George Bush, Multilateralist?
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Editorial
The New York Times
February 4, 2003
PHILADELPHIA - When President Bush was asked last week whether he would seek a second Security Council resolution before invading Iraq, he flashed his multilateralist credentials. "I was the guy that went to the United Nations in the first place," he said, alluding to the November resolution that led to weapons inspections. Some liberal multilateralists scoff at such self-congratulation, dismissing Mr. Bush's November effort as a public-relations diversion en route to certain war.
But an honest liberal has to admit that Mr. Bush's unilateralist belligerence lit a fire under the Security Council, giving the United Nations a prominence it has rarely enjoyed in its 57-year history. In fact, there remains a slim chance that the president could, however paradoxically, emerge as a historic figure in the United Nations' evolution toward enduring significance. But only if administration hawks make an admission of their own: that working through the United Nations could get them everything they profess to want. That means not just disarmament, but regime change and the introduction of democracy.
Both the United Nations' champions and its critics sometimes indulge a gauzy conception of its founding mission. The idea wasn't to bring world peace through love and understanding. The main idea was that powerful nations would spot troublemakers and pound them into submission (hence bringing "collective security," in polite language).
At the time, right after World War II, the main form of troublemaking was cross-border aggression. (The first President Bush's response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait — a multilateral attack sanctioned by the Security Council — was a textbook use of the United Nations' power.) Still, the United Nations Charter, in charging the Security Council with preserving "international peace and security," is broad enough to also address post-9/11 threats, like weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
Doing this systematically will require expanding and tightening the main arms control treaties — the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This task may have to await another president, but in the meantime Saddam Hussein has created a crucial test of the United Nations' credibility. His invasion of Kuwait rightly exposed Iraq to intrusive weapons inspections. What happens next will shape the United Nations' ability to play a larger role in monitoring nations deemed suspicious by the international community. Sincere or not, Mr. Bush's insistence that the United Nations not be humiliated is right for the times.
And, just as Mr. Bush's autumn drive toward war softened up the Security Council, his winter rumblings have again set the stage for the successful use of the United Nations. Even if Colin Powell's speech tomorrow doesn't reveal a smoking gun, Hans Blix, a chief United Nations weapons inspector, has already given Mr. Bush all he needs to drive another multilateral nail in Mr. Hussein's coffin. The United States should now propose a resolution that explicitly defines particular acts of noncooperation with inspectors as automatic triggers of war. France is unlikely to veto a resolution devised to give Mr. Blix the power he seeks.
The United Nations should then send additional inspectors into Iraq as fast as it can train them. With guaranteed access to Iraqi scientists, aerial surveillance of sites before and during inspection, and the continued sharing of American intelligence, inspectors would hit paydirt before long. Indeed, if the administration's leaked claims are accurate — if the meager inspections to date have already sent Iraqis scurrying to move weapons and documents — then inspectors could find the smoking gun in "weeks, not months."
It would then be time for a third Security Council resolution: Demand that the Iraqi regime abdicate — perhaps via the exile that Mr. Bush and Colin Powell have informally offered — or face war. Assuming acceptance, troops would enter Iraq peacefully under United Nations authority and begin the long project of building a democracy.
Of course, if Iraq rejected the offer we'd have war, which unilateralist hawks have wanted all along. But at least it would be war of the kind multilateralists wisely prefer: under explicit United Nations authority, with multinational participation. Perhaps more important, the ensuing peace would share those properties.
This wouldn't eliminate terrorist blow-back. An American-led war followed by military occupation would be a publicity bonanza for Al Qaeda, with grave long-term consequences. But a multinational, United Nations-administered presence would at least complicate terrorist recruiting efforts, and would deflect some of the blow-back toward other coalition nations. This may sound cynical, but the United Nations is all about cost-sharing, and one cost of confronting nations that build illicit weapons is possible terrorism. The seeming indifference of some administration hawks to this virtue of multilateralism is puzzling, given their self-image as pitiless calculators of national interest.
If President Bush starts a war without explicit Security Council sanction, and before weapons inspectors have caught Iraq red-handed, he will have undone any good he did for the United Nations in November. The lesson learned — by, say, a North Korean dictator — will be that if you let weapons inspectors in, America may attack you anyway, even if they don't find much of anything. But if the president works through the Security Council and unseats Saddam Hussein without war, this could be a watershed in the history of the United Nations.
The first President Bush dusted off and put to use United Nations machinery that had lain dormant for most of the cold war. His son might yet sustain the United Nations' evolution toward the powerful instrument of peace it was originally meant to be. This would rank as one of the great paradoxes of presidential history. But if Nixon could go to China, President Bush can go through New York.
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Robert Wright, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is author of "Nonzero."
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