Commentary

U.S. Strategy for UN Action Against Iraq Collapsing

In the face of stiff international opposition to American unilateralism and growing domestic opposition to a unilateral American war against Iraq, the Bush administration was forced to take a step backwards and seek the approval of the UN Security Council for launching military action against Iraq. Although Bush sought to hide his retreat behind a blustering attack on the Security Council and a threat to invade Iraq with or without the sanction of the United Nations, most observers saw it as a tacit admission that the United States was not in a position economically or politically to go to war alone.

During the past few weeks, the U.S. has been desperately trying to ram a resolution through the Security Council authorizing military strikes against Iraq if it does not fully cooperate with UN weapons inspectors. It has been generally recognized that this was merely a ploy by the Bush administration to provide its war plans with a cover of legality and that the U.S. had no intention of allowing the weapons inspections to succeed. In the past, the U.S. used the weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq and to deliberately provoke confrontations. It then exploited vague and ambiguous language in Security Council resolutions to claim UN authorization for attacks against Iraq, even though the vast majority of Security Council members had a different interpretation. As a result, Russia, France and to a limited extent China have vigorously opposed the adoption of any new resolution which could be even remotely interpreted as authorizing automatic military force if Iraq fails to comply.

Despite the most blatant and brutal U.S. blackmail of Security Council members, including threats to deny Russia and France access to Iraqi oil, opposition to the U.S. resolution has remained firm. Both France and Russia introduced their own resolutions explicitly prohibiting military action without further Security Council authorization. The U.S. has now backed off in its attempts to push through its own resolution; however it is now claiming that the original UN resolution from 1991 authorizes the U.S. to take military action against Iraq if it sees fit. This position has been rejected by virtually all of the Americans'1991 coalition partners, including Kuwait, so this tactic also appears to be dead in the water.

With growing opposition at home and abroad, the Bush administration is slowly but surely painting itself into a corner. After all of its inflammatory rhetoric and blatant lies about Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime cannot afford to do nothing, nor can it afford to allow the weapons inspections to proceed and expose its lies. However, if it proceeds to launch a unilateral invasion of Iraq, it risks further isolation internationally and increased opposition domestically. In addition, it will not be able to offload the enormous costs of its war on its allies, as it did in 1991 and to some extent in Afghanistan, and it faces severe risks of destabilizing many of its Arab client regimes in the Middle East.

However, the logic of empire is not necessarily rational. The Bush regime is desperate to prove that its new National Security Strategy is more than mere words. Meanwhile, its Israeli allies are desperate for a new war in the Middle East to serve as a cover for their own crimes against humanity, including the final installment in their campaign to ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinians from Palestine. Therefore, with or without UN authorization, a very clear danger exists of a U.S. invasion of Iraq sometime in the next few months, regardless of the consequences to the people of the region.