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The Roller Coaster of Relevance
The Security Council, Europe and the US War in Iraq
Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies, 29 July 2004
In February 2003, as Colin Powell prepared for the Bush administration's last attempt to pressure the United Nations to endorse war in Iraq, US diplomats ordered that the massive Guernica outside the Security Council chamber be covered with a blue cloth. Picasso's anti-war masterpiece was simply unacceptable as a backdrop to Washington's efforts to mobilize international support for war.
When the UN Security Council, led by two of its three key European members, stood defiant against Washington's drive towards war from September 2002 to May 2003, President George Bush failed to win international legitimacy for the Iraq invasion. The Bush administration spurned the global body as "irrelevant." But throughout those eight months the Council, and the UN as a whole, commanded more importance, more influence and ultimately more relevance than perhaps ever in their history.
Diplomatic Waterloo
The divisions between the United States and what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disdained as "old Europe" were spun out within the Security Council before a global audience. The fight put the UN itself at center stage as both venue and player in the tense trans-Atlantic contention. In that context, powerful European opposition to the US war made it possible for the United Nations - with the Security Council at its heart - to play the role assigned to it in Article 1, Section 1 of the UN Charter: "to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."
Given that UN arms inspectors were by that time working largely unobstructed in Iraq, what emerged from the stand-off was the harsh reality that the "acts of aggression" requiring a response were actually those of the US government, which was preparing to launch a preventive unilateral invasion of Iraq, explicitly without Security Council approval. It was clear that leading European countries, in and out of the Council, viewed the threat of US unilateral militarism as an equal, or even greater global threat than that ostensibly posed by Saddam Hussein's putative weapons of mass destruction. And they understood that averting such real threats lay at the heart of the UN Charter's call for "effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace."
In other words, it was supremely appropriate that European and other opponents of a US invasion of Iraq claimed the Security Council as both vehicle and venue for challenging Washington's "threat to peace." The resulting row split the Council, with the US and Britain backed by Bulgaria and soon-to-be-replaced Aznar's Spain, facing off against their French, German, Russian, Chinese and Syrian opponents backed by the "Uncommitted Six."
Over the succeeding months, the European-led opposition empowered the Council to show new strength in defending the legitimacy and centrality of the United Nations against Washington's insistence on what it called "coalitions of the willing." By providing protection to the poorer, weaker Uncommitted Six, France and Germany strengthened the linkage between the permanent Council members and the non-permanent member states that are often sidelined by big-power maneuvers. This helped embolden small country governments to take a stand based on principle and the popular will of their peoples, rather than submitting to the demands of the global superpower. And crucially, the European opposition helped amplify the voice of what the New York Times called "the second super-power" - civil society and global public opinion.
If there were to be a battle between those super-powers, the United Nations was going to claim its place - and it wouldn't be on Washington's side.
The United Nations and the "Coalition of the Willing"
Given US propensity for reliance on military might, and the Bush administration's particular preference for unilateral action as a governing principle, it was not surprising that the US quickly asserted its willingness to completely bypass the UN if it did not join the anti-Iraq crusade on Washington's terms. And given Europe's much more consistent history (at least in recent years) of relying on international law and diplomacy as the key political instruments of politics, it is not surprising that key European governments quickly took the side of defending United Nations centrality in decision-making over war and peace.
On both sides of the Atlantic, challenges lay in the relationship between governmental positions and public opinion. In the US, public sentiment was divided, with opposition rooted in a growing rejection of Bush administration extremism and recklessness. The shifting levels of support for the coming war were largely the result of Bush administration fear tactics regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and its repeatedly asserted links between Iraq and the September 11th attacks. Largely unchallenged in the media, the most dire innuendo of the Bush administration left Americans not only believing in the necessity of the war, but believing such outlandish notions as Iraqi responsibility for the World Trade Center attacks (almost 70% at one point) and that most of the 9/11 hijackers were actually Iraqi.
By contrast, European opposition to the war was broad and deep, extensively covered in the media, and fiercest in those countries whose governments - particularly Britain and Spain - emerged as junior partners in Bush's war. So from the start the significance of the "Old Europe-New Europe" split was primarily over whether ostensibly democratic European governments stood with their peoples or against. It was that difference in the commitment to democratic accountability, as much as the particularities of how close each government was to the Bush-Blair axis, that shaped the inter-European divide.
So when the US announced its intention to abandon even the pretense of winning Security Council endorsement and instead to create a "coalition of the willing," it was governments of "old Europe," backed by popular sentiment and active public political mobilization in all of Europe, that posed the strongest challenge.
The concept of a "coalition of the willing" actually emerged first within an earlier UN context. In 1990, under then-unprecedented US pressure, the Security Council authorized the first US war against Iraq, but rather than committing UN forces, it instead approved a "Coalition of the Willing" of sorts, controlled by the United States. In fact, Council resolution 678, in a deliberate but nonetheless outrageously misleading phrase, grants permission to go to war not to the US but to "Member States cooperating with the Government of Kuwait."
This time it was different. The Bush Junior administration had no intention of following the lead of the former President Bush in insisting on UN authorization as a precondition. As a result, the US-UK "coalition" was created without international legitimacy.
On the eve of war, in late February 2003, the Bush administration still refused to issue an official list of its coalition "partners." The reason was clear. Governmental backing for the war in almost all coalition countries, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, clashed with widespread popular opposition. About 34 countries were cited in various press reports as endorsing the US position; of those, 22 were in Europe . Bush officials claimed that this represented strong multilateral support, highlighting the European role, but it is worth pointing out that the European nations whose governments officially supported the US war represent only about 4.3 percent of the population of the world. Subtracting the average 75 percent of their populations that opinion polls show opposed the war (although most European public opposition polled even higher than 75%), the war supporters in the "European Coalition of the Willing" make up just over 1 percent of the world's population.
What was particularly telling was the reluctance of most of the supposedly "willing" governments to even tell their own people they were backing Washington's war. US officials admitted that they would not issue a definitive list in deference to the political pressures facing their partners at home. A few European nations, including Hungary and the Netherlands, allowed their names to be placed on the coalition list, but simultaneously reassured their citizens that they would not actually support the military action in any substantive way.
And outside of the reluctantly willing - who should perhaps more appropriately be deemed the "Coalition of the Coerced" - EU anchors France and Germany opposed the legitimacy of such a coalition as undermining the centrality of the Security Council. Certainly there was more than a hint of opportunism in their stand; both had accepted the US maneuvers on Kosovo, when ostensible fear of a Russian veto in the Council led the US to seek authorization from NATO instead of the UN. But it was clear that Bush's European opponents rejected the notion that a unilaterally created "coalition" could somehow enjoy the credibility or legitimacy of the Charter-mandated UN Security Council.
As a result, Paris and Berlin found themselves emerging in the eyes of the world as defenders of United Nations centrality and legitimacy - in direct contradiction to George Bush's proclaimed "irrelevance" of the UN.
The Security Council as Defender of Defiant Governments
The split between the European powers and the US set the stage for the Europeans - especially France and Germany - to play the role of protector for the smaller, weaker Council members who chose to defy Washington's war drive or who refused to take a position. That role was less relevant regarding the expected opposition from Syria, the sole Arab country on the Council. But it was a significant factor in the willingness of the Uncommitted Six to maintain their defiance. Although the US withdrew its proposed resolution endorsing war rather than risk Council defeat, the refusal of the Six (insultingly dubbed the "Six-Pack" by western pundits) to give in to US pressure emerged as an unprecedented and highly symbolic act of resistance.
The six - Mexico and Chile, plus the impoverished, weak governments of Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea - risked potentially dire consequences. Refusing to acquiesce to US threats could mean the loss of desperately needed economic assistance, trade and tariff arrangements, or deals on issues such as immigration and human rights. All of those countries, some of them small, some of them desperately poor, all of them thoroughly dependent on US aid, trade and other support, were certainly recalling the Yemen precedent at the UN as they examined their options. In 1990, during the run-up to that Gulf War, the US was determined to obtain Security Council authority for war. Only two countries voted against resolution 678 that provided that authorization, Cuba and Yemen. The only Arab country on the Council, Yemen clearly could not endorse a US invasion of another Arab state. Yemen voted no, and no sooner had Ambassador Abdullah al-Ashtal put down his hand, there was a US diplomat at his side who said "that will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." The remark was picked up on a UN microphone, and broadcast around the world. Sure enough, three days later the US cut its entire aid budget to Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world.
Twelve years later, memory of the Yemen precedent still hovered over the UN. Cameroon and Guinea, two of the poorest of the Council hold-outs, were receiving significant US aid and trade advantages under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The law held a Sword of Damocles over recipients, with specific language prohibiting them from engaging in "activities contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests." Of course there was no clarifying language defining such activities - but it had an impact nonetheless. In October 2002, when the Council was first debating the US resolution on Iraq arms inspections, the ambassador of Mauritius (which preceded Guinea on the Council) was recalled to his capital to be told in no uncertain terms that he needed to show more enthusiasm in his endorsement of the US position. Why? His foreign minister was taking no chances on losing AGOA support.
And yet, partly because of the economic and strategic protection of France and Germany as well as that provided by the global popular opposition to the US war, the Six still refused to cave in either to political self-censorship or direct US pressure. Chile, whose post-Pinochet Socialist government maintained a strong commitment to international law and the United Nations, had negotiated for nine years with the US on a free trade agreement. All that remained was ratification, and the White House trade representative had agreed to bring it to Congress in January 2003. By mid-March, with pressures mounting on Chile to vote for the US-UK resolution for war, it was clear that withholding the agreement, preventing ratification, was the key weapon in Washington's diplomatic arsenal against Chile, and yet Chile's government stood firm. In Mexico, President Vicente Fox had been elected on the promise of better trade arrangements as well as a new immigration deal to protect the 3.5 million Mexicans living in the US without legal documents. Domestic pressure mounted as farmers demanded that Fox obtain US concessions on agriculture trade issues. But Mexico, like Chile, bolstered by their European allies as well as strong public support, refused to give in to the pressure.
In Pakistan, the US had imposed sanctions after the 1999 military coup that brought General Musharraf to power; since September 11, with the Bush administration eager to gain Islamabad's backing for the 'war on terror' in and around Pakistan itself, Washington lifted most of those sanctions. Pakistan's government, rarely concerned with the views of its huge population but very worried about rising opposition within its own military, wobbled but ultimately stood firm against US pressures, including the threat of renewed sanctions. And Angola, long the victim of a crippling Cold War-era war pitting the government against the US-backed UNITA rebel movement, remained an outcast from Washington's diplomacy. Normalizing relations with the US, and gaining coveted access to some level of US assistance, had moved tantalizingly close for Angola, and Luanda's refusal to accept the US position was all the more remarkable because of the clear threat that such relations would be withheld again.
Perhaps most remarkably, the Six largely got away with their defiance. Aside from some symbolic punishments (ratification of Chile's free trade agreement was delayed until Santiago replaced their outspoken UN ambassador, for example) none of the dire consequences came to pass.
The US Undermines the Rest of the Council
One day before the December 8, 2002, deadline set for Iraq to provide documentation for its claims of having destroyed its illegal weapons programs, Iraq submitted to the Council a massive 12,000-page inventory of its chemical, biological and nuclear facilities, including all civilian production. Its presentation quickly fueled major controversies between the US and the Security Council.
As required by Council Resolution 1441, Iraq provided what Baghdad called a "full and accurate" accounting of its WMD programs and materials. But in an extraordinary hijacking of UN authority, only the US, of all the Council members, actually got the full text. The Iraqis provided two complete sets of the documents, one for the UN arms inspection agencies (the nuclear section destined for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and the chemical and biological sections for UNMOVIC at UN headquarters in New York) and one for the Security Council. The Council had agreed, unwillingly and under enormous US pressure, that only the five permanent members, all official nuclear weapons states, would receive copies of the entire document, while the ten elected members of the Council would receive edited versions, with the "how to build a nuclear bomb" material excised. Several countries, including Norway and Syria, expressed sharp disagreement to this two-tier approach to Council members, but accepted it.
However, when the document was actually handed over to the Council, the rotating president, the ambassador of Colombia, went even further. What happened next had little to do with Security Council decisions and everything to do with US power. During December 2002 Colombia (which had preceded Mexico on the Council) was serving as president of the Security Council. Just before Iraq was due to submit its declaration, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had visited Bogota, offering a huge increase, reportedly seven hundred million dollars, in long-promised military aid. Two days later, when the UN inspectors presented Colombia's ambassador with the enormous pile of documents and CD-ROMs at UN headquarters in New York on behalf of the Council, he immediately turned them over to a waiting US diplomat. The dossier was whisked off to a waiting helicopter, and ferried to Washington DC "for copying" before even the other four permanent members were able to see it. As a result, the US had sole and secret access to the documents for an entire day.
Twenty-four hours later, Russia, France, China and the UK received what they were told were exact copies of the dossier. More than a week later, the ten non-permanent Council members received their documents - now reduced from 12,000 pages to just over 3,000. A leak in the German daily die Tageszeitung of some of the thousands of pages that Washington deleted from Iraq's arms declaration provided further information. The deleted sections had little to do with how-to information on building nuclear weapons. But they documented 24 US corporations, 55 US subsidiaries of foreign corporations, as well as several US government agencies, that had provided parts, material, training and other kinds of aid to Iraq's chemical, biological, missile, and nuclear weapons programs throughout the 1970s and 80s, some continuing till the end of 1990. The US corporations include Honeywell, Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, Bechtel, and more. US government Departments of Energy, Commerce, Defense and Agriculture; federal laboratories at Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore were also involved. Extensive documentation of European involvement in the programs, particularly German and British, as well as Chinese and others, was deleted as well.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the US seizure of the document "unfortunate" and "wrong." Off the record Council ambassadors were furious. The US move represented one of the most egregious examples in history of US domination of the UN by its own power to bribe, threaten and punish.
The split between the US and the rest of the Council -particularly with the European opposition - deepened.
The Security Souncil and the Second Super-Power
The third part of the triad challenging the US drive towards war, along with the defiant governments and the United Nations, was the energized, mobilized, impassioned civil society that emerged in countries across the globe to challenge the US war. In almost all of those countries, demands that the UN - specifically UN arms inspection agencies - be allowed to finish its work in Iraq were on top of the protesters' agendas.
But this civil society movement was not simply about protests in the streets. The demonstrations were the most visible component of a vast, only partly-coordinated set of campaigns in virtually every country that included parliamentary challenges, passage of "cities for peace" resolutions, deep religious opposition, lively student and youth activism, and more. In "old" Europe, unlike in the US, the scale of protest was mirrored by government positions matching that of the protesters. Across the US, as well as in Britain, Spain and elsewhere in "new" Europe, there was popular outrage at the refusal of governments to even acknowledge, let alone pay heed to the massive opposition.
And in much of the world the protesters shared with their governments a commitment to making the United Nations - as assigned by international law, by history, and by its Charter - the lead actor in protecting peace. As the weeks and months went by Bush's war remained the target of a huge and rapidly expanding global opposition movement. Hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters continued to fill the streets, particularly in the capitals whose support was most crucial to White House and Pentagon war plans - Turkey, the Philippines, Pakistan, Egypt, as well as Britain, Spain, and across Europe old and new
It was not acceptable, said civil society, for the UN to be turned into a mechanism to provide legitimation for an illegitimate war. That view was expressed at the highest European levels as well. In the fall a tri-partite meeting of France, Germany and Russia had attempted to present a united front against the looming war and in defense of the United Nations. The meeting failed to persuade Washington, by then already clearly committed to its build-up towards war.
Throughout the winter the US escalated its pressure on Council members to pass a new resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq. By the time the Council convened on February 14, 2003 to hear the report of the UN inspectors, many expected the US to get its way. (While the Bush ideologues continued their disparagement of any UN involvement, they had agreed to go through the motions largely because of Tony Blair's desperate need for UN endorsement to protect his political future.)
Instead of backing the US position, though, the inspectors provided generally positive reports of Iraqi compliance. In the discussion that followed, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin took up civil society's warning against Washington's abuse of the United Nations. Diplomats across the Council chamber greeted his statement that the UN "should be an instrument of peace, and not a tool for war" with an unprecedented thunderous ovation.
The following day saw the biggest, most unified global protest movement in history. In cities around the world, ten to thirteen million protesters took to the street to voice opposition to war. In Europe, the biggest crowds filled the streets of London and Madrid, where government support of Bush's war affronted overwhelming majorities of public opinion. And in all those demonstrations, in all those cities around the world, speaker after speaker called on the United Nations to stand firm, urged the Security Council to resist US pressure, praised the Uncommitted Six for becoming democratic, and embraced the Council's European opponents of war.
Early that morning, even as the New York protesters who would eventually number half a million were gathering outside the United Nations, a small group passed through police lines to UN headquarters. Led by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, they went to meet with Secretary General Kofi Annan. The two African statesmen, both Nobel peace laureates, faced each other across a table. Bishop Tutu began with the words, "we are here on behalf of the people marching in 665 cities around the world. And we are here to tell you that those people marching in those 665 cities claim the United Nations as our own, we claim it as part of our global mobilization for peace."
It was in reaction to those massive demonstrations that the New York Times published its now endlessly-quoted reference to the world's "second super-power." And it was clear which of the two claimed the United Nations.
Before Iraq
Certainly the divide between Europe and the US existed long before the demonstrations of February 15, 2003, long before the Security Council split over Iraq, long before September 11th. But the Euro-American divide took a much more central role in global affairs when the Bush administration came into office in January 2001.
Bush had inveighed against "nation-building" during his campaign, condemning US participation in Balkan peacekeeping and hinting at a unilateral withdrawal from Bosnia and/or Kosovo. Europe was not amused. Some of the new administration's earliest foreign policy prescriptions further antagonized key European allies - especially its high-handed withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and its announced abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, long viewed as the linchpin of the global arms control regime. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) fell completely off the agenda. Bush's announced "un-signing" of the International Criminal Court treaty was understood in Europe as a direct slap in the face. European anger towards US arrogance rose, and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman described how "America is referred to as a 'rogue state' in Europe now as often as Iraq."
But by the spring of 2001 European and international unease made possible the beginning of an international, rather than solely French, challenge to post-Cold War US power. The clearest indication of a new mood popped up on May 3 at the United Nations, when western European nations orchestrated a vote to boot the US off the Human Rights Commission. That same day, Washington also lost its seat on the International Narcotics Control Board that it had held for two terms.
Human rights were only part of the problem, but that issue sharpened international anger on a host of other examples of US unilateralism and hypocrisy. European diplomats explaining the Human Rights Commission vote pointed to the US imposition of the death penalty; its refusal to sign or ratify numerous treaties and conventions including those guaranteeing the rights of women and children, land mine prohibitions, the ICC, Kyoto, and more.
The willingness of most of Europe to stand up to the US on the human rights commission gave some additional hope to the idea that the United Nations could serve as a venue of European challenge. In late March 2001 the New York Times editorialized a warning. "Europe may seem like familiar territory to Bush administration officials, many of whom dealt with the continent during the cold war years when European leaders were more deferential to Washington's wishes than they are now. Administration policy makers must adjust their thinking to Europe's new mood or risk conflicts over the environment, arms control, NATO and trade." When the president travelled to Europe for his first outing as leader of the Atlantic alliance, Europe was largely unimpressed. The Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, then president of the European Union, praised the EU as "one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination."
Europe continued to challenge the US, during new crises involving germ warfare treaties, control of NATO, and the contentious UN conference against racism in South Africa. But then came September 11th, and Europe's growing criticism came to a screeching halt. Only the threat of war in Iraq would reinvigorate the Euro-US divide.
The Roller Coaster Ride
The eight and one-half months of European-led Security Council defiance of the US drive towards war in Iraq collapsed in May 2003. US pressure finally succeeded, and the Council passed Resolution 1483. While not endorsing the US invasion of Iraq, 1483 arguably came pretty close to granting the post-war occupation a kind of legal status. What it did not confer was legitimacy, and even with the official re-embrace of US "leadership" in the Council, tensions between many European countries and the US continued.
France and Germany attempted to rebuild their bilateral ties with the US even while keeping their distance from the Iraq war. The centrality of the UN in global consciousness declined. The no-longer-uncommitted Six were eager to restore their positions in Washington's pantheon. The Council itself was hardly any longer a player, and some attention shifted to the General Assembly where a few countries were considering a campaign to reclaim UN decision-making for that body, rather than the less democratic Council.
US-European relations remained strained. An EU poll in November indicated that 53% of Europeans identified the US in a three-way tie with Iran and North Korea as the second greatest threat to world peace. And the possibility of rebuilding US-European ties while maintaining the centrality and relevance of the Security Council seemed out of reach.
Lessons
The Council split over Iraq in fact represented a healthy and necessary development. In the EU countries that challenged the US war, that opposition strengthened democracy and accountability, and showed the global power of joint European action (even if not all EU countries were involved). The defeat of Aznar's government in Spanish elections in March 2004, rejecting his embrace of Bush and Blair and reclaiming their democracy in the wake of the horrific attack on the Madrid train system, further boosted Europe's democracy. And the unity of opposition provided a new model for smaller, weaker, poorer countries to stand up to powerful pressures when backed by stronger allies - a model already seen at work at the World Trade Organization summit in Cancún, when the poorest developing countries, backed by third world power-houses Brazil, India, Argentina, South Africa, brought the WTO's agenda to a halt. It set the terms for closer ties between a mobilized global civil society and the United Nations, joined by a shared commitment to stopping war. And it provided the Council itself with a chance to reclaim its mission and redefine the parameters of global power.
Europeans - Old and New - remain ambivalent about how to deal with US power in the Security Council and in the broader trans-Atlantic relationship. Some leading EU governments appear eager to "put behind us" the messy unpleasantness of the dust-up with Washington over Iraq. But the problem remains that European governments gain popular support at home when they join their publics in resisting US moves towards preventive war - so European democracy is strengthened. And they lose that popular support when they move to re-embrace the United States - and Europe's democratic accountability pays the price.
For the Security Council, the lesson of the Iraq schism must be to recognize that its significance in world affairs - its relevance - is directly tied to its independence from the unilateral power trajectory of the United States. The goal cannot be simply to achieve trans-Atlantic unity within the Council, with Europe hoping for a few left-over crumbs of the perquisites of US power. When the Council serves as a venue of European challenge to that power, it can provide protection to its permanent and non-permanent member governments, it can gain strength by building links between the UN and global civil society, it can defend the very centrality of the United Nations so threatened by US unilateralism.
The stakes have never been higher. Do we face a future of permanent preventive war, or a world based on international law? Leading EU governments - those willing to stand with their publics to oppose the US drive towards unilateral domination - can help create an empowered Security Council, able to recast global power away from reliance on nuclear arsenals and corporate treasuries, and instead towards a recognition of the role of the United Nations and international legality as the centerpieces of peaceful relations among nations. And just maybe, those same European countries can help the Council find its place within the second super-power, joining the United Nations to willingly defiant governments and mobilized global civil society, in an internationalist challenge to the juggernaut of unilateral US power.
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