Posted on 11/11/2002 2:13:14 PM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - Iraq got something almost right yesterday. Mohammed Aldouri, its ambassador to the United Nations, looked at the resolution passed unanimously by a 15-0 vote of the Security Council, and said: "This is the will of the United States on the rest of the world."
Actually the resolution, which leaves Washington enough latitude to launch a military strike to disarm and remove Saddam Hussein, is not the will only of the United States, but also of Britain, Italy, Spain, Kuwait, Qatar and several other nations that are responsible enough to support action to defang the Mesopotamian pariah.
But even if Mr. Aldouri was engaged in spin when he suggested that no one except President George W. Bush wanted the resolution, his larger point is true; the vote was the moment that the UN knuckled under and, at least temporarily, accepted the supremacy of the United States.
It -- by which I mean France -- knew that it could no longer go on felling diplomatic trees across the path of the oncoming warrior Bush. The hour came and it had to choose, as the President made plain in his speech to the General Assembly two months ago, between siding with him or consigning the UN to irrelevance.
Mr. Bush knew the time was ripe to bring the Iraq issue to a crisis. When he did, France folded.
The French (with the Russians tagging along) would have argued and cavilled until the crack of doom if they'd been allowed. The more they can tangle what they call the hyperpower in UN negotiations, the better they like it. That way France can maintain the self-indulgent fiction that it remains a great power.
But Tuesday was a watershed. When Mr. Bush delivered an epochal victory for the Republican Party in the congressional mid-term elections, France's obstruction became untenable. The backing of the American people legitimized the Bush presidency beyond any possible Democratic or multilateral casuistry, wiping out the spectre of 2000, when he lost the popular vote.
This makes Mr. Bush immeasurably stronger at home, but also abroad. For the American electorate has slapped down the party that equivocated about the coming war on Iraq, and told Mr. Bush he can get on with it.
Thus armed, Mr.Bush was able to end the haggling at the UN and effectively deliver an ultimatum to the Security Council that the resolution before it, number 1441, was the last one it would get. It could take it or leave it. Take it -- and the UN will still have a role to play in world affairs; leave it -- and the UN becomes the Little League of Nations, sidelined and irrelevant for years to come, perhaps forever.
France was left to choose the lesser of what it sees as two evils -- it could accept UN subordination for a while or it could accept it permanently. And of course it chose the former. It can and doubtless will come back and argue UN supremacy at a later date. It will almost certainly try to stall again when the weapons inspectors report that Iraq is in "further material breach" of resolutions. But yesterday's vote gives Mr. Bush all and more than he could possibly need to proceed as he deems fit, and on his own schedule.
For now, France and the UN have accepted -- de facto if not quite de jure -- that the nation state, or at least the most powerful nation state, still calls the shots.
Washington signalled that UN procrastination had become intolerable a week ago, as Secretary of State Colin Powell began to say in public that it was time to make the tough decisions. It is no coincidence that Washington's patience ran out in the week of the mid-term election. Mr. Bush campaigned on terror and Iraq, and voters gave him their answer on terror and Iraq.
He took a gamble and the gamble paid off. Rather than adopting a Rose Garden strategy -- staying at the White House (supposedly) above the political fray -- he wagered his popularity and won.
What neither Mr. Bush nor anyone else could have known for sure was that he would win the election so convincingly and get such clear voter backing to bulldoze the UN into place. Victory at home secured victory abroad.
...And, I helped! ;^)
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