As the US lobbies for a new Security Council resolution on Iraq it is time for the international community to reassert the framework of the UN and international law as a focal point in the management of international affairs, writes Hassan Nafaa* Since the collapse of the bipolar order, Iraq has become the gauge not only of the role the UN can play in the "new global order", but also of the very credibility of the international organisation and its ability to alter the increasingly oppressive and intolerable course of international relations. When George W Bush came to power, the US began to treat the UN like a pair of worn, discardable shoes that it could put on or take off as its purpose suited. However, as it became inextricably embroiled in its Iraqi quagmire, it found itself forced to eat some humble pie. Hence its subsequent attempts to toady to the UN from time to time in the hope that the international organisation will throw it a lifeline that will also help it save face -- a face that now appears to the world horrendously grotesque. Its most recent attempt is in the form of a draft Security Council resolution for the "transfer of authority to the Iraqi people". In spite of the severity of the situation it faces in Iraq, the US has given us little reason to believe that its attitude towards the UN is any more sincere or trustworthy than it had been on previous occasions. Washington's record of behaviour has created the indelible impression that to White House officials the UN is no more than an instrument to further their own interests and global strategy. Far from regarding the international body as a partner in the process of steering the world to the better, the Bush administration has blazoned on its consciousness the motto, "I am the world! I am the UN!" Accordingly, American actions and attitudes are "law", and what they say goes. Everyone still recalls how, after its lightening "victory" over Iraq in a war it waged against the will of the international community, the US managed to push through a resolution that legitimised its illegal presence in Iraq, gave it licence to dispose of Iraq's oil and other resources as it saw fit, and entrenched it as an occupation authority accountable to no one. Apparently, not even bound by the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Since then, the US has been returning to the UN, cap in hand, whenever it needed a resolution that would reduce some problem or other it faced in Iraq or lighten the psychological, material or moral burdens it had brought upon itself. It is only natural therefore that people would think that Washington's appeal to the Security Council for a new resolution regarding the administration of Iraq during an interim period is merely a continuation of its old game of bending the UN to serve its interests. This may even be the secret opinion of White House officials who feel compelled to change tactics but who have no real intention of altering their essential policy outlooks and strategic objectives. However, this administration should realise that the US's relationship with the UN over the Iraqi issue has entered a completely new phase. Since the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, US attitudes towards the UN could be said to have passed through three distinct stages: deception, exposure and contempt. The new phase we might term "the need to strike a new balance". The deception phase began with the UN Security Council resolution permitting "member states, cooperating with the government of Kuwait, to use all necessary means to compel Iraq to unconditionally submit to UN resolutions before 15 January 1991". It culminated in the war to liberate Kuwait. Because Saddam Hussein had failed to fathom the major transformations that were taking place in the international order, especially since the collapse of the Berlin Wall a year earlier, he had unwittingly provided the US with the perfect occasion to demonstrate the impotence of the Soviet Union and to hasten its demise. In order to rally the world around it, Washington unveiled the banner of a "new world order" in which the UN would now finally assume the central role that the Cold War had long prevented it from playing. Beneath that new and glittering banner, the Security Council obligingly passed all the necessary resolutions on Iraq, setting in the process two precedents: the first time that Article 7 of the UN Charter was invoked and the imposition of the harshest and most comprehensive sanctions against a member state. With these resolutions in place, the US then succeeded in obtaining a mandate to use armed force against Iraq, which, in effect, enabled it to monopolise the management of the Iraqi crisis. The next time the US resorted to the Security Council was to obtain resolution 687, which effectively placed Iraq under a US mandate. Since then, it became apparent to close observers that Iraq had become a keystone in an American strategy for global hegemony beginning in the Middle East. The "exposure" phase began following the end of the war to liberate Kuwait and lasted until September 2002 when the Bush administration began its practical preparations for occupying Iraq. During this period, the US had succeeded in tightening the noose around Iraq. It encouraged and supported Iraqi opposition elements, especially the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south and took various measures to curtail Iraq's military capacities, such as the no-fly zones in the north and the south. On the international front, the US campaigned relentlessly to prolong sanctions and to intensify the search for weapons of mass destruction. In its unflagging pursuit of these policies, Washington cared nothing for the suffering sanctions were causing the Iraqi people or for the harm being done to the prestige and credibility of the UN which was knee-deep in prolonging this suffering in one way or another. Gradually it became clear that the Kuwaiti crisis had been a unique and unrepeatable instance of international collaboration and that now the Security Council had become virtually an agency of the US State Department intended to toe the line with the double-standards of Washington's foreign policy, as became abundantly clear with every subsequent US strike against Iraq, launched without consulting the international community on the grounds that the 1991 mandate was still valid. With the arrival of George W Bush and the American ultra-right to power, and this administration's drive to capitalise on the post-11 September panic to mobilise the US military machine to advance its project for world domination, the relationship between the US and the UN entered a third phase. Washington's contempt for the UN reached its peak with the American attack on Iraq without a Security Council mandate, and its barefaced return to the UN for a resolution legitimising its illegal occupation of Iraq. Throughout this period, the UN attempted to resist, if feebly, the American drive for hegemony while Washington worked assiduously to silence anyone who defied its grandiose scheme, even if that meant decimating the UN and the entire body of international law. However, suddenly the occupation had to contend with the rapid and unanticipated rise of the Iraqi resistance. As this gained momentum, evidence mounted that Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction and connections with Al- Qaeda had been pure fabrications. Soon afterwards the entire façade of principles and values that the ultraconservatives had trumpeted as their mission in the Middle East came toppling down in Abu Ghraib. The White House was now forced to scramble for cover in the form of a face-saving exit from Iraq and only the UN could provide it. Here began that phase in US-UN relations that we have termed the "search for a new balance"; officially inaugurated with the US- British Security Council resolution proposal for the "transfer of sovereignty" in Iraq. Some observers are of the opinion that the Bush administration has woken up to the fact that it is no longer possible to go through with its plans for Iraq and that it must, therefore, acknowledge defeat and hand over political and security management to the UN. While the UN, indeed, may offer the US the least humiliating exit from Iraq, I doubt that such a pragmatic solution is what is foremost in the minds of the neo-conservatives in Washington. If anything binds that clique it is their ideological fanaticism and it is unlikely that they would abandon a vision for the fulfilment of which they had worked so long to come to power. Rather, it is more in keeping with their perverse logic for them to pour all their cunning into foot-dragging and ploys that will restore an element of calm to Iraq and help them gain time until the forthcoming presidential elections are over, after which they will resuscitate their damaged enterprise for the region. I, therefore, do not believe that Washington has taken the strategic decision to withdraw from Iraq, as it had once withdrawn from Vietnam. It follows that Washington will probably not make the concessions asked of it, such as stating a specific timeframe for withdrawal so as to enable a smooth phase-in of UN administrative and military personnel to oversee Iraq for the remainder of the interim period until full transfer of sovereignty is complete. As a result, we can expect some bitter fighting in the corridors of the Security Council over the forthcoming weeks, even though all will do their best to appear calm on the surface. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the UN will be the arena of the most far-reaching diplomatic battle in recent times. The Iraqi question has become the focal point of the international community's struggle to restore dignity and prestige to the UN and to rescue international law from the grips of its American hijackers. The only way to resolve this struggle is to strike a new balance that will allow the US to exercise its role as a great power within the UN rather than on top or outside of it. The UN faces an arduous test of its will, but not one that is impossible to pass. * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
