No, the UN is Right for the Job

With victory in sight, some American neo-conservatives see the Iraq war as a "two-fer" that will get rid of both Saddam Hussein and the United Nations. For example, Richard Perle, a member of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board, wrote recently in the Guardian, "Thank God for the death of the UN." And the Pentagon and State Department are struggling over the UN's post-war role.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would minimize the UN role in post-war Iraq. But institutions like the United Nations are a way to legitimize America's disproportionate military power and enhance its soft or attractive power. By acting unilaterally and showing disdain for institutions, the skeptics squander that soft power. As recent polls have shown, the United States is about 30 points less attractive today than a year ago in most European countries. The situation is even worse in the Islamic world and parts of Asia.

Hard-nosed realists scoff at this loss of soft power. Since the United States vastly outspends the rest of the world in military terms, other countries cannot form a military alliance that would balance American power. The United States can do as it pleases and others have no choice but to follow. But the skeptics ignore the possibility of "soft balancing."

States can team up, as France, Germany, Russia and China have, to balance America's soft power.

By depriving the United States of attractiveness and legitimacy, both inside and outside the United Nations, they did not stop America from going to war in Iraq, but they certainly made it more expensive. By transforming the global debate from the sins of Saddam to the threat of American empire, they made it difficult for leaders in allied democracies like Turkey to support the United States and thus cut into America's hard power.

Those in the administration who wish to minimize the role of the United Nations after the war will compound this error. They talk of creating a new organization of democracies, but the deepest divisions over U.S. legitimacy are precisely among the democracies.

Whatever its flaws, there is no substitute for the United Nations as a means of restoring the legitimacy that we Americans lost by the manner in which we entered the war. UN involvement does not mean handing our hard earned victory over to international bureaucrats. A vital role for the United Nations, to use the words of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, means paying as much attention to the issues of legitimacy that preoccupy the State Department as to the issues of efficiency that preoccupy the Pentagon.

Iraq will require a significant number of American troops under U.S. command for some time to create the stability that is a pre-condition for all else. But the United Nations has a proven track record in managing humanitarian assistance, and is better able than the Pentagon to work with the network of nongovernmental organizations that are essential in distributing aid.

Similarly, any trials of Iraqi war criminals will be far more credible if carried out by international tribunals. Moreover, the United Nations has a record of helping to rebuild judicial and constabulary systems in places like East Timor and Kosovo. A World Bank role could help prove that the use of Iraq's oil meets Iraqi rather than just American interests. An international conference to create a transitional Iraqi government like the one that led to an Afghan government that now works with a representative of the UN Secretary General will be more credible if there is UN involvement. And when the time eventually comes for elections in Iraq, the United Nations has a credible record of impartial supervision and monitoring.

Beyond the reconstruction of Iraq, it will be essential for Bush to realize that the UN Security Council is a forum for discussion among the largest powers. When it fails, the failure cannot be blamed on the United Nations. It represents a failure of the bilateral diplomacy among the major powers that are using the world body. Bush should emulate the success of his father, pick up the phone to Paris, Beijing and Moscow, and begin the discussion of how to avoid paralysis on the next dangerous case that confronts us, North Korea. Those in his administration who celebrate the end of the United Nations are grievously mistaken. In the dangerous world after Sept. 11, we need to learn how better to use it, not lose it.