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Friday, February 07, 2003
posted by gbarto at 12:54 AM:
Bush: 'The Game Is Over'President says he would welcome second Security Council resolution to authorize use of military force to disarm Iraq
It sounds like given the less than enthusiastic response to Powell's talk by France, China, etc., the US and Britain have decided to proceed anyway. And wisely. It's been widely noted that all the skeptical responses were read from statements prepared before Powell's presentation, debunking the idea that any of these nations can be taken seriously as wanting the UN to stand for anything.
Interestingly, Den Beste makes an argument that is the flipside of what we have said, and yet the same:
The same is true of the UN. From the French point of view, a dead UN and one which is still twitching where France has little practical influence are essentially the same. If despite everything the UN now rubberstamps American plans, then it means that it has ceased to be a place where France can still attempt to wield substantial influence and where its pronouncements can't easily be ignored. The UN only is useful to France if it gives France the ability to prevent America from doing things; once that is not possible the UN no longer has any value to France. The damage has already been done there, too.The TurkeyBlog, of course, has maintained that the French could be brought around if the alternative was making a joke of the UN, the only place where they have a lot of real authority anymore. Steve's point is well taken, and it will be interesting to see which view the French take: screw the UN if they can't control it or save the UN so at least they'll have a platform for another day. I'll have more on this in the French news (which you've already read if you're reading this the morning of the seventh, but which I haven't written yet).
In the mean time, I think one of my big points from the last few weeks (best made here) stands: Messing around with the UN was not a waste of time, but an extremely worthwhile exercise. But the value of the exercise was not cravenly seeking UN approval but putting the UN on the spot and forcing it to either be a serious body that would work with us or a joke we could safely discard. Not so long ago, the general public wasn't so sure it could back an invasion without UN approval. Powell's presentation may not have gone anywhere at the UN, but it hit its main mark well: it got the main points of the case against Iraq splashed across every major front page in the US, with a sidebar showing the American public what a joke the UN is and why its support is not so meaningful as widely assumed. The Chinese ambassador's statement, written before Powell's speech and indifferent to all the speech contained did more - with the outraged op-eds it led to, etc. - to damage the argument we need UN approval than any presentation the White House could have made.
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