Stardate 20030129.1044

(Captain's log): So I've slept on it, now, and I do feel better. I have received a lot of letters (upwards of fifty) in response to my posting last night about the State of the Union Address, and nearly all of them tried to convince me that things weren't as bad as I thought. (Thanks for the support, folks.)

The overwhelming consensus was that the "masterstroke" is actually coming, and that what's going to happen is that Powell is going to go to the UNSC, lay out a lot of evidence, and then ask for a straight up-and-down vote on an authorization for war. One reader pointed out that procedural votes in the Security Council require 9 ayes but are not subject to veto, which means a motion to cut off debate might be possible in a short time ("short" in diplomatic terms, not in computer terms, i.e. a few days). There was actually a report I saw before the SOTU that said that the State Department was already working to draft a new UNSC resolution but that it would not be submitted unless we knew we had nine votes.

If, indeed, that's what happens then I will feel vastly better. And it would also mean we could turn back any attempt to amend. Either that's "procedural" in which case nine votes could prevent it, or it's substantive in which case the US and UK could jointly veto. (I presume that it would be considered substantive.)

I don't think it would be too hard to come up with nine votes. In the long run, the non-veto powers know which side of their bread to butter up, and they know that if the US truly is determined to go to war even without UNSC authorization (which was another consensus point about the SOTU among those who wrote) then opposing us would gain them nothing but make us angry. And several of them are friends anyway, and others would like to be. So I don't see it as being really hard to come up with seven non-veto members to support this to go along with the UK and US, especially if we're willing to do a bit of bribery.

Could that be part of why Bush proposed a huge increase in AIDS spending for Africa? Part of a price to buy votes from Angola, Cameroon and Guinea? If "Africa" is seen as crossing us up in the Security Council, that proposal could become a dead issue. I don't think those three nations will take the chance; it's too nice a carrot hanging out there to ignore just for the chance of tweaking our noses. Bush just bought them.

Chile, Mexico and Spain would definitely side with us. Syria and Germany are presumably definite "no" votes. We'd need either Bulgaria or Pakistan, and I think that Bulgaria is a pretty sure bet; the freed nations of eastern Europe right now are a lot more interested in being friends with the US than with France (and they also feel a lot of gratitude to the US and UK for winning the Cold War; France was not a member of NATO during that critical period having left in 1966 and rejoined in the 1990's). So coming up with nine votes even without Russia looks entirely possible. We might even end up with more than nine, with the possibility of Pakistan or Russia or both.

So it could be true. If we really can rustle up nine votes in the UNSC then we would have the ability to pin France to the wall and force the Chirac government to make a straight public choice of oui or non on whether they support murderous torturing dictators. And both answers badly damage them internationally. If they choose Saddam and veto an authorization for war, we go ahead anyway and France gets to take credit for killing the UN, not to mention for being in favor of whatever horrors in Iraq we uncover once we've won. If they vote for us, Chirac ends up looking spineless. The French rhetoric of recent weeks has painted Chirac into a corner; it may well be yet another case of giving-them-plenty-of-rope.

And no matter how it comes out it then weakens France and Germany within the EU and strengthens the UK and Spain, which is all to the good.

So it all sounds quite plausible. I hope it's true; I hope that this is what happens. But I've lost faith in the subspace crystal ball, because an attack on February 1 also looked damned plausible. I'll wait and see. The wording of the UNSC resolution will tell the tale.

It's noteworthy that Schröder is starting to cover his ass.