High Stakes Poker at the UN Security Council
On CBC Radio Two this morning I heard a report (which could not be located on the Web for posting) about the tension developing between the two opposing factions in the UN: France, Germany, Russia, evidently supported by enough to make a majority on paper, countered by the US, Britain and Spain, each group set to propose different Iraq resolutions. This article from CSM lays it all out:
On the one hand, the US, backed by Britain and Spain, will seek the six countries' support for a new UN resolution introduced Monday that would place an international imprimatur on the use of force to disarm Iraq.
But also on Monday, France, Germany, and Russia began circulating in the 15-member Council their own proposal for enhancing weapons inspections as a way to put off war.
Here are the stakes: The objective, experts say, is to win the crucial battle for international public opinion. "It's not a United Nations blessing of US action that we need. It's the support of domestic and international opinion, and going through the UN is the way we get that," says Ivo Daalder, a foreign-policy expert at the Brookings Institution here. If the US is to fight a war with any country at its side, it will be only with a new UN resolution, Mr. Daalder adds. "[British Prime Minister] Tony Blair needs it for his domestic audience ... so does Spain, so does Italy," he says - and that means a Council majority of nine must be won over. The White House acknowledges that while the US holds to its view that authorization for war is contained in previous resolutions - including 1441, which passed the Council unanimously last November - the new resolution is a concession to allies such as Britain that face strong antiwar majorities at home.
The big worry, of course, is that if Bush doesn't win, in a snit, he'll take his toys and go home (i.e., leave the UN) and thus wreck the international system.
