Namibia’s UN Affliction

Namibia’s UN Affliction The Protracted Conflict BRIAN CROZIER T o a l l o w t h e United Nations to make a sovereign state’s foreign policy is a folly. Even to allow that egregious body to influence policy, except in unusual and specific circumstances, is an aberration. Both of these propositions have been shown to be true during the long years of the Rhodesian conflict, and both are relevant to the continuing dispute over South- West Africa, or Namibia.

The founding fathers of the UN assumed (wrongly) that the (necessary but unnatural) wartime alliance between the democratic West and the totalitarian East could continue into the peace. They also fell into the semantic trap of declaring the founder-members (i.e., themselves) to be “peace- loving” and “democratic,” which in the case of the Soviet Union was one hell of an assumption to make in the absence of clear definitions of “peace- loving” and “democratic.”

BC

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Brian Crozier

Namibia’s UN Affliction The Protracted Conflict BRIAN CROZIER T o a l l o w t h e United Nations to make a sovereign state’s foreign policy is a folly. Even to allow that egregious body to influence policy, except in unusual and specific circumstances, is an aberration. Both of these propositions have been shown to be true during the long years of the Rhodesian conflict, and both are relevant to the continuing dispute over South- West Africa, or Namibia.

The founding fathers of the UN assumed (wrongly) that the (necessary but unnatural) wartime alliance between the democratic West and the totalitarian East could continue into the peace. They also fell into the semantic trap of declaring the founder-members (i.e., themselves) to be “peace- loving” and “democratic,” which in the case of the Soviet Union was one hell of an assumption to make in the absence of clear definitions of “peace- loving” and “democratic.”