U.S. vs. UN on rebuilding for Iraq

Yoichi Funabashi, The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

The United States and the United Nations agree that the Iraqi people must establish their own government and advance nation building by their own initiative. The U.S.-led "Coalition of the Willing" currently occupying Iraq must eventually be removed.

But the agreement ends there. The U.S. and the United Nations clash on the order in which to accomplish this goal.

The U.S. wants to establish a Constitution, hold elections and set up a government-in that order. The United Nations, meanwhile, wants to install a government first, then draft a Constitution and hold elections.

In short, the U.S. and the United Nations disagree on how to advance the reconstruction of Iraq, or that's the conclusion I came to when I met recently with UN Security Council permanent representatives and fellow members of a nongovernmental organization.

The U.S. believes public order will deteriorate and democracy will flounder in postwar Iraq if an Iraqi government is set up hastily.

The United Nations, on the other hand, thinks that unless a government is established by the Iraqi people, it will not be supported by the public, regardless of plans devised by the occupying forces, and fears democracy will be even more difficult to attain.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan often jokingly calls himself "the SG of the United Nations," meaning scapegoat rather than his official title. Annan recently declared the United Nations has no intention of playing a political role in Iraq unless a provisional government is established, thereby opposing U.S. calls for active UN involvement. Annan could try to clean up the mess left in Iraq with the help of a coalition made up of those who started the war without UN approval. But if he fails, he could become a scapegoat.

Perhaps Annan wants to avoid such a scenario. The terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad is fueling his reluctance. For the United Nations, the incident was a reenactment of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It may seem as though the strong U.S.-UN discord began with the Iraq war, but it is more accurate to say the war only made their differences more apparent.

The tension between the two stems from a deeper structural change in world politics.

One problem concerns power. With the end of the Cold War, the power in the U.S.' hands swelled abnormally, giving rise to a unipolar structure and unilateralism. These twin issues became more apparent with the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the Iraq war.

Even if other major powers act as one, they are no match for the U.S., which is why they decided to use the veto power available to permanent members of the Security Council to counter Washington. In particular, France and Russia took advantage of their position in the Security Council to secure their say on when, where and how U.S. power would be projected, and used the Security Council to magnify their own power.

The U.S. and the United Nations are turning into virtually the only two major powers with global influence, with the second-or more precisely the Security Council-becoming the only power with the ability to counter the first. The opposition between the two during and after the recent Iraq war is symbolic of their struggle for power.

Another problem concerns national sovereignty.

The 1990s saw the end of the Cold War and the beginning of civil wars. New threats in the form of religious and ethnic strife, failed states, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction spread. In some situations, national sovereignty had to be overlooked to push for humanitarian intervention, as was the case in Bosnia and Kosovo.

As such cases increased, new questions arose about the legitimacy of military action and, at the same time, limits of military force in nation building also became visible. For these reasons, UN involvement is needed more than ever.

But the situation creates a contradiction.

The Security Council and its permanent members, which have the power to veto and belong to the nuclear club, have the final say over whether to restrict a country's national sovereignty and intervene in its affairs. In effect, they have absolute national sovereignty. By contrast, other members of the United Nations only possess relative national sovereignty. The inconsistency of such a double standard is intensifying.

Reforming the United Nations, and in particular the Security Council, is a pressing issue. As Annan says, "radical reform" is needed immediately.

The U.S., which created the United Nations, holds the key to UN reform.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president during World War II, looked forward to the establishment of the United Nations more than anyone else. He is even said to have let slip to an aide that he wanted to resign the U.S. presidency to become the first UN secretary-general when the war was over, although he died two weeks before an international conference in San Francisco was to enact the UN Charter.

The baton was passed to Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman. In his address to the United Nations, Truman referred to the significance of the UN Charter and stated that regardless of the power countries possess, they must be denied the right to use that power as they please. Truman called this the price all countries must pay for world peace.

The U.S. is urged to return to that starting point. UN reform can only advance when the U.S. does just that.