Stardate 20021017.1654

(On Screen): I confess that I'm becoming very confused about the Bush administration's interactions with the UN. I know what I myself would like to see done, but as Dan Hartung pointed out to me, there's a good reason I'm not in the diplomatic corps.

To some extent, what I think is going on is that our military preparations are not mature, and we couldn't actually begin the offensive yet even if we wanted to. If so, then spending a while wrangling in the UN represents a reasonable smoke screen to buy more time for the buildup. So just as with the "indecision and confusion" we seemed to see a few months ago, this may all be distraction, the magician's smoke and mirrors.

Another possibility is that UN approval actually has become politically necessary in order to secure the cooperation of certain nations in the coalition we'll need to form for the war. Not Europe, of course; we don't need them and probably don't want them along. But both Kuwait and Qatar, whose cooperation is essential, have been announcing that they might not permit their territory to be used unless there was UN approval.

Well, sort of. The signals have been mixed, and it's always dangerous to assume that the public announcements about these kinds of thing actually have anything to do with the real policies that the nations have adopted. There's a good chance that the public positions on this announced by both nations are in part attempts to avoid inflaming their radicals, and in part attempts to avoid a preemptive nuclear SCUD strike before we're ready to go.

But it may be that those governments need the political cover of a UNSC resolution, even though we really don't.

There's a whole lot of double-think going on out there. There are a hell of a lot of people who'd really like to see Saddam vanish and Iraq be defanged, but they're not sure they like the alternative much better, when the US demonstrates yet again its overwhelming military power projected far from home, and in any case they don't feel safe in publicly supporting any effort against Iraq until after it's a success. So you had a line at the UN podium yesterday of corrupt third-world autocracies, each waiting for their turn to make speeches opposing any attack on Iraq. It's not because they have any love for Saddam but because they're afraid that they, too, may eventually come into our crosshairs, not to mention coming into Saddam's crosshairs. (Denouncing America surpasses soccer as the world's most popular spectator sport, because it's very safe and a lot of fun. There's little danger of rogue American terrorists retaliating.)

France is taking this opportunity to glory in the exercise of its last remaining vestige of international significance so as to deceive itself into thinking that it actually still matters, while at the same time trying to bargain in hopes of avoiding titanic economic losses when investments in Iraq by French companies go up in smoke.

All of that is completely understandable. I just don't understand why Bush is playing along with it all. He's been making "our patience will eventually run out" noises, but at the same time it looks as if concessions are being made.

What I'm beginning to suspect is that the Bush administration may have decided that it's time to let our ideological enemies (like France) win one to mollify them, as long as it can be done in a way which has no real significance. Given that the Bush administration now has the ability at any time to kiss off the UN entirely and move if it becomes necessary, then as long as we're marking time anyway, there's little danger in this.

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