U.S. Hegemony, Race, and Oil in Deciding United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 on Iraq
![handle is hein.journals/tclj17 and id is 33 raw text is: U.S. HEGEMONY, RACE, AND OIL IN DECIDING
UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1441 ON
IRAQ
Henry J. Richardson, IIf
I. INTRODUCTION
Questions of international law regarding Iraq have been very much
present and also very much absent in U.S. and international discourse during
the gestation of United Nations (U.N.) Security Council Resolution 1441,
adopted November 8, 2002.' That gestation process is the primary focus of
this article. Its presence has been signaled in part by a stream of claims by
the second Bush Administration to authoritatively interpret the Resolution's
legal doctrines and mobilize those interpretations into U.S. and global
publics, including: (1) that the United States has the legal right to unilaterally
enforce a ten-year old body of Council resolutions without such Council
authorization; (2) that various definitions of material breach act as
sufficient authority for military force; and (3) that a single nation could
unilaterally modify critical legal definitions through different trigger phrases
of Council authority to use force, i.e., serious consequences; other
interpretations producing automaticity granting Washington the right to
unilateral military action.
The importance of international legal questions has equally been
signaled by competing streams of claims invoking international law against
the United States. This writing argues that enhancing the universal authority
of U.N. Charter-anchored international law comprises an independent
imperative for the world community, including, for the United States, its
government's lack of acknowledgment. This imperative is undermined in
generic ways by the emergence of the United States as a global hegemon
around the Iraq question.
Most public discussion about war against Iraq has been framed by the
Administration and media alike largely in terms of neo-realist interest-
theory and its strategic propositions, which has the effect or intent of
Professor of Law, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law. I benefited
greatly from insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article from my faculty
colleagues Jeffrey Dunoff, Rafael Porrata-Doria, Charles Pouncy, and Achilles Skordas.
Excellent research assistance was provided by Deirdre Heine, J.D. expected 2004, with the
help of John Necci, Director of the Temple Law Library. I am also grateful for the timely
assistance of the editors and staff of the Temple International and Comparative Law
Journal. But all opinions, deficits, and errors are mine alone.
1. S.C. Res. 1441, U.N. SCOR, 4644th mtg., U.N. Doc. S[RES/1441 (2002)
[hereinafter Resolution 1441].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/tclj17&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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U.S. Hegemony, Race, and Oil in Deciding United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 on Iraq
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