[Nasional-e] The UN is the way to go

[Ambon]

 The UN is the way to go
  William Pfaff IHT  Wednesday, January 22, 2003



War with Iraq?

NEW YORK Until now, the New York foreign policy community has seemed
persuaded that the war with Iraq is going to be postponed or might even not
take place at all. The obstacles to a military intervention have grown
steadily more complicated and persuasive as U.S. public support for
unilateral attack falls and allied opinion remains overwhelmingly against
it.
.
The Bush administration expresses concern that it is losing the public
relations battle. The UN inspectors' discovery of chemical weapons shells
promoted the argument that the inspections actually are working and should
continue - not what Washington wants to hear.
.
President George W. Bush has made a huge political investment in "regime
change" for Iraq and has launched a costly military buildup that is hard to
suspend and awkward to reverse. But he has thus far shown himself both
unreflective and stubborn in defending his case.
.
Unreflective in that he seems to have failed to grasp that the public in the
United States and abroad needs to be convinced intellectually that a war
would have more positive than negative consequences. He simply repeats that
Saddam Hussein is an awful man, as if his critics were disputing that.
Saddam's actual threat to the United States is asserted but neither
explained nor documented.
.
This lack of clarity about intentions and political strategy is why his
public support has faded and why Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw,
has joined France and Germany in asking for another Security Council debate
and resolution after the chief UN inspectors make their provisional report
next Monday. It is why all the allies have been talking about giving the
inspectors more time, which would postpone any military intervention until
the end of the summer.
.
Washington's failure to make a structured and supported case for
intervention has disquietingly echoed Bush's testy answer to a recent query
about the timing of the war. He said, "I get to decide that." It suggests
that he personally will decide on war and postwar policy according to his
hunches and what he has called his "good instincts."
.
On the consequences of a war, the president's neoconservative supporters
have offered futuristic theories about a transformed region and a
modernizing shock to the Muslim Middle East. They and anonymous
administration officials have given the press proposals for military
government in postwar Iraq, or some form of UN administration, or a new
government by returned exiles or regional leaders, or even for dismembering
the country.
.
But we still have nothing official about the administration's intentions.
The president cannot expect wide international support until he says what,
once Saddam has been driven from power, he intends to do with Iraq - and its
resources, a cause of much current suspicion.
.
The other decisive event affecting the war outlook will be the Israeli
elections next Tuesday. The alliance between the Sharon government and the
Bush administration has driven the policy to overturn Saddam.
.
The Israeli right has seen regional crisis and war as an opportunity to end
what it sees as the threat of an independent Palestinian state. The extreme
right wants expulsion of the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
.
In contrast, the new Labor Party leader, Amram Mitzna, promises unilateral
withdrawal from some Israeli colonies, final agreement on a Palestinian
state or, failing agreement with the Palestinians, physical separation of
the two societies, meaning creation of a permanent frontier.
.
Labor is unlikely to take power, but a coalition including or led by Labor
is a possibility. A rightist coalition, probably more likely, would rest on
an incoherent mix of small parties. Either of these outcomes would end or
undermine the alliance between Israel's expansionist right and the Bush
administration.
.
External pressure on Washington for early action on Iraq would be lifted.
The Bush administration would be left in some confusion, with changed
Israeli priorities, a new balance of political and strategic interests, and
need for a changed rationale for its policy on Palestine.
.
If the UN inspectors' Jan. 27 report fails to sustain the American argument
that an early military intervention is necessary, the United States might
nonetheless go ahead, since Bush has made so dramatic a personal and
political commitment to Iraqi "regime change."
.
In that case he would have little NATO help, no American use of Turkish or
Saudi Arabian bases, no foreign money to pay for the war, and an immense
wave of foreign criticism as well as much domestic dissent.
.
Much as he may dislike it, the Security Council provides the way to go.
.
Tribune Media Services International