong and now we're all more paranoid.

And with the UN putting their icing on this arsenic-laced cake... how much longer before all halliburton breaks loose?