JB

The Washington Post reports that the Bush Administration is now telling other countries that it has decided to go to war no matter what and that it is up to them to preserve the United Nations as a viable organization by voting to give the U.S. authorization to invade Iraq. The issue is not whether or not there will be war, but "whether council members are willing to irrevocably destroy the world body's legitimacy by failing to follow the U.S. lead, senior U.S. and diplomatic sources said." Put another way, it will be the fault of these other countries if the U.N. is rendered irrelevant because they didn't unquestioningly obey the orders of the United States.

A senior diplomat from [a Security] council member [nation] said his government . . . . was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war. "You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."

Second, this strategy is likely to cause some states to dig in their heels. If the United States is going to war regardless of the evidence that Hans Blix produces, and if the U.S. doesn't really care what they think, why should they bless the U.S. attack? If the war goes badly, they can say "I told you so." If it goes well, they can free ride on the benefits. The only reason to go along is a fear that the U.S. will punish them later on for failing to toe the party line. But the U.S. can't possibly punish all the countries that fail to go along. It will need at least some of them later, and the more influential they are (e.g., China, Russia, France, Germany), the more the U.S. will need to get past the present disagreements in the long run. Thus, ironically, the current strategy of bullying may be counter-productive because it allows countries to free ride while telling their populations that they did not kowtow to the Americans.

Third, this strategy gives Saddam absolutely no incentives to disarm. Why disarm when the U.S. has publicly announced that no matter what the U.N. says or does Iraq is going to be invaded by the Americans? Again, it is the Bush Administration that has made the U.N. irrelevant by preventing the U.N. from offering Saddam the following deal: Disarm and stay alive; fail to disarm and be deposed. The U.N. cannot offer that deal if America will attack no matter what Saddam does.

The President has continued to insist officially that he has not made up his mind whether or not to go to war. It is clear that this is a lie. That fact in itself is not so troubling. Politicians lie all the time. The problem is that this is a lie that his diplomatic officials are now openly saying is a lie.

This is no way to run a railroad, much less conduct foreign policy.