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THE ROVING EYE
The UN game and
the logic of war
By Pepe Escobar
CAIRO - The date is virtually set for a deadly
cargo of 3,000 bombs and missiles to start falling on
Iraq in the first 48 hours: March 3, after the climax of
the hajj Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, a day which,
according to American meteorologists, presents the ideal
conditions. The logic of war, imposed by America from
the start, prevails. From now on, it's just a question
of procedure.
In a crucial Anglo-French summit
this Tuesday in the north of France, British premier
Tony Blair will pull all stops in trying to convince
French President Jacques Chirac that the UN must
authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein's
regime. This happens exactly one day before US Secretary
of State Colin Powell is due to deliver at the Security
Council his "smoking gun" evidence to convict Iraq. But
whatever the spinning, Asia Times Online has learned
from European diplomatic sources that it all amounts to
a single issue, and one issue only.
The Bush
administration - including words by Powell himself - may
in the past have promised to hold Iraqi oil fields "in
trust" for the people of Iraq. Nobody seriously
believed that this would happen. The Bush administration
instead is now promising behind closed doors to spread
the riches among American, French, Russian and Chinese
oil companies by enforcing contracts signed by Saddam
Hussein himself. Saddam had already offered French giant
TotalFinaElf exclusive rights to Iraq's largest oil
field, the Majnoon, which may hold 30 billion barrels of
oil. Iraq has also signed a contract with Russia's
Stroytransgaz to develop Iraq's Western desert. And
Russia and China want to strike deals to explore the
West Qurna and Rumaila fields.
If that is the
case, it means no French, Russian or Chinese veto in a
second Anglo-American-sponsored Security Council
resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. Germany -
which is presiding over the Security Council in February
- will most certainly abstain.
Meanwhile,
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak maintains his frantic
but vain diplomacy "doing everything to spare the Iraqi
people from a military operation". Greek Foreign
Minister Georges Papandreou - currently in the European
Union presidency - launched a tour of Arab countries
trying to sound out possible peaceful solutions for the
crisis. The Turkish government, in its continuous
highwire act, said that it is not - yet - demanding
parliament's approval for a massive deployment of
American troops on Turkish soil; but Turkish troops are
already massing at Iraq's Kurdistan borders.
But
these are all peripheral developments. The fact is that
the war is being decided in Washington, London and
Paris. France - and most European Union member countries
for that matter - maintain the position that as long as
the inspectors are working on site, there is no risk of
weapons proliferation in Iraq. Tony Blair, once again
playing the go-between, at least persuaded George W Bush
last Friday in Washington to pay lip service to the
acceptance of a second and final resolution at the
Security Council.
It all amounts, once again, to
a - crucial - problem of interpretation. A second
resolution, according to Bush, has absolutely nothing to
do with a resolution as viewed by most of the members of
the European Union: this would be a sort of ultimatum to
Saddam, and if he was judged to be in breach, a
definitive authorization for the use of force. Bush
thinks that he already has the authorization in his
hands, provided by Resolution 1441, because, as the
mantra goes, "Saddam is not disarming". Moreover, he
would prefer not to take any risks with a second
resolution. American and British diplomats have been
drafting a second resolution for days now. But supposing
that there is a vote in the Security Council this
Wednesday, after Powell's presentation, Bush will be
certain to collect only four "yes" votes to war: the US,
Britain, Spain and Bulgaria.
European diplomats
keep stressing that the key question, now, is not
whether Iraq is cooperating or not: it is to establish
beyond any doubt whether Saddam's regime represents a
menace to the international community, and then discuss
ways to deal with it. As a Portuguese diplomat puts it,
"We have to answer three questions, and there should be
no doubts about the answers. Is he a menace to world
peace? Is a war necessary now? And is this war legal?"
For the European Union - as well as for Arab
countries - war is the last option after all other
possible options have failed. As France stresses
officially, Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector, did not
say that the inspectors could not work; himself, along
with the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief
Mohamed ElBaradei, will be back to Baghdad on Sunday for
more talks with the Iraqi leadership. Any imaginable
Iraqi weapons program is frozen as long as the
inspectors are working.
But this interpretation
of Resolution 1441 cannot possibly be accepted by
Washington because it delays a war indefinitely.
Powell's case - the ultimate pitch of his career
- runs the risk of not swinging most European Union
member countries. His pitch won't swing the vast
majority of European public opinion either, because
there's absolutely no proof of the far-fetched Saddam
link to al-Qaeda.
To top it all, there's an
image problem. Bush, the character, travels not badly
but miserably. And not only to Europe, but to Latin
America, Africa and Asia, not to mention the Muslim
world. A great deal of Americans may find a connection
to his blunt language, stripped-to-the-bone vocabulary,
cartoon images and religious fervor. But as far as the
rest of the world is concerned, his is a major public
relations disaster.
The UN game is a very
serious matter. France is carefully considering its
implications. A key actor in the Middle East since
Napoleon fell in love with the pyramids, France knows
that it cannot afford to be excluded from the
post-Saddam regional new order. It cannot afford to lose
its billionaire oil contracts already signed with Iraq.
And it cannot afford to see the Security Council
dismissed by the Americans in case Bush and his hawks
decide to go along with their "coalition of the
willing". Diplomats comment in private that if France,
through Chirac, feels it can unify the European Union,
the Arab world, Asia and the rest of the world for that
matter around a pacifist, legal, no-war solution for the
Iraqi crisis, it would certainly defy the US with its
own "no" vote in the Security Council.
Germany
has a different kind of problem: it is boxed in in its
resolute no-war stance. German public opinion remains
overwhelmingly anti-war. But Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder's Social Democrats have just suffered a
thunderous defeat this Sunday in regional elections in
Hesse and Lower Saxony, the chancellor's home state.
Apart from all the effusive praise to the solid
Franco-German alliance recently celebrated in Versailles
by Chirac and Schroeder, France is now obviously
considering how weak the chancellor might become. But
anyway, their position on Iraq remains the same.
Ultra-pacifist and extremely popular German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer - who will preside over
Powell's pitch on Wednesday - has already said on the
record that in the event of a smoking gun being found in
Iraq, this means only that the UN inspectors must
continue their mission for as long as it takes, so that
Saddam can be made to disarm peacefully.
France
is skillfully playing the diplomatic game. It has
maintained enough balance to allow it to swing either
way. Blair is clearly the US's ally in the European
Union: the issue is how to restrain and isolate Britain
within Europe. European public opinion - including the
business elite - also regards the American Middle East
game plan as extremely dangerous, with the very concrete
possibility of a nasty fallout contaminating Europe
itself. Britain is already al-Qaeda's top European
target. In the end though, France might even go along
with the Anglo-American axis. After all, there's too
much oil at stake. The UN game is nowhere near its
climax.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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