This trust has been eroded not simply by Washington’s behavior, heavy-handed though it has been. The other major powers have also been unilateral and incoherent. Consider France, which, in its discomfort with American power, has shattered the EU’s foreign-policy process, weakened NATO, hurt its relations with its Central European allies and permanently set back its relations with Britain–all to avoid endorsing military action against Saddam Hussein. (Another prize for bad diplomacy surely goes to Turkey, which has forgone massive economic aid and good will.)
The basic debate centers now on whether and how to involve the United Nations. Some within the administration–OK, Rumsfeld and Cheney–argue that the United Nations has proved to be bureaucratic and unwieldy in Kosovo and Afghanistan. They urge a short, direct American occupation followed by a handover to Iraqis. They would be happy to have the United Nations bless this enterprise and to work with its relief agencies.
The French and Russians, however, have made it clear that they will not agree to such an arrangement. They have privately told Kofi Annan that they would be willing to have the United Nations involved, but only if it (the U.N. and not the United States) administered the program–as in Kosovo and Afghanistan. So the options on the table appear to be an American occupation or a U.N. occupation.
This is where diplomacy comes in. It is in both sides’ interest to have something in the middle. Marginalizing the United Nations does not help the French and the Russians. It is in their interest that American power is exercised through the United Nations as much as possible. The truth is that in Iraq, America can go it alone. And if the United Nations is bypassed in Iraq, that will not be a good omen for the organization’s future. Other multilateral arrangements will be made–ones in which the French and the Russians will not have vetoes–and the world will go on. This is why Kofi Annan is searching for ways to stay involved.
The administration’s concerns about the United Nations have some merit. It has tended to be slow in empowering people on the ground in Kosovo. Afghanistan could be working better (though here the primary error was the administration’s; it did not disarm the warlords). But against these costs, a U.N. umbrella has one enormous advantage in Iraq–it allows the occupation to be seen as international and not American. (If the United Nations were not involved, it is unlikely that Britain could stay in Iraq.)
The administration believes that the war’s outcome will vindicate America in the eyes of the world. As someone who has supported military action, I have my doubts. After all, few around the world opposed the war because they believed that America would not prevail, or because they supported Saddam Hussein. The reason so much of the world has been so passionately opposed is that they see the war as a raw exercise of American power, an act of American imperialism. An American occupation will only confirm this in many people’s minds.
In the Arab world in particular, a U.S. occupation–with no U.N. involvement–will only give rise to new conspiracy theories. If weapons of mass destruction are found, well, then, the CIA put them there. If U.S. companies help rebuild Iraq, those contracts were the reason for the invasion in the first place. Some of these fears are a product of the dysfunctional nature of Arab societies these days. But some of it is a suspicion of America’s great power–which is why one hears such voices all across the globe. Surely Washington’s goal should not be to amplify them.
There is one important sense in which the models of post-World War II Germany and Japan do not work for today. That was still an age of empire. France and Britain ruled vast swaths of the world. But we now live in an age of nationalism. An American occupation, no matter now just, could soon come under fire from Iraqis or other Arabs as being a new colonialism. If it does, we might well wish we were not quite so alone.
