Beware The Bluewash

The US government's problem is that it has built its foreign policy on two great myths. The first is thatit is irresistible; the second is that as time advances, life improves. In Iraq it is trapped between the two.To believe that it can be thwarted, and that its occupation will become harder rather than easier to sustainas time goes by requires that it disbelieve all that it holds to be most true.

But those who oppose its foreign policy appear to have responded with a myth of equal standing: that whatunilateralism cannot solve, multilateralism can. The United Nations, almost all good liberals now argue, is amore legitimate force than the US and therefore more likely to succeed in overseeing Iraq's reconstruction andtransition. If the US surrendered to the UN, this would, moreover, represent the dawning of a fairer, kinderworld. These propositions are scarcely more credible than those emerging from the Pentagon.

The immediate and evident danger of a transition from US-occupation to UN-occupation is that the UnitedNations becomes the dustbin into which the United States dumps its failed adventures. The American and Britishtroops in Iraq do not deserve to die any more than the Indian or Turkish soldiers with whom they might bereplaced. But the governments which sent them, rather than those which opposed the invasion, should be theones which have to answer to their people for the consequences. The vicious bombing of the UN headquarterslast week suggests that the jihadis who now seem to be entering Iraq from every corner of the Muslim worldwill make little distinction between khaki helmets and blue ones. Troops sent by India, the great liberalhope, are unlikely to be received with any greater kindness than western forces. The Indian government isreviled for its refusal to punish the Hindus who massacred Muslims in Gujurat. The UN will swiftly discoverthat occupation-lite is no more viable than occupation-heavy.

Moreover, by replacing its troops, the despised United Nations could, in one of the supreme ironies of ourtime, provide the US government with the escape route it may require if George Bush is to win the nextelection. We can expect him, as soon as the soldiers have come home, to wash his hands not only of moralresponsibility for the mess he has created, but also of the duty to help pay for the country's reconstruction.Most importantly, if the UN shows that it is prepared to mop up after him, it will enhance his incentive totake his perpetual war to other nations.

It should also be pretty obvious that, tough as it is for both the American troops and the Iraqis, pinneddown in Iraq may be the safest place for the US army to be. The Pentagon remains reluctant to fight more thanone war at a time. One of the reasons why it has tackled Iran and North Korea with diplomacy rather thanmissiles is that it has neither the soldiers nor the resources to launch an attack until it can disentangleitself from Iraq.

It is clear too that the United Nations, honest and brave as many of it staff are, possesses scarcely morelegitimacy as an occupying force than the United States. The US is now the only nation on the Security Councilwhose opinion really counts: its government can ignore other government's vetoes; the other governments cannotignore a veto by the United States. In other words, a handover to the UN cannot take place unless George Bushsays so, and Bush will not say so until it is in his interests to do so. The UN, already tainted in Iraq byits administration of sanctions and the fact that its first weapons inspection mission (UNSCOM) wasinfiltrated by the CIA,[1] is then reduced to little more than an instrument of US foreign policy.

And until the UN, controlled by the five permanent members of the Security Council, has itself beendemocratised, it is hard to see how it can claim the moral authority to oversee a transition to democracyanywhere else. This problem is compounded by the fact that Britain, which is hardly likely to be perceived asan honest broker, is about to assume the council's presidency. A UN mandate may be perceived by Iraqis asbluewash, an attempt to grant retrospective legitimacy to an illegal occupation.

None of this, of course, is yet on offer anyway. The US government has made it perfectly clear that the UNmay operate in Iraq only as a sub-contractor. Foreign troops will take their orders from Washington, ratherthan New York. America's occupation of Iraq affords it regional domination, control of the second biggestoilfields on earth and, as the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz has hinted, the opportunity towithdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia and install them in its new dependency instead. Republican funders havebegun feasting on the lucrative reconstruction contracts, and the Russians and the French, shut out of thebanquet, are being punished for their impudence.

Now that the US controls the shipping lanes of the Middle East and the oilfields of central Asia and WestAfrica, it is in a position, if it so chooses, to turn off the taps to China, its great economic rival, whichis entirely dependant on external sources of oil. The US appears to be seeking to ensure that when the Iraqisare eventually permitted to vote, they will be allowed to choose any party they like, as long as it ispro-American. It will give up its new prize only when forced to do so by its own voters.

So, given that nothing we say will make any difference to Bush and his people, we may as well call for ajust settlement, rather than the diluted form of injustice represented by a UN occupation. This means theswiftest possible transition to real democracy. Troy Davis of the World Citizen Foundation has suggested aprogramme for handing power to the Iraqis which could begin immediately, with the establishment of aconstitutional convention.[2] This would permit the people both to start deciding what form their own governmentshould take, and to engage in the national negotiation and reconciliation without which democracy there willbe impossible. From the beginning of the process, in other words, the Iraqi people, not the Americans, wouldoversee the transition to democracy.

This is the logical and just path for the US government to take. As a result, it is unlikely to be taken.So, one day, when the costs of occupation become unsustainable, it will be forced to retreat in a manner andat a time not of its choosing. Iraq may swallow George Bush and his imperial project, just as the Afghanmorass digested the Soviet empire. It is time his opponents stopped seeking to rescue him from hisself-destruction.

George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order is published byFlamingo.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. See for example Milan Rai, 2002. War Plan Iraq. Verso, London.
2. Troy Davis, 2nd April 2003. Building Iraqi Democracy.