A World of Possibilities

Not since Winston Churchill redrew the map of the Middle East after World War I has a Western statesman encountered such an opportunity for cartographical and strategic creativity as George W. Bush currently enjoys in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Nor does that opportunity stop with Iraq—though it certainly starts there.

The broad lines of U.S. policy toward Iraq seem reasonably plain already. Washington has accepted that the United Nations and other “multilateral” institutions will provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid. But it would like to exclude the U.N. from any major role in the political reconstruction of the country. Anything more than that would be highly imprudent. The U.N. is simply unsuited to coping with complex and rapidly changing crises: U.N. involvement in Rwanda and the various Balkan crises resulted in agonizing delays while crucial questions were wired back to New York for final decision. In Rwanda, one such delay resulted in a massacre; in Bosnia and Kosovo, U.N. and other multilateral agencies have produced a bloated and apparently permanent aid bureaucracy rather than functioning economies. And these failures occurred even without the French, Germans, and Russians using “multilateralism” as a diplomatic weapon to frustrate U.S. policy at every turn. If the U.N. were shaping Iraq’s political future, there would be endless scope for Europe’s “Gang of Three” to obstruct, delay, and distort.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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Not since Winston Churchill redrew the map of the Middle East after World War I has a Western statesman encountered such an opportunity for cartographical and strategic creativity as George W. Bush currently enjoys in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Nor does that opportunity stop with Iraq—though it certainly starts there.

The broad lines of U.S. policy toward Iraq seem reasonably plain already. Washington has accepted that the United Nations and other “multilateral” institutions will provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid. But it would like to exclude the U.N. from any major role in the political reconstruction of the country. Anything more than that would be highly imprudent. The U.N. is simply unsuited to coping with complex and rapidly changing crises: U.N. involvement in Rwanda and the various Balkan crises resulted in agonizing delays while crucial questions were wired back to New York for final decision. In Rwanda, one such delay resulted in a massacre; in Bosnia and Kosovo, U.N. and other multilateral agencies have produced a bloated and apparently permanent aid bureaucracy rather than functioning economies. And these failures occurred even without the French, Germans, and Russians using “multilateralism” as a diplomatic weapon to frustrate U.S. policy at every turn. If the U.N. were shaping Iraq’s political future, there would be endless scope for Europe’s “Gang of Three” to obstruct, delay, and distort.