REBUILDING IRAQ I: THE UN IS NOT UP TO THE JOB

 

  Artículo de S. Neil MacFarlane en “The International Herald Tribune” del 14.04.2003

Y

REBUILDING IRAQ II: NO, THE UN IS RIGHT FOR THE JOB

 

  Artículo de Joseph S. Nye

 

 

Rebuilding Iraq I

 

GENEVA The debate over the United Nations' role in postwar Iraq has focused on the political question of who should lead. It is surreal to assume that two great powers which have just won a war at considerable expense in blood and treasure would simply step aside in favor of an organization that refused to support their war in the first place.

 

But the political debate misses another important issue: Why should we think that the United Nations is up to the job in the first place? Here there are real grounds for doubt.

 

True, the United Nations has ample recent experience, in Kosovo and East Timor, of post-conflict administration. But this experience tells us little about its capacity to handle Iraq. Kosovo and East Timor are postage stamps. Iraq is a country with 22 million people, a great many of whom are armed. It is an entirely different order of magnitude.

 

In Kosovo and Timor, outside forces had made considerable progress in stabilizing security prior to the United Nations assuming administrative control. Pacifying Iraq is likely to be a much longer-term proposition. Multiple and fluid lines of authority will only complicate that difficult process. In Timor, there was a legitimate opposition movement that could be quickly drawn into government. No such structure is evident in Iraq.

 

Moreover, the United Nations is not a coherent actor. It is a loose confederation of agencies over which the secretary-general wields little real power. The Kosovo and Timor operations revealed a number of chronic problems with this system: weak lines of authority; squabbling between departments within the Secretariat; turf battles in the field between UN agencies; deep tensions between civilian and military components of post-conflict administration; and the variable quality and commitment of UN personnel.

 

It is worth asking whether these weaknesses could be tolerated in the likely much more challenging post-conflict conditions of Iraq, where clear lines of authority, unambiguous chains of command, and very tight coordination will be required.

 

Finally, there is the matter of UN decision-making. The principal decision-making body for a UN operation in Iraq would be the Security Council. How likely is it - given the disputes in the Council before and during the war - that the Council will be able to act cohesively, quickly and decisively after the war? If this question cannot be clearly and positively answered, it would be irresponsible to confer a leading role upon the United Nations.

 

The United Nations is a necessary institution in world politics. It often plays a very constructive role. Some UN institutions and agencies are well placed to play a major part in post-conflict Iraq. A further Council resolution would have an important legitimizing effect. The rapid engagement of UN humanitarian agencies is essential. The UN might serve as a useful umbrella under which an interim Iraqi authority could be formed, as in Afghanistan.

 

UN electoral assistance could prove very useful in a transition to democratic governance. But this is a long way away from the proposition that the United Nations should be responsible for administering Iraq. Such statements reflect either ignorance or mischief. The limits on the organization need to be recognized. Giving it roles that it is ill equipped to fulfill risks disaster not only in Iraq, but also for the United Nations itself.

 

The writer, a professor of international relations at Oxford, is a member of the faculty at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. This is a personal comment.

 

 

 

REBUILDING IRAQ II: NO, THE UN IS RIGHT FOR THE JOB

 

  Artículo de Joseph S. Nye en “The International Herald Tribune” del 14.04.2003

 

Rebuilding Iraq II

 

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts With victory in sight, some American neo-conservatives see the Iraq war as a "two-fer" that will get rid of both Saddam Hussein and the United Nations. For example, Richard Perle, a member of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board, wrote recently in the Guardian, "Thank God for the death of the UN." And the Pentagon and State Department are struggling over the UN's post-war role.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would minimize the UN role in post-war Iraq. But institutions like the United Nations are a way to legitimize America's disproportionate military power and enhance its soft or attractive power. By acting unilaterally and showing disdain for institutions, the skeptics squander that soft power. As recent polls have shown, the United States is about 30 points less attractive today than a year ago in most European countries. The situation is even worse in the Islamic world and parts of Asia.

 

Hard-nosed realists scoff at this loss of soft power. Since the United States vastly outspends the rest of the world in military terms, other countries cannot form a military alliance that would balance American power. The United States can do as it pleases and others have no choice but to follow. But the skeptics ignore the possibility of "soft balancing." States can team up, as France, Germany, Russia and China have, to balance America's soft power.

 

By depriving the United States of attractiveness and legitimacy, both inside and outside the United Nations, they did not stop America from going to war in Iraq, but they certainly made it more expensive. By transforming the global debate from the sins of Saddam to the threat of American empire, they made it difficult for leaders in allied democracies like Turkey to support the United States and thus cut into America's hard power.

 

Those in the administration who wish to minimize the role of the United Nations after the war will compound this error. They talk of creating a new organization of democracies, but the deepest divisions over U.S. legitimacy are precisely among the democracies.

 

Whatever its flaws, there is no substitute for the United Nations as a means of restoring the legitimacy that we Americans lost by the manner in which we entered the war. UN involvement does not mean handing our hard earned victory over to international bureaucrats. A vital role for the United Nations, to use the words of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, means paying as much attention to the issues of legitimacy that preoccupy the State Department as to the issues of efficiency that preoccupy the Pentagon.

 

Iraq will require a significant number of American troops under U.S. command for some time to create the stability that is a pre-condition for all else. But the United Nations has a proven track record in managing humanitarian assistance, and is better able than the Pentagon to work with the network of nongovernmental organizations that are essential in distributing aid.

 

Similarly, any trials of Iraqi war criminals will be far more credible if carried out by international tribunals. Moreover, the United Nations has a record of helping to rebuild judicial and constabulary systems in places like East Timor and Kosovo. A World Bank role could help prove that the use of Iraq's oil meets Iraqi rather than just American interests. An international conference to create a transitional Iraqi government like the one that led to an Afghan government that now works with a representative of the UN Secretary General will be more credible if there is UN involvement. And when the time eventually comes for elections in Iraq, the United Nations has a credible record of impartial supervision and monitoring.

 

Beyond the reconstruction of Iraq, it will be essential for Bush to realize that the UN Security Council is a forum for discussion among the largest powers. When it fails, the failure cannot be blamed on the United Nations. It represents a failure of the bilateral diplomacy among the major powers that are using the world body. Bush should emulate the success of his father, pick up the phone to Paris, Beijing and Moscow, and begin the discussion of how to avoid paralysis on the next dangerous case that confronts us, North Korea. Those in his administration who celebrate the end of the United Nations are grievously mistaken. In the dangerous world after Sept. 11, we need to learn how better to use it, not lose it.

 

The writer, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, is author of "The Paradox of American Power."