Robert Kagan, whose article "Power and Weakness", championing a militarily assertive United States unshackled by international principles that suit an allegedly defensive and weak Europe, provoked huge controversy last year, accused the two countries of dishonesty.
"The most disingenuous behaviour of all has been by the French in recent weeks and the Russian government coming in behind the French as well," Kagan told a roundtable conference in Moscow.
"France and Russia are now in direct violation of the spirit and letter and resolution 1441," passed in November warning Iraq of 'serious consequences' if it failed to show it had fully dismantled all weapons of mass destruction, Kagan said.
"It was the final opportunity to fully comply with resolutions that go back to 1991," he underlined.
US President George W. Bush had ignored his own instincts at the urging of close ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair to try and get UN Security Council authorisation for a strike against Iraq, he said.
But even after a unanimous vote in favour of resolution 1441, France and Russia had stymied attempts to get a second measure giving the green light to war by threatening to use their vetoes as permanent council members.
"If the lesson of all this is that even when the United States is persuaded to go to the Security Council to take action and even when it gets agreement on a certain kind of resolution, that at the end of the day the countries that agreed to that resolution don't want to implement it, what will be the lesson to the United States? What will be the lesson to the American public?," he said.
Kagan pointed to an opinion poll published this week that suggested that 58 percent of Americans now have a negative attitude towards the UN Security Council, up 10 percentage points on a month ago.
"It will be possible to convince a new generation of Americans, that the UN Security Council is what it was throughout the Cold War, and what it was throughout most of their lives, an institution that you couldn't go to for serious action," said the influential academic.
Kagan, one of a handful of neo-conservative thinkers believed to have the ear of Bush's administration, said that the US aim had been to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein rather than simply to disarm him.
"I don't think that Bush administration officials ever believed that disarmament was the solution either. They always believed that you had to get rid of Saddam Hussein," he said.
But he defended the policy as necessary to safeguard US security and insisted that the sanction of the UN Security Council was not essential for the United States to make a pre-emptive military strike.
"The problem is not the United States, the problem is those totalitarian regimes who are developing those weapons with purpose.
"It is not an aberration for a country to take action, even though it doesn't have Security Council authorisation," Kagan concluded - Sapa-AFP.
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
