Organisation des Nations unies

The Organisation des Nations unies occupies a central, contested place in Noam Chomsky’s account of terrorism and international order: it provides legal procedures for addressing violence, but its authority is repeatedly tested when powerful states reject judgments or veto resolutions directed at their own conduct. Through the Nicaragua case, the rules on force and self-defense, and the proposed response to the September 11 attacks, Chomsky presents the institution as a measure of whether international law applies consistently or yields to power.

Legal framework and collective security

Chomsky invokes the postwar legal order as a rejection of the cycle of reprisals that had brought Europe close to self-destruction. Under the arrangement he describes, force is barred except in self-defense against an armed attack, pending action by the Security Council to protect international peace and security; reprisals are specifically prohibited. He argues that the United States could not invoke Article 51 of the United Nations Charter for the September 11 response, because it was not then under an armed attack in the sense required by that provision. For him, the question is not merely what rules can be applied to adversaries, but whether the same fundamental rules bind the United States.

The organization’s legal role appears alongside the International Court of Justice. Chomsky recalls that in 1986 the court condemned the United States for unlawful use of force, which he characterizes as international terrorism. The United States then vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to respect international law. He cites this as one example of a recurring conflict between the authority of international institutions and the willingness of a powerful state to accept their conclusions.

Nicaragua and the limits of enforcement

The Nicaragua case provides Chomsky’s most developed illustration of that conflict. During the 1980s, the United States attacked Nicaragua and imposed a devastating economic war. Chomsky describes tens of thousands of deaths and a country so extensively damaged that it might never recover. Nicaragua did not answer by bombing Washington; it brought its case before the International Court of Justice, which ruled in its favor and ordered the United States to end its actions and pay substantial reparations.

The United States rejected the court’s ruling and intensified its attacks. Nicaragua then took the dispute to the Security Council, where the United States alone vetoed a proposed resolution calling on states to observe international law. Nicaragua subsequently brought the issue to the General Assembly, which adopted a similar resolution by a majority. The United States and Israel voted against it in two successive years; El Salvador joined them once. Chomsky treats Nicaragua’s resort to judicial and multilateral channels as an example of how a state should respond to aggression, while the sequence exposes the limits of those channels when the state found in violation can block collective action.

Terrorism, evidence, and prosecution

In Chomsky’s proposed response to the September 11 attacks, the Organisation des Nations unies would provide a legitimate international framework for locating and prosecuting those responsible. He argues that international legal institutions would probably endorse efforts to arrest and try Osama bin Laden and his associates, including the use of force, if their guilt could be demonstrated. He says that nearly the entire world had asked the United States for evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks and that such evidence, if assembled, could have secured support for a major international operation under United Nations auspices.

Chomsky distinguishes that proposed process from a campaign of retaliation. He notes that the Taliban had indicated possible diplomatic avenues, but that their proposals were rejected and force was chosen instead. He also acknowledges a practical evidentiary difficulty: even if Osama bin Laden and his network were involved, proving it might be difficult, particularly because, according to what was then known, almost all the perpetrators appeared to have died carrying out the attacks. His argument therefore rests on conditional accountability—investigation, proof, arrest, and trial—rather than treating accusation alone as sufficient grounds for war.

Resolutions, self-determination, and selective standards

Chomsky also points to the General Assembly’s 1987 resolution on international terrorism. Adopted by 153 votes to two, with Honduras abstaining, it condemned terrorism and called for vigorous action against it. The disputed passage simultaneously affirmed that the resolution could not prejudice the rights to self-determination, freedom, and independence of peoples deprived of those rights by force, including people under colonial or racist regimes or foreign occupation. It also affirmed their right to struggle against such conditions and seek support in doing so, in accordance with the Charter and other principles of international law.

The United States and Israel rejected that qualification, Chomsky says, and Washington’s interpretation of terrorism prevailed in practice, with severe human consequences. He sets this controversy beside the United States’ past classification of the African National Congress as a terrorist organization while South Africa was not grouped with Cuba and other states as a terrorist nation. The contrast supports his broader criticism of definitions that condemn violence by disfavored actors while leaving the conduct of allies and powerful states outside the same frame.

Security policy and strategic power

For Chomsky, the Organisation des Nations unies is also a point of contrast with the political uses made of the post-September 11 crisis. He argues that governments used the attacks to intensify repressive policies: Russia sought room to continue its actions in Chechnya, China joined the coalition for similar reasons, and Turkey offered troops while linking its participation to American support during its campaign against Kurds. He further argues that fear and appeals to patriotism enabled domestic restrictions in the United States and that the Bush administration used the moment to advance policies serving the interests of large corporations.

He interprets the establishment of substantial American military bases in Central Asia as a major consequence of the new phase of the war. In his account, those bases could support multinational companies under American dominance, provide access to the region’s resources, and complement the encirclement of the Persian Gulf’s major energy resources. Before the war in Afghanistan, he identifies Diego Garcia as the most secure base in the wider network extending from the Pacific to the Azores; the new positions, he argues, made intervention easier.

Chomsky connects those deployments to an explicit pursuit of global military dominance. He recounts that during Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s visit to the United States, Abdullah urged the administration to consider Arab responses to its strong support for Israeli repression. Chomsky reports that American officials dismissed those concerns and described the Afghanistan campaign as demonstrating an intensified capacity for force. He further interprets the bombings of Afghanistan—and, by comparison, the NATO bombing of Serbia—as demonstrations of credibility and power, rather than treating their stated justifications as the only explanation. In this argument, the Organisation des Nations unies’ collective-security framework stands against a policy in which military action can also communicate the consequences of refusing the dominant power’s rules.