Bush Now Desperately Needs UN Help

by Jim Lobe

Will the administration have to give up significant control over the political and rebuilding process in Iraq in order to get what it wants: a major infusion of foreign troops and international economic aid?

Or will it be able to continue running the show, as implicitly suggested by the draft resolution that Washington began circulating to Council members this week?

Early returns indicate that the Council will now become the focus of intense and possibly protracted negotiations on this question. Germany and France, which wields a veto on the Council, have already denounced the proposal submitted by Secretary of State Colin Powell as inadequate.

The administration itself remains deeply divided on what it is prepared to give up.

Powell and the State Department have long argued for a strong UN role in post-war Iraq, which, unlike the neo-conservative hawks in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, they do not see as the staging base for "remaking" the entire Muslim Middle East.

For now, Powell is insisting that the resolution should permit Washington to exercise a "dominant" role in Iraq, although his main concern is that all occupation security forces should come under a unified U.S. command similar to the one that applies to UN forces in Korea.

The State Department is less concerned about sharing power with the UN on matters dealing with Iraq's political evolution and economic reconstruction.

The hawks, on the other hand, have seen virtually any substantive UN involvement in Iraq as a potentially disastrous obstacle to their ambitions not only for practicing "regime change" in Syria, Iran, and possibly Saudi Arabia, but also for being able to retain U.S. military bases on Iraqi territory, now that Washington has substantially drawn down its forces in the Saudi kingdom.

In an editorial titled 'Wobbly on Iraq?' Thursday, the staunchly neo-con 'Wall Street Journal' put the best gloss on these considerations when it warned that the administration's goals "to de-Baathify the country and put war criminals on trial" in Iraq are unlikely to be favored by the French and the Russians.

"If they insist on gaining influence in Baghdad as the price of a new UN resolution, Mr. Bush will have to risk their veto," the Journal said.

It stressed that the only acceptable UN resolution should be a "fig leaf" for continued U.S. control that will nonetheless persuade India, Pakistan and Turkey to send the tens of thousands of troops the administration wants to bolster occupation forces.

Those countries have insisted that they will only consider contributing troops if the Security Council approves a new resolution, although they have not detailed the provisions -- including those regarding UN control -- that would have to be included in the resolution for them to participate.

Participation by the more-experienced and better-equipped military forces of France, Germany, and several other key NATO allies will almost certainly be contingent on a resolution similar to the one passed by the Security Council with regard to Kosovo in 1999.

It gave political authority to a UN civil administrator while leaving military and security operations in NATO's full control. But instead of NATO, Washington's European allies are considered likely to acquiesce to a U.S. general retaining command of occupation military forces.

Will such a resolution be acceptable to the Bush administration?

Powell clearly favours the idea, and the Kosovo model has been explicitly evoked by U.S. diplomats in informal consultations with their foreign counterparts in recent days, according to sources. Britain also reportedly believes such a solution might be the best that can be achieved.

As indicated by the Journal's editorial, the hard-liners, not surprisingly, oppose such a solution.

But as a result of the increasingly bad news coming out of Iraq, they find themselves in a very weak position, a point made forcefully in a 'Washington Post' article Thursday, which noted that a new coalition between the uniformed military leadership and Powell has formed within the administration, tilting the balance of power against the hawks.

The article stressed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally report only through the Secretary of Defense, have established an independent line to Powell in recent weeks to circumvent the Pentagon's civilian leadership.

Long skeptical of the hawks' optimism about the plans for post-war Iraq, the uniformed military appears to have moved toward open revolt against Rumsfeld and chief deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith.

The reasons are clear. U.S. soldiers are still getting killed at the rate of at least one every other day, while, according to another Post report published Wednesday, "almost 10 American troops a day (are) now being officially declared 'wounded in action.'"

Worse, the military has long known what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported earlier this week: the current troop presence in and around Iraq -- about 180,000 soldiers -- will be unsustainable in two months' time unless Washington recruits a bigger army, reduces its commitments elsewhere, or changes the rotation rules for its troops in ways that would discourage re-enlistments and recruitment.

In other words, the military concluded that unless the occupation becomes much more international, the Iraq situation spells institutional disaster.

But it was not only the military's alignment behind Powell that brought Bush around. Karl Rove, his veteran chief political adviser, has also backed up Powell, reportedly warning that the bad news from Iraq could well prove fatal to the president's chances for being re-elected 14 months from now.

This week's latest estimates of how much the administration will need to run Iraq -- at least $65 billion for fiscal 2004 -- have added to the clamor among lawmakers returning from the August recess for Washington to bring in the United Nations. Given these considerations, it is not clear what bargaining chips the hawks have as negotiations begin over the terms of a new resolution.

It appears that the world body -- so disregarded and disdained by Bush and the hawks just three months ago -- can name its price.