Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2003, pages 22, 24

United Nations Report

 

Inept Diplomacy and Blame to Spare on The March to a Predetermined War

 

By Ian Williams

How did we get to the point of an American and British attack on Iraq without a U.N. mandate? There is a lot of blame to go around—but most of it ends up somewhere between the White House and the Pentagon. Above all, according to his British allies, President George W. Bush had decided that, while he would agree to go to the United Nations, he was going to attack by the end of March regardless of the outcome there.

As this became increasingly obvious, it made many Security Council members bridle. They took seriously the U.N. weapons inspections—whatever their outcome—and resented their being used as a fairly transparent excuse for war. After repeated assurances that the U.S. had evidence of the “smoking gun” Colin Powell signally failed to deliver it.

The bluster and gratuitous insults from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his ilk, moreover, drove Germany, France and Russia into deeper intransigence. But it was not they who foiled a second Security Council resolution on Washington’s terms. Clumsy U.S. diplomacy drove even vulnerable Security Council members like Chile and Mexico into opposition, which is why, at the Azores summit, the U.S. and UK abandoned the attempt to get the resolution.

While the White House holds the primary blame, it would be unfair not to apportion some culpability to the French, who managed to become almost as clumsy as Washington. Telling Bulgaria to stay silent put President Jacques Chirac on the same moral ground as Rumsfeld, and his almost unqualified pledge of a French veto against any military action played into the hands of those who wanted to abandon the U.N. route altogether.

By the end, ironically, the French were talking of 30 days for inspections with rigid benchmarks for Iraq prior to military action. Had that offer been made a month earlier, it may have worked.

Even then, however, it would have depended on the cooperation of someone who, although he may very momentarily be legally in the right, is at the root of most of the disasters afflicting the Iraqi people: Saddam Hussain. He waited years to fulfill even minor and inconsequential parts of the resolutions he agreed to 10 years ago, after his clumsy and brutal invasion of Kuwait was defeated. If he had accepted weapons inspectors back after Resolution 1284, sanctions could have ended by now.

Even when, under threat of war, the inspectors finally did return to Iraq, perhaps the most telling part of Secretary of State Powell’s comments was his suggestion that if the Iraqi tyrant had nothing to hide, then his scientists would be lining up at the U.N. offices to be interviewed. As it was, their fearful refusal to be interviewed by the inspectors without tape recorders or minders gave eloquent support to American accusations.

While looking at the guilty we should of course examine the role of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Opponents of American policy over Iraq often refer to him as a poodle, and there is some sad truth in the description. Poodles, however, used to be French—or should we say, “freedom”—hunting dogs, and in their present stage of development yap incessantly at their owners until they get what they want.

 

Clumsy U.S. diplomacy drove even vulnerable Security Council members into opposition.

So if, for the time being, one overlooks Blair’s complicity in the invasion of Iraq without U.N. mandate, it should be remembered that it was his insistence, reinforcing Powell’s, which persuaded President George W. Bush to go to the U.N. at all.

Blair, both personally and politically, has a commitment to the United Nations which must at times seem puzzling to Bush. The latter, however, recognizes political imperatives, and when his British counterpart demonstrated that he needed the U.N. route, and the second resolution, Bush was prepared to go along.

But when the Security Council proved unconvinced by Colin Powell’s “show and tell” of Iraqi crimes, and when inept American diplomacy and bullying actually reinforced the resistance of Council members, it posed a threat to Blair’s tenure in office. Most Council members thought that, no matter how suspicious they were of Saddam Hussain—and the inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei emphasized their suspicions of lack of good faith on the Iraqis’ part—one cannot start a bloody war on suspicion. The Council moved toward adopting benchmark tests for Iraq with a deadline that, by the end, was one month away.

By then, however, an impatient Bush had made it plain to his British ally that, regardless of evidence, he had decided that the war would start in late March. Blair’s foreign policy has been based on the premise that going along with the White House on the big issues would give Britain “a hand on the steering wheel” of U.S. foreign policy. In practical terms, this meant helping Colin Powell and the State Department tug the wheel in the opposite direction from the assorted unilateralist and pro-Likud ideologues insinuated in the Bush administration.

At times, having a hand on the steering wheel of a runaway train may seem rather pointless. In fact, however, George W. Bush was so short of credible allies that Blair’s loyalty gave him leverage beyond any feelings of gratitude from the president. He used that leverage at the Azores summit to secure a commitment to a post-war U.N. involvement in Iraq—both in administration and reconstruction—and a commitment to the Quartet “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Even though Blair has been Britain’s most pro-Israeli prime minister he is motivated by his distaste for what Israel is doing, and his pragmatic realization that all the arguments about Saddam breaking international law fall down if the “allies” condone Sharon’s ongoing pogroms against the Palestinians.

The problem that now faces Blair—and, indeed, Powell—is how to secure any credible form of delivery on those Azores pledges. They need to outweigh the influence from the hawkish unilateralists around the Pentagon, who had already drawn up occupation plans for Iraq that did not include British, let alone U.N., influence.

The Israel lobby and its friends, moreover, were aghast at the pledge on the road map, for which, according to the Israeli press, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had no less than 100 amendments to the supposedly final document signed by the Quartet. Both Blair and Foreign Minister Jack Straw have stepped up the pressure, and Straw even confessed to double standards over the respective treatment of Israel and Iraq. The foreign minister must be on the right track, because the Israelis summoned the British ambassador to Israel to complain!

However, the approval of $9 billion in loan guarantees and an outright grant of a billion dollars to Israel does not auger well for Blair’s success in getting the U.S. administration to deliver on its promises. Even if the “oral” conditions preclude spending the money beyond the Green Line, one feels certain that Israeli government accountants can make sure that the money gets where they want it regardless.

There will be an interesting tussle in which President Bush’s genuine gratitude to Blair will be weighed in the balance against his equally genuine admiration for Sharon and his alleged fight against “terrorism,” and the weight of neoconservative (and indeed paleoconservative) opinion in the Pentagon.

In the end, Blair’s arguments on the peace process will be found wanting because of that and the influence of the pro-Israeli factions in Congress and the administration. His opinions on U.N. involvement carry a bit more weight than does the outright opposition of the Israel-firsters—and will help ease the financial burden.

Even at the best of times, President Bush’s attempt to run a war and cut taxes at a time of rapidly mounting deficits is an ambitious agenda. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s reminder that the prime responsibility for the population in Iraq will lie with the occupying belligerents seems to have surprised some in the administration who were not listening when the majority of the Security Council in effect told them that the attack on Iraq was unilateral and illegal.

Even alleged coalition members like Japan have made it plain that they will only provide post-war finance for Iraq under U.N. auspices. And American officials who turned up at the U.N. and virtually asked for a check made out to the U.S. for reconstruction were sent away.

So, as the battles raged in southern Iraq at the end of March, there was a major problem for the United Nations and its members. The majority of Security Council members considered the Anglo-American attack to be totally illegal, but, in the face of very heavy-handed diplomacy from Washington, were too scared to put forth a resolution saying so. In the first place, there was considerable doubt that any such resolution would get a majority in the Security Council—and, of course, if it did, the British and Americans would veto it.

That left the General Assembly. Even there, however, no one has moved a resolution condemning the attack. Noticeably some 70 speakers orated at length at the open Security Council meeting on the subject. Most of them, particularly the Arab delegations, inveighed against the illegality of the war. Editorials in Arab newspapers chastised Kofi Annan, who had, after all, already publicly said that he considered the attack to be outside the U.N. Charter.

Not one of those orators proposed a resolution, however, either in the Council or the Assembly. Their fiery rhetoric was aimed solely at their domestic audiences.

But while no one wants to stick a head above the parapet and draw American fire by moving condemnation, there are few who are prepared to go the other way and legitimize the invasion after the fact.

Blair was hoping for a Kosovo-style resolution that would retroactively make the operation kosher and involve the U.N. in reconstruction and post-war administration. He will not get the former, but will get support in his battle with the Pentagon hawks to bring in the U.N.

The first battle was over Resolution 1472 on March 28. After a week of haggling, the Security Council resolution in effect authorized the continuation of the oil-for-food program for 45 days. It did not legitimize the U.S.-British invasion and occupation. Indeed, it explicitly stated that the belligerent powers had the primary responsibility for the welfare of the civilians—which implies, of course, even if it does not say so explicitly, that this was not a U.N. operation.

The resolution will allow the U.N. instead of the Iraqi government to accept shipments already contracted for under oil-for-food, and to adjust them in the light of changing priorities. It leaves open the question of further aid, however, which will certainly be conditioned by Security Council members on U.N. and international involvement in the occupation. Both on principle and out of naked self-interest, countries like France and Russia will not allow the U.N. to pay for an American occupation—especially when Washington already has contracted exclusively with U.S. companies (not even British ones were considered) for its administration and reconstruction.

The battle in Washington between the allies (in this case Powell, Blair and the U.N.) and the Pentagon hawks will in its own way be as grueling, if less bloody, as the struggle to take Baghdad. Already, however, Richard Perle’s public dancing on the grave of the United Nations proved very premature, not least when, within days, he had to resign as chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. One down—but several more to go before rationality rules in that Washington outpost.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.

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