Bush Rediscovers the UN, by L'Express correspondent Philippe Coste
The American President calls for the UN to play a role in Iraq. A Poisoned Present?
Times change. George W. Bush, who hoped to savor a solo victory, now finds himself forced to share the burden of the Iraqi calamity. He explained his position on September 7 in a televised speech calling for the UN to shoulder part of the load and to forget the disagreements of yesterday. The succession of attacks against American troops and their allies in Iraq have produced a return of diplomacy, if not exactly true belief, or at least tactical necessity. Congress demands today an accounting for the budgetary enlargement of $87 billion called for by the White House. The democratic presidential candidates, finally, look as if they may succeed in whipping up an offensive that makes Iraq -- far from being the lighthouse of democracy in the Middle East -- instead look like the launching pad for a new Jihad.
George Bush is up against a public opinion that is increasingly skeptical about sending, in addition to the 130,000 men already mobilized, 60,000 more soldiers and the payment of the tens of billions that will be required for reconstruction. He has therefore asked his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to obtain "allies" at the UN, a majority of which were hostile to the offensive against Saddam Hussein, who are willing to contribute to the effort today. It remains to be seen with what effect and with whom.
Less than a week before the big parade of heads of state in New York for the UN's general assembly, intense debates among the representatives of the five veto-bearing Security Council members evoke not so much as memories of the psychodramas of last March as, this time, more realistic and pragmatic maneuvering. Certainly, from Dresden, where he met Gerhard Schroeder on September 4, Jacques Chirac has firmly pushed aside the American proposal. Ambassadors have criticized a text that looks like a classic fools' market: the UN offers its international legitimacy, the lives of Indian, Turkish or Bangladeshi soldiers, money from the national treasuries of its member states for infrastructure and reconstruction, against being a mere front for the occupying coalition, deprived of any real responsibility for the political or economic future of the country. No one, nonetheless, has an interest in abandoning the US in Baghdad or in leaving Iraq in irreversible chaos. "It is time to get beyond questions of principle," recommends David Malone, president of the think tank International Peace Academy and former Canadian ambassador to the UN. "A US defeat would return to haunt the West as a whole and even the UN itself."
History, and the White House, seem to be repassing the collection plate to an organization at once reviled by the hawks in Washington and denounced for its incapacity to restrain American bellicosity. If the UN accepts American military leadership in Iraq, it will be because it believes that its political leadership will break the circle of violence, will legitimize local governments, will stabilize the country as a whole, and will make it easier for regional governments in the Middle East -- who remain worried about being accused of colluding with Washington -- to become involved.
A Power Measured by American Concessions
From Cambodia to East Timor, the UN has proved that it can rebuild a nation. For Iraq, the issue depends less on the cost of the operation -- a week of war costs the equivalent of the entire annual budget of the UN's peacekeeping organization -- than on its risks. The attack of August 19th on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, including the death of the UN's special envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 22 others, has sapped both the morale and the unity of the organization. The determination of the General Secretary, Kofi Annan, and of the UN's other high officials, to prevail in Iraq contrasts with the bitterness and fear of in-country humanitarian personnel. "We are a defenseless and weak organization," says one international functionary, "and yet we find ourselves on the front line." On the opposite side, however, the UN fears becoming, as in Somalia, the leading edge of an American military intervention.
In the name of their credibility, and of their diplomatic survival, the UN and its Security Council can't afford to miss the opportunity to bring back the all-powerful America into the fold and to retake some semblance of initiative on the critically important Iraq dossier. But it remains to measure their theoretical power, once more, by the measuring stick of concessions from Washington.
