Global Policy Forum

By Phyllis Bennis

Not everyone in the Clinton administration is happy that they lost their chance to bomb Iraq -- but they should have been. Behind Clinton's grudging acceptance of the UN-Iraqi agreement negotiated by Secretary General Kofi Annan, at least some in the administration were likely quietly grateful to find a way out of their self-created political trap. Weeks of escalating rhetoric, against the backdrop of a massive and carefully choreographed military buildup in the Persian Gulf and continued defiance in Baghdad, had brought Washington to the brink of launching a major military strike. The only alternative would have been to acknowledge that it really had no viable policy towards Iraq. But by the time that moment approached, it had become embarrassingly and publicly clear that such an attack, however punishing, would do little or nothing to diminish Iraq's capacity to develop biological and chemical weapons. What it would do, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, is kill a minimum of 1500 Iraqi civilians. It would raise the political temperature in the region, especially in countries governed by US allies, to an unpredictably dangerous level, and put the question of double standards back at center stage for the Arab street, already outraged over U.S. failures to press Israel in the peace process.

The danger now is that the US, having reluctantly done the right thing in agreeing to Annan's mission and then in voting in the Security Council to accept the deal he wrought, is keeping up its preparations to do the wrong thing in the not-very-distant future. By continuing the military build-up in the area, and especially by asserting the claim that previous UN resolutions somehow legitimize any future U.S. strike against Iraq, Washington has made clear that it does not recognize any UN or other multilateral constraints on unilateral action. Washington has failed to fashion a policy that addresses comprehensively and effectively the global threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or one that replaces the indiscriminate economic sanctions regime that has so devastated Iraq's civilian society with new forms of sanctions that would target Iraq's military rulers and their entourage.

Popular pressure-at both the domestic and international levels--played a key role in persuading the Clinton administration that a military assault on Iraq would be politically counterproductive. In the U.S., the initially scattershot small demonstrations protesting the threat of airstrikes was soon joined by a wide range of hesitations, concerns, doubts and unease voiced by Pentagon officials, editorial page writers, and middle America. Certainly it's true that some of the opposition came from the right, from Republicans in Congress uneasy only because they didn't trust the White House to go far enough in destroying Iraq, and some media hesitation was voiced only after congressional divisions emerged. But the breadth of opposition soon crept up on Washington policymakers. At the Ohio State town meeting, the challenge to the administration's bombing plans lay not only in the protestors shouting down Madeleine Albright, but in the questioners themselves. Despite being vetted by CNN producers, many were well informed and skeptical of U.S. claims; some were strongly opposed to a military strike. Tellingly, the Albright-Cohen-Berger team could not provide serious answers. As a tool of asserting or manufacturing consent, the 'town meeting" was a debacle.

Perhaps even more persuasive was the attitude of other governments. In the region, even the thoroughly authoritarian and staunchly pro-US monarchies of the Gulf largely stood by, with the exception of Kuwait, refusing to jump onto Washington's war wagon. Saudi Arabia convinced the U.S. not to request use of Saudi bases for launching air strikes, so Riyadh would not have refuse. Bahrain felt compelled to withdraw an earlier promises of military support. In the Security Council, the French and Russian opposition to military action was crucial; one could not help but take into account the nascent efforts by Paris and Moscow to begin nibbling at the edges of the seven- year-long unchallenged U.S. control of Middle East politics.

Even Tony Blair's Britain, caught between its consistent backing of Clinton's war efforts and its current position as president of the EU, moved to distance itself from the U.S. once Kofi Annan returned from Baghdad with a negotiated settlement. British diplomats endorsed the UN-Iraqi accord much more wholeheartedly than their American counterparts, and remained noticeably cool to Clinton administration claims that the new Council resolution somehow authorized a future unilateral U.S. strike. The U.S. was stuck.. Bill Richardson declared that the resolution endorsing the secretary-general's agreement represented a "victory" for the U.S. because its language included the threat of "severest" sanctions if Iraq again violated the terms. But Washington is more isolated than ever in its claim that first, the actual language of the resolution means something other than what it says about collective Council, not unilateral U.S., action being required; and second, that the new resolution is irrelevant anyway because the U.S. already has authority for unilateral action based on earlier resolutions. (The resolution states that the Council decides "to remain actively seized of the matter, in order to ensure implementation of this resolution, and to security peace and security in the area." In UN-speak, "remain actively seized" refers to the issue remaining on the Council's agenda.)

This time Washington accepted a diplomatic way out of the box. But the threat of a U.S. attack remains serious, even if the constraints facing the Clinton administration remain much the same. Clinton's hostility to the Iraq-UN agreement and the Security Council resolution endorsing it may well reflect the influence of congressional unilateralism at work. But however pragmatic its origins, the position reflects an acceptance by the White House of the anti-UN fury raging across Washington. What is badly needed now--as it has been for some time--is a new approach that targets Iraq's weapons programs in the context of an effective international response to the threat of weapons proliferation beyond Baghdad, and that recognizes the centrality of the UN in Middle East diplomacy. At least four components should be the basis for such a new set of policies.

First, on the specific issue of Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions, Washington should acknowledge that this is indeed an issue for the United Nations, and not for the U.S. on its own. It should affirm the actual terms of the cease-fire resolution regarding elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and stop moving the goalposts. The UN resolution does not, for example, require that Saddam Hussein be ousted before sanctions can be lifted. However desirable such a change might be, the persistent U.S. demands for it provides only a negative incentive to Baghdad, effectively insuring non-compliance, and undermines the legitimacy of the UN.

The Clinton administration, moreover, cannot legitimately persist in its claim that the earlier Security Council resolutions authorize unilateral military strikes. Resolution 678 authorized the use of "all necessary force" to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait, and so is no longer relevant. The section of 678 stating that that use of force is to "restore international peace and security in the region" was specific to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, and insuring implementation of resolution 660 (the first to demand Iraqi withdrawal) and others subsequent to 660 that existed when 678 was passed. Resolution 678 cannot be invoked seven years later to punish a violation of an agreement that did not even exist when the resolution was written. Resolution 687, the cease-fire resolution that provides for the weapons inspections, explicitly states that it is the Security Council which will take "further steps as may be required for the implementation of the resolution." The last paragraph of 687 also states specifically that the Security Council "remains seized of the matter," meaning that Iraq's compliance remains on the Council's agenda--it was not subcontracted to Washington.

Second, the US must stop simply regretting the civilian devastation caused by the economic sanctions, and allow the UN to end them. They are having only a marginal impact on the regime, but continue to wreak havoc on the Iraqi population, particularly children and other vulnerable strata. The most recent UNICEF report documents 4,500 children under the age of five dying every month from combinations of inadequate medical care, unclean waer, nutritional deficiencies and other results of the sanctions. Resolution 687 links the oil sanctions to specific findings regarding Iraq's four weapons programs: nuclear, long-range missile, chemical and biological. UNSCOM has already acknowledged that two of the four programs, Baghdad's nuclear and prohibited missile efforts, have been destroyed. On that basis, at least 50% of the economic sanctions should be lifted immediately. Obviously a tight international arms embargo should remain in effect against Iraq, but easing the economic sanctions would allow Iraq access of spare parts needed to take advantage of the recent increase in oil exports allowed in the UN's oil-for-food deal. (Currently Iraq remains unable to produce enough oil to take advantage of that increase, since its drilling and refining equipment has not been restored since the 1991 war.) Third, the US should take the lead in strengthening and broadening what is now an Iraq-specific arms control regime. Since 1991, punishing Iraq has superseded the larger goal of monitoring and destroying weapons of mass destruction. This undermines legitimate international interest in non-proliferation: by making the weapons monitoring regime humiliating, indeterminate and punitive rather than focused on disarmament goals, the US undermines the potential of permanent UN-organized monitoring regimes against a whole host of unsavory governments.

The UN should create a new international non-proliferation regime to challenge the entire trade in chemical and biological weapons--focused on the supplying companies and countries, as well as the recipients like Iraq. A first step here would be to authorize--indeed require-UNSCOM to identify the companies and countries that have supplied Iraq with its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons-development capabilities. Such a sanctions regime would target companies such as the Rockville, Maryland, American Type Cultures Collection, which provided anthrax, E-coli bacteria, botulism and more to the government of Iraq throughout the 1980s (as well as bubonic plague stock and "non-lethal" anthrax to alleged white supremacists in the US). This approach would also target the US government itself, whose Commerce Department licensed those shipments to Iraq, as well as the governments of Russia, France, Germany and other countries who licensed or did not prevent similar shipments.

Those increased disarmament efforts should also include implementing the specific call in resolution 687 to establish a nuclear weapons-free and a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East. The US has so far been unwilling to even discuss such an option, since it would mean acknowledging and challenging Israel's advanced nuclear arsenal and the weapons of mass destruction maintained by other US forces and allies throughout the region.

Finally, we must support and work to consolidate the new centrality of the United Nations in this crisis and beyond, in preventive diplomacy, counter-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction. This crisis has demonstrated the extent to which the UN can provide very real political constraints on the capacity of a government, even the "sole superpower," to initiate war. Despite the anti-UN bluster coming out of Washington, the longer-term lesson of this crisis is that the UN role should be expanded beyond the immediate demands of Iraq crisis management, and that the world organization should take the lead in forging a new international Middle East peace initiative to challenge the destructive hegemony of the US over regional diplomacy.

Phyllis Bennis, is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN.