Back to the UN!
Phyllis Bennis
IPS, 21 September 2003
Still committed to its war drive in Iraq, Washington stands more isolated
than ever. Its trade aims were defeated at the World Trade Organization in
Cancún. It faces international outrage following its veto of the mildly-worded
Security Council resolution challenging Israel's threat to expel or assassinate
Yasir Arafat. In response, the General Assembly overwhelming passed a
resolution virtually identical to that Washington vetoed in the Council. Like the
Security Council's "Uncommitted Six" (Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico,
Pakistan), which stood defiant and refused to endorse Bush's war in Iraq, the
emergence of the Group of 21 developing countries at the WTO proved once again
that resistance to empire is possible within the international community. Led
by Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and India, the Global South's negotiators in
the suites were backed by the power of global protesters in the streets -
and together they made Cancún a model particularly relevant as Washington
returns to the United Nations to try to coerce the world body into supporting its
occupation of Iraq.
Increasingly on the defensive at home, the Bush administration finally is
facing a long-delayed (and still hesitant) challenge from Democrats regarding the
conduct of the war and how (not yet whether) the requested $87 billion for
another year of military occupation should be spent. The public divisions that
characterized the 2002 run-up to the war have begun to surface again. The most
visible is renewal of a highly public spat between Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld and his former (and fired) Secretary of the Army, former Enron executive
Thomas White, who called Rumsfeld's post-war planning "totally inadequate".
In response to the new pressures even Vice-President Cheney made a rare foray
out of his undisclosed location to hit the Sunday morning television talk
shows claiming that the war is going fine, that Iraq is just a step away from a
flourishing market democracy, and that no adjustment is required in
Washington's occupation strategy. He also stated with a straight face that war in Iraq is
hitting the "geographic center" of the terrorists whose attacks began on
September 11th. (It was enough of an embarrassment that Bush himself had to
publicly distance himself from his influential vice-president, reminding the public
that he never actually said the words that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.)
The usually pragmatic secretary of state weighed in too, with a high-profile
and emotional new justification for the war - this one announced during a
quick visit to the Kurdish town of Halabja, whose civilian population was
devastated with poison gas during the Iran-Iraq war. That 1988 attack, Colin Powell
claimed, provides "evidence of the existence and the use of weapons of mass
destruction", and thus justifies the US invasion and occupation fifteen years
later. He agreed there should have been a more aggressive response from the
Reagan administration (in which he served as National Security Adviser). He did
not, of course, mention that the US had been providing financial and military
assistance to Iraq throughout the years of the war, despite public knowledge
of Iraq's use of illegal chemical and biological weapons. That assistance
included sales to Baghdad of the biological seed stock for anthrax, e-coli,
botulism and other biological weapons, as well as the provision of satellite-based
targeting information to increase the accuracy of chemical weapons (themselves
provided by Washington's European allies).
Despite the rejection of their initial Council proposal, there is no
indication yet that the Bush administration intends to respond to that international
isolation with a serious shift away from its current effort to coerce the
United Nations into providing military and financial assistance to its illegal
occupation of Iraq. To the contrary, it appears Washington is still demanding that
the Security Council endorse continuing US control of the occupation, while
calling for UN member states to participate in the occupation as part of a
multilateral force established under US command. Bush administration
concessions will be limited to rhetorical feints designed to provide political cover
for disparate governments unwilling or afraid to apply the lessons of Cancún and
the Uncommitted Six, and instead are willing, whether eagerly or grudgingly,
to appease the empire's hunger for power.
Led by strong resistance from France and Germany, the Council rejected the
initial US draft out of hand. Negotiations are continuing, although the Bush
administration has now admitted there will almost certainly not be a decision
before Bush speaks to the General Assembly on 23 September.
There are some indications of a shift from Secretary General Kofi Annan's
earlier call for Council unity, which hinted at support for unity at virtually
any price, even including Council endorsement of a war that violates the UN's
own Charter. Annan remains sharply focused on the 19 August attack that killed
his special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 22 others and brought into sharp
relief the impossibility of protecting UN humanitarian staff broadly perceived
as backing the US occupation. At the WTO meeting in Cancún he focused
explicitly on the injustices of wealthy countries' trade policy, particularly
subsidies, rather than choosing an ostensibly "even-handed" approach. And Annan has
put the broad question of UN reform, including expansion of the Security
Council, on top of his agenda. According to the New York Times, the UN's leadership
is debating how to get "the freedom it needs to survive without being seen as
either a lackey of the United States or an easily swattable gadfly". Annan
has said that "radical" reforms of the UN are called for, and his General
Assembly speech will likely include a call for such changes - not likely shifts in
the interest of Washington's unilateralists.
But the Bush administration is growing desperate for international help, and
while there is no sign of Washington giving way on the substance, dangers
remain that other countries may give in. France and Germany in particular have
been publicly silent over the last couple of weeks. They may have been engaged in
behind-the-scenes efforts to gain leverage in pushing the Bush administration
towards a greater UN role in Iraq. But while French President Jacques Chirac
and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met on 18 September and more or less
reaffirmed their positions on Iraq, German officials said Berlin's real goal
was to urge the French to be more conciliatory. Similarly, the three-nation
mini-summit on 20 September grouped Chirac and Schroeder with Tony Blair in what
was described as an effort to avoid a new confrontation over Iraq.
There are clear signs that the Bush administration is attempting to punish,
or at least isolate Paris because of Chirac's commitment to replace the US
occupation with a short-term UN operation designed to return Iraq's sovereignty
to Iraq. The campaign includes efforts to win German and Russian support
against France; Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying that US strategy is to
"ignore [Germany], reward [Russia], and punish [France]". Some of that campaign
may be working. The BBC reported from the Berlin summit that "it seems the
French are playing hardball while the Germans would like to kiss and make up".
And although Chirac said disagreements with Britain remained, German Chancellor
Schroeder announced that the three countries agreed on the need for a
"significant role" for the UN, a significant step down from the "central" role Germany
and France had earlier demanded.
There is no indication Bush will soften his tone in his General Assembly
speech. ``He's not been willing to take half a loaf,'' said a senior
administration official. Under those circumstances, it is certainly possible that some
members of the Security Council might be willing to cave in to US pressure and
agree to some version of Washington's resolution. Any resolution, however,
would still have to win approval from Russia, Germany, and especially France.
While some French officials have reportedly said that this time there is no
chance that Paris would veto a US draft, French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin said that "the eventual arrangements cannot just be the enlargement or
adjustment of the current occupation forces. We have to install a real
international force under a mandate of the United Nations Security Council". Even if
the French are reluctant to go head to head with the US, de Villepin and
Chirac have taken positions from which it will be politically difficult to back
down.
But in the face of Washington's anti-French crusade it is doubtful that
Blair, who fully supported Bush's war but is now politically embattled at home
because of that support, would openly turn on his powerful Texas partner to join
"Old Europe" in challenging the US During the 20 September summit Blair
indicated some willingness to accept some of Chirac's and Schroeder's concerns,
hoping to reclaim a central position within Europe. The likely result will be
acceptance of a compromise resolution heavy on face-saving for both sides.
In the end, such a compromise is dangerously likely to maintain the essence
of Washington's original demands: that the Security Council endorse, and that
UN member states be urged to provide money and troops to bolster Washington's
occupation of Iraq under unchallenged US command.
Bush's decision to return to the UN for military and financial assistance
does not reflect any US concern regarding the illegality of the occupation, the
lack of legitimacy of the US presence in Iraq, or the impact on Iraqis of
Washington's abject failure to provide for even the minimal humanitarian needs
of the population. Instead, it reflects a growing concern about how to deal
with what the New York Times called the "high cost of occupation" for the US
in Iraq - costs both in US soldiers' lives and in dollars.
The high price in dollars is already being paid by US taxpayers even as the
administration submits a new request of $87 billion of which $65 billion is
to cover US fighting costs. Only $15 billion is budgeted for Iraq's
reconstruction, plus $5 billion to rebuild Iraq's military under Pentagon tutelage.
(Only $2 billion is budgeted for reconstruction of devastated Afghanistan.) The
new request follows the $79 billion dollars released in April 2003, with
current spending at just under $1 billion per week to sustain the US military's
occupation of Iraq. The beneficiaries are corporations close to the Bush
administration, notably Halliburton and Bechtel, which are earning billions of
dollars.
The high price in lives is being paid by US troops, those staffing
checkpoints with jittery trigger-fingers and those assigned to state-building duties
for which they have no training. An even higher price is being paid by Iraqi
translators and other Iraqis working with and for the US occupation
authorities, and by UN humanitarian staff who are perceived as working under or as part
of the US occupation structure. The highest price in lives, of course, is
paid by Iraqi civilians. They are dying at US occupation checkpoints and as
"collateral damage" in armed attacks by US troops, dying in more than 600
gunshot killings each month in an unprecedented crime wave, and dying as a result
of the continuing lack of sufficient clean water, electricity, and medical
care.
The US wants a UN-endorsed multilateral military force to participate in
the occupation force in Iraq. It would function as a separate, parallel force
with a separate command structure, but the commander would be an American. US
officials make clear their intention that the multilateral force would operate
under the Pentagon's strategic control, and Russia has indicated it would not
oppose such a force being created under US command. There is a history of
this kind of US control of UN peacekeeping operations through imposing a US
general or admiral as "UN commander". This was US practice during the
Clinton administration in Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere.
But what is unprecedented is that the plan does not envision Washington even
pretending to share authority and decision-making with the UN itself or with
the governments sending contingents of soldiers. And the proposal certainly
rejects the French call for Washington to end its occupation and turn over full
authority to the UN for a brief period to oversee a rapid (perhaps as short as
one month) return to Iraqi independence and sovereignty.
A number of countries, facing intense US pressure, might be prepared to
send troops with a new UN resolution providing even a vague international
imprimatur. Countries eager for Washington's largesse and/or for a place on the
international stage are already sending token forces; Ulan Bataar's newspapers are
gloating over Mongolia's tiny contingent of 200 troops. US officials have
actually described the possibility of a new UN resolution to provide "political
cover" for governments wanting to participate but restrained by domestic
public opposition. In the meantime, a number of countries are under fierce
bilateral pressure from Washington to send significant numbers of troops to seriously
bolster and/or replace some of the Pentagon's soldiers. They include
Pakistan, Turkey and South Korea.
The new UN resolution also encourages other countries to contribute funds, as
well as troops, to the US occupation. A donors conference is scheduled for
late October in Spain, a key US ally. If a UN resolution is passed before
that date with little acrimony in the Security Council, it is likely significant
new amounts of financial support will be forthcoming.
The willingness of Security Council members to stand defiant of US pressure
will ultimately depend on public pressure brought to bear on those
governments both at home and from global civil society, as well as on backing from other
members of the United Nations. Brazil and Argentina could play a key role in
backing new Chilean and Mexican resistance in the Council; South African
support would be vital for Angola, Cameroon and Guinea to continue to stand up to
Washington; the Organization of the Islamic Conference could provide key
backing for Pakistan. At the end of the day, governments will have to be forced to
learn the lesson of Cancún and of the 8 ½ month "defiance campaign" in the
Security Council - the lesson that the governments of even poor countries can, if
backed by a broad social movement, defy the world's new empire, and the sky
will not fall down. And the lesson that in fact such defiance will again
strengthen democracy in those countries willing to take the chance. And those are
lessons only a mobilized global movement can teach.
So What Should Be Done?
1) We should oppose any new UN resolution aimed at providing more legitimacy
for the US-UK occupation of Iraq. The UN should not endorse, and countries
should not send troops or funds, to maintain or strengthen or
"internationalize" Washington's occupation. We should demand that the UN return to its
earlier position in which for 8 ½ months the Council stood defiant of the Bush
administration to defend its Charter mandate to "prevent the scourge of war". That
period, in which the UN was part of the international mobilization for peace,
represented the global organization's most "relevant" and most democratic
moment.
2) Only after the US-UK occupation has ended should the United Nations,
including a UN-commanded multilateral peacekeeping force, return to Iraq. Their
mandate should be for a very short and defined period, with the goal of
assisting Iraq in reconstruction and overseeing election of a governing authority.
The UN political leadership should vocally oppose the US demand that the
global organization return to Iraq under the authority of the US occupation.
3) As belligerent powers who initiated the war, and as occupying powers, the
US and the UK are obligated to provide for the humanitarian needs of the
Iraqi people. While their military occupation should be ended immediately,
Washington and London remain obligated to pay the continuing costs of Iraq's
reconstruction, including the bulk of the cost of UN humanitarian and peacekeeping
deployments. The US should immediately make public a realistic estimate for
the full cost of reconstruction in Iraq. Washington should reverse the spending
priorities of its $87 billion request from Congress, and turn over to full UN
authority a starting grant of at least $75 billion (the initial amount spent
on waging the war) for reconstruction in Iraq. The $15 billion (out of the $87
billion) requested by the Bush administration for Iraqi reconstruction is
insufficient to meet Washington's obligations under international law. These
funds should not come from ordinary taxpayers, but should be raised from an excess
profits tax on corporations benefiting from the war and post-war
privatization in Iraq, as well as from the Pentagon budget lines initially directed at
continuing war in Iraq.
4) The General Assembly should reassert its power as the UN's most democratic
agency to take an explicit position calling for an end to the US
occupation, and to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice
on the legality of "preemptive war". Such an effort will require international
mobilization by global civil society demanding that the UN, and especially the
General Assembly, play a central role in challenging the US drive towards
empire.
5) Real reform of the United Nations should return to the top of the global
agenda. Those reforms include democratization (through expansion of the
Security Council, ending the veto power, and expanding power of the General
Assembly), transparency, and creation of an oversight agency to monitor the Security
Council for violations of the UN Charter in its decisions. The US should use
this moment to reverse its longstanding opposition to the creation of a
standing UN-controlled rapid-reaction military force, beginning with reconstituting
the UN Charter-mandated Military Staff Committee.
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