| |
Bush's
backside UN-covered
By Alexander Casella
Some observers had not discounted the fact that
as a last-minute gambit, Saddam Hussein might authorize
the return of weapons inspectors and subsequently
bargain for the establishment of a timetable that would
provide for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq.
This is exactly the card that Saddam has now played. It
has not changed Washington's contention that his regime
must fall, but it has rendered Washington's task of
rallying the United Nations Security Council to its cause that
much more difficult. Indeed, a number of countries,
including France and Russia, are already signaling their
reluctance to adopt a new Security Council resolution
that would pave the way for American intervention.
Instead, they are now arguing that Saddam Hussein has
opened the door to a diplomatic solution.
Observers in New York, meanwhile, believe that
they are now seeing a series of tactical moves in which
Saddam will try to gain time and France and Russia will
try to maximize concessions from the US as the price
for their support. Still, everything points to
Washington getting its way - albeit at the highest cost
that the market will bear. The only open questions
remaining are, who will rule a post-Saddam Iraq, and how?
To interpret President George W Bush's appeal to
the UN General Assembly as a demand that the
organization act against Iraq is misleading. The world
body does not, and never did, have the means to take
action against any state - a state of affairs that the
190-strong UN representative states are quite familiar
with. Ultimately, what the US president is now demanding
from the international community is multilateral
endorsement of a unilateral policy.
The United
Nations was created in 1945 in the wake of World War II
with essentially one purpose; to provide a mechanism to
enable its member states to settle their disputes
without resorting to war. While they upheld on paper
this lofty ideal, the founding states were not however
ready to compromise their national sovereignty by
subjecting it to the collective will of the
international community. To this effect, they grounded
the world body on two contradictory principals; the
first was that all nations were equal. The second was
that some nations were more equal than others.
The principal of equality expressed itself in
the General Assembly, where each member state has one
vote. During the Cold War, the Soviet bloc allied itself
with the non-aligned group for an automatic majority in
the General Assembly. This majority adopted, year after
year, an unending stream of resolutions hostile to the
West.
In practical terms this carried no
consequences. The General Assembly could rave and rant
to its heart's content, all to no effect. Its resolutions
are non-binding to members and thus hardly worth the
paper they are printed on. The fact that some countries
carried more weight than others expressed itself in the
Security Council. With five permanent members - China,
France, the UK, Russia and the US, each of which has the
power of veto - and 10 other members elected for
rotating two-year terms, the council has the authority
to adopt resolutions that are binding, with one
important caveat. To be adopted, a Security Council
resolution must not only obtain at least nine votes, it
must not be vetoed by any one of the five permanent
members. Thus, the prerequisite for the adoption of any
Security Council resolution is that none of the five
permanent members cast their veto.
For the
duration of the Cold War, the Security Council was
paralyzed as the two blocs systematically vetoed all the
resolutions presented by their opponents. The collapse
of the Soviet Union brought about both a complete
realignment of the international balance of power and a
reassessment of the priorities of the permanent five.
Paramount now was their concern that local
confrontations be kept under control and not degenerate
into wider regional conflicts.
This new
concurrence of interests enabled the Security Council to
finally fulfill its role as the only organ of the UN
entitled to impose its decisions on members. What
emerged was a novel approach to "peace-keeping", in
which the Security Council would "authorize" the use of
force against a rogue state; while such an authorization
still needed the concurrence of the permanent five,
gaining it was not any more an impossible task (although
it still required considerable behind-the-scenes
bargaining).
Thus, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in
1990, the Security Council on November 29 passed a
resolution authorizing the use of force to expel the
invader. This enabled an essentially American force
leading a brokered coalition to operate behind the fig
leaf of a UN Security Council resolution reflecting
multilateral endorsement. Likewise, during the East
Timor crisis, it was the UN Security Council that
"authorized" Australia's military intervention, pending
the stabilization of the country and the arrival of UN
peacekeepers that operated essentially as peace
monitors.
Following the liberation of Kuwait,
the Security Council in Resolution 1284 imposed both an
embargo on Iraq and the presence of weapons inspectors
to monitor the dismantling of weapons of mass
destruction. That these inspectors would be borrowed by
the UN from member states and would have a strong
intelligence background was understood. In 1998 the UN
was forced by Iraq to withdraw the inspectors and no
subsequent monitoring was conducted over the past four
years.
What developments occurred in Iraq during
this four-year long gap in the inspection process is
currently the great unknown. It is possible that Saddam
Hussein resumed development of weapons of mass
destruction; it is also possible that he did nothing,
and whatever evidence Washington has presented to
bolster the case that he resumed production is purely
circumstantial. What is however unquestioned is that by
refusing the return and unhampered operation of the
weapons inspectors, Saddam Hussein is in flagrant
violation of Security Council resolution 1284. The
violation was obviously not a major issue either for the
Clinton administration or for President Bush before
September 11.
But then, the attacks came, and
they brought on what diplomatic observers in New York
refer to as a "change of dynamics" in the overall thrust
of American foreign policy. Initially, the Bush
priorities were essentially either domestic or inherited
from the Cold War. Hence the attention given to missile
defense and Taiwan. September 11, by illustrating the
link between internal security, terrorism and foreign
policy, completely reversed the priorities of the Bush
presidency. The emphasis now is on imposing a degree of
Pax Americana on what had been perceived as rogue states
that, unlike the predictable Soviet Union, presented the
potential of a new and unconventional threat to US
interests. Thus it was not so much Saddam Hussein or the
situation inside Iraq that had changed, but rather the
perception of the US and the priority it now gives to
the preservation of its Middle East oil sources.
Within this new constellation, Washington is
confronted with two issues. One is Saddam Hussein and
the potential danger he represents to America's
interests in the region. The other is terrorism.
Regarding terrorism, US military and economic supremacy,
however overwhelming it may be, does not provide the
stiletto needed to root out a diffuse network of small
terrorist cells scattered among four continents. In
combating terrorism, it is the likes of Pakistan, Syria,
China and Russia - not to mention Iran - that are the
US's newly indispensable objective allies. While the
effort is facilitated by the fact that no nation state,
and in particular no dictatorship, likes free-lance
terrorism it can't control, its nature forces the US to
prioritize its enemies. Hence Washington's improved
relations with Syria, Russia and China.
The
issue of Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, unlike the
fight against terrorism, entails a conventional military
effort which the US could indeed undertake unilaterally
(albeit with some logistical difficulties). However, a
multilateral endorsement would go a long way toward
facilitating the endeavor both in terms of logistics and
cosmetics. Thus when Bush tells the UN General Assembly
to "act" or become irrelevant, in substance he is
telling the Security Council to "authorize me to
intervene, because with or without your agreement I will
do it".
Overthrowing Saddam, which is today the
avowed policy of the US, is not a daunting task. No Arab
government, public statements to the contrary, harbors
any sympathy for the regime in Baghdad. The Europeans,
as a group, while increasingly wary of American
unilateral interventions, have neither the means nor the
interests to stand up to Washington. Conversely, the
French and the Russians do have longstanding economic
interests in Iraq, but provided that an agreement can be
reached to the effect that these interests are protected
in a post-Saddam Iraq, neither is likely to oppose an
American intervention. As for the Chinese, they are
mostly concerned with Taiwan and trade and some American
reassurances on these issues will go a long way toward
obtaining, if not their support, at least their
neutrality.
It is only within this overall
picture that the negotiations now under way in New York
can be understood. The end result, according to informed
sources, is likely to be two Security Council
resolutions: the first would demand an unconditional
return to Iraq of the weapons inspectors with a
deadline; the second would provide that if the deadline
is not met, or the inspectors prevented from doing their
task on the ground, "all available means will be
authorized" to implement the resolution.
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
