September
5, 2003, 1:20 p.m.
U.S. at Bay? Or U.N.?
The
Bush people have to maneuver through swampy ground.
here's no question that the administration misjudged the extent of the
Iraq problem. That problem is the problem of Iraq, #1, and #2, the problem
of our allies and of the United Nations. The doom box is loud and vibrant,
e.g., the Daily Telegraph, whose Daniel Johnson reports a meeting
at 10 Downing Street between Jack Straw, foreign secretary, and Tony Blair,
prime minister, and speaks of "confidential advice to the Foreign Secretary"
which "depicts a country on the brink of collapse." Readers were told
that "participants
at the meeting were invited to think the hitherto unthinkable: 'We are
at risk of strategic failure in Iraq.'"
That
isn't going to happen, though we have to acknowledge that there are allies
out there who rather wish it would happen. They call this Schadenfreude,
which is the pleasure covertly taken from adverse developments. Hear now
the tone of the editorial in India's Hindustan Times: "America has
found out at last that the taste of the pudding is in the eating. Five months
ago it short-circuited a debate in the U.N. Security Council when it found
it would not be able to secure approval for invading Iraq, and went ahead
with its plans anyway. But the Bush Administration has since discovered
that toppling Saddam Hussein was the easy part. Thus, it now proposes to
go back to the U.N. it had so haughtily ignored to seek a resolution authorizing
the setting up of a multinational force to stabilize Iraq, a task which
the predominantly U.S. occupying force has found well beyond its capability.
The truth is that before deciding to go back to the U.N., Washington solicited
nearly every country it thought it could leverage, India included, for troop
contributions for Iraq. But it drew a blank."
The Bush people
have to maneuver through swampy ground. It is of course not correct that
we ignored the United Nations. We operated under the auspices of several
U.N. resolutions. Legally, it having been established that the government
of Saddam Hussein had not lived up to its obligations under the peace
treaty of 1991, the old war was still in force, its sanctions continuing.
But it is true that a French veto threatened, this time around, and that
threat forced the U.S. to proceed without the ultimate formality of an
ad hoc Security Council resolution. To charge that we traduced the U.N.
by declining to accept a French veto on strategic policy is to say more
than history is likely to hold.
But it is true that
we would be glad for more help than we are getting. Nations that have
useful peacekeepers at their disposal probably aren't going to come in
to do their share about the collegial problem in the Mideast. The administration
acknowledges this by the verve with which we are setting up an Iraqi Governing
Council to take over as much of the burden as can be shared. The crystallizing
position of our summer friends is that they wish U.N. authority to replace
U.S. authority in Iraq. The French and the Germans are pretty direct on
this point, and the U.N. bureaucracy is itching for authority. It isn't
immediately obvious just what points of contention there would be between
the U.S. and the U.N. in the management of the Iraqi problem. Oil revenue,
perhaps, though any surplus is many years down the road. What would threaten
joint action is the importunate voice of Muslim fundamentalism. Kofi Annan
is not built to press his own views athwart the hard opposition of non-Western
opinion.
The Bush people
are no doubt prepared, if necessary, to get on with the true liberation
of Iraq without help, even from those neighbors who would most profit
from a detoxified Iraq. Jordan's Al-Dustur reports that "The American
adventure has reached its impasse. The American arrogance has been stripped
of its peacock feathers." What would the Jordanian paper recommend? What
was that paper saying in 1991 when Jordan sided with Saddam Hussein?
The Bush appeal
for United Nations cooperation should be carefully made. Experienced observers
will soon see that any failure in Iraq owing to a failure of other nations
to discharge collegial responsibilities will damage the United Nations
far more gravely than any clerical inattention to it by the United States.
The sacred ideal of joint action is at stake.
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here's no question that the administration misjudged the extent of the
Iraq problem. That problem is the problem of Iraq, #1, and #2, the problem
of our allies and of the United Nations. The doom box is loud and vibrant,
e.g., the Daily Telegraph, whose Daniel Johnson reports a meeting
at 10 Downing Street between Jack Straw, foreign secretary, and Tony Blair,
prime minister, and speaks of "confidential advice to the Foreign Secretary"
which "depicts a country on the brink of collapse." Readers were told
that "participants
at the meeting were invited to think the hitherto unthinkable: 'We are
at risk of strategic failure in Iraq.'"
