The United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil faces some tough choices

Ger­many has con­firmed it would work with France to intro­duce a new Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion aimed at dis­arm­ing Iraq with­out war by strength­en­ing the inspec­tions regime and back­ing it up with United Nations peace­keep­ers. While Rus­sia expressed cau­tious sup­port for the Franco-German ini­tia­tive, the United States, pre­dictably, threw a hissy fit. Mean­while, Bel­gium and pos­si­bly France will block the United States’ request to NATO to shore up Turkey’s defenses when war breaks out with Iraq.
“Damn those Eurow­imps!” Rums­feld was heard to exclaim when Ger­many admit­ted to work­ing on the res­o­lu­tion. (Ok, he didn’t really say that.) The plan calls for France and Ger­many to put its euro where its mouth is by tripling the num­ber of inspec­tors, declar­ing all of Iraq a no-fly zone and back­ing it all up with thou­sands of U.N. peace­keep­ers. Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Peter Struck said Ger­man “could well take part” in the peace­keep­ing force if the pro­posal is adopted.
But let’s be hon­est. The United States, which reacted angrily to France and Ger­many act­ing like sov­er­eign nations with national inter­ests of their own, will veto any such res­o­lu­tion. Which brings us to an inter­est­ing game of chicken on the Secu­rity Coun­cil. Britain is set to intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing force against Iraq in the next week or so. Ger­many is set to intro­duce the peace­keep­ing ini­tia­tive Feb. 14, the day of U.N. weapons inspec­tor Hans Blix’s likely final report. France and Rus­sia could veto the British res­o­lu­tion while the United States could veto the Franco-German one. What’s a super­power to do?
The snit is get­ting increas­ingly per­sonal, too, with the French and Ger­man offi­cials clash­ing with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. As the Guardian reported:

Mr. Rums­feld, a lead­ing US hawk, said it was not sur­pris­ing if pub­lic opin­ion in Ger­many and France was opposed to war in Iraq if their gov­ern­ments were.
[Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Joschka] Fis­cher lashed back: “You have to make the case in a democ­racy. Excuse me, I’m not convinced.”

The United States will be under enor­mous pres­sure to go along with the strength­ened inspec­tions, since world opin­ion is firmly on the side of giv­ing inspec­tors more time. (Plus, it allows the lil­liputians of the world to throw at least a few sym­bolic ties around the Amer­i­can Gul­liver.) This lat­est pro­posal by the French and Ger­mans is a gam­ble, a gaunt­let tossed at the feet of the United States by mul­ti­lat­er­al­ists who say, “If you walk out that door alone, don’t expect to come back.” If the United States per­sists in warn­ing the United Nations that it is threat­ened with irrel­e­vancy if it doesn’t enforce its res­o­lu­tions, then France and Ger­many are chal­leng­ing Amer­ica to walk out on the U.N., as it did the League of Nations, bet­ting, of course, the Bush White House is unwill­ing to take that dras­tic a step to get its way on Iraq.
(By the way, Kos has a lively debate on this in the com­ments sec­tion of his site, Daily Kos.)
At the same time, Bel­gium is plan­ning to block a U.S. request for war materiel for Turkey to defend itself for when the war breaks out in early March. Turkey responded by say­ing it was “strongly likely” to invoke Arti­cle 4 of the NATO treaty for the first time in his­tory. The arti­cle, which says, “The Par­ties will con­sult together when­ever, in the opin­ion of any of them, the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity, polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence or secu­rity of any of the Par­ties is threat­ened,” allows a mem­ber coun­try to claim the alliance’s atten­tion if it is threat­ened. Belgium’s for­eign min­is­ter, Louis Michel, said deploy­ment under a NATO umbrella would be tan­ta­mount to endors­ing a war with Iraq. (How­ever, Ger­many and the Nether­lands have gone ahead and dis­patched Patriot mis­sile sys­tems to Turkey by the end of next week, with or with­out NATO’s help. Strat­for muses that the bold­ness of the Dutch was a sig­nal that it stands with the United States, after declin­ing to sign on that open let­ter cir­cu­lated last week, itself a fur­ther sign of the deep divi­sions within Europe.)
In my opin­ion, Bel­gium has stepped over the line on this one. Regard­less of why Turkey is threat­ened, NATO mem­bers have a treaty oblig­a­tion and should step up to the plate. Lend­ing aid in defense of a ally is not the same as pro­vid­ing assis­tance in an aggres­sive war. What prin­ci­ple is served if an Iraqi gas attack kills thou­sands of inno­cent Turk­ish civil­ians and the Turks were unable to defend against it because they didn’t have the proper equip­ment? Michel and oth­ers may argue that such attacks won’t hap­pen if Amer­ica would quiet its war drums, but the fact of the mat­ter is those peo­ple will still be dead — and they likely would have been opposed to the war, if Turk­ish opin­ion polls are to be believed.
All of this points to the shape of the world after war with Iraq. The Atlantic Alliance could be shat­tered, the Mid­dle East trans­formed in ways unforseen, the Euro­pean Union revealed as a deeply fis­sured beast and a reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary power in Europe. Sure seems like a lot of change to dis­arm Iraq, no? Espe­cially when you con­sider that Libya and Iran — the lat­ter admit­ted today to hav­ing ura­nium — both have sim­i­lar weapons of mass destruc­tion pro­grams and a longer and more vio­lent his­tory of ter­ror­ism and sup­port of trans-national ter­ror groups. But, as I’ve stated before, WMD are only the pub­lic rea­son the Bush White House is call­ing for Saddam’s head. The real rea­sons, which I’ll detail later Mon­day, are based in hard-nosed geostrate­gic inia­tives that are breath­tak­ing in scope.