Editorial

Should the UN be in Charge of Rebuilding Iraq?

With the U.S. war against Iraq ending and its military occupation beginning, there have been calls from many quarters for the United Nations to be put in charge of rebuilding the devastated country. The first to raise such a demand were France, Germany, Russia and, ironically, Britain. Jean Chretien quickly added his voice to the chorus, pointing out that the United States is not very good at nation-building. Some people within the anti-war movement have issued similar demands. It is the view of Modern Communism that there should be no UN involvement in Iraq so long as U.S. troops continue to occupy that nation. The participation of the UN in "rebuilding" Iraq under U.S. occupation would not only provide legitimacy to that occupation, but would actually assist the Americans to get on with their military conquest of the remainder of the region.

There is no big mystery why France, Germany and Russia want the involvement of the UN. They were all hoping for a long and costly war which would bog the Americans down in Iraq and deplete their military and economic resources. Now that such a scenario has not developed, they are desperate to protect their own interests in the Middle East, as well as to get in on some of the $100 billion in contracts expected to flow from rebuilding the destroyed Iraqi infrastructure. Since the U.S. is not likely to accept a role for those countries in the wake of the bitter UN Security Council battle, their only hope is to use the United Nations to insinuate themselves into Iraq.

Britain's support for UN involvement has a different motive. As one of only two other countries that participated militarily in the American coalition, Britain can expect lucrative contracts from rebuilding Iraq. However, British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered enormous political damage at home by going to war without UN authorization. He now wants to mend some of those fences by convincing the Bush administration to return to multilateralism. However, probably more importantly, Blair realizes that there is still a considerable danger that the U.S. could get bogged down in Iraq, just as the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. By handing over large aspects of the occupation duties to the UN, the Americans would be relieved of the main costs of rebuilding and be left free to concentrate on what they do best - wage war. In addition, criticism and resentment over corruption and failure to deliver prosperity would be deflected away from the U.S. and towards the UN.

The reason for Jean Chretien's support for UN involvement is similar to Britain's. Since Canada's economy is highly integrated into the American economy, it is virtually automatic that many large Canadian companies will get in on the profits to be made. Just to be sure, Chretien has been prostrating himself in front of the Americans in the past couple of weeks. In fact, Chretien has been rather candid about the fact that his motive for calling for UN involvement is to protect American interests from the short-sightedness of the current Bush administration.

Those in the anti-war movement calling for UN participation in Iraq are doing so out of humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people. However, such concerns are misplaced. All that the UN would contribute would be a front for an American occupation. The country would still be occupied by American troops and the contracts would still be awarded by the Pentagon and U.S. State Department. The UN would simply be reduced to an agency of the U.S. to make the occupation more palatable, if not to the Iraqi people, at least to the foreign NGOs. Meanwhile, the U.S. could legitimately demand that the UN and/or various member states also finance the reconstruction of Iraq, thus relieving the U.S. of that onerous burden. In other words, objectively speaking, putting the UN is charge of rebuilding Iraq would provide the greatest political, economic and possibly military support to the United States and help it out of the crisis it has created for itself.

However, it appears unlikely that the Bush administration will agree to any UN involvement in post-war Iraq, with the possible exception of administering humanitarian aid. It has already declared the UN to be irrelevant and sees no advantage in reviving it. Bush advisor Richard Perle has even suggested that the UN be replaced by a new international body which embraces American values and accepts U.S. national interests as its mission statement. The Bush administration is also seeking revenge against those who have dared to oppose its agenda. Furthermore, it appears that the bulk of the contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq have already been parcelled out to cronies of the Bush administration..