Better with the UN? Searching for Peace and Governance in Iraq

Abstract

It was not our intention to go to Baghdad. And, had we done that, we would have gotten ourselves into the biggest quagmire you can imagine trying to sort out 2000 years of Mesopotamian history. --Colin Powell, 1991 (1) A year has passed since the U.S.-led coalition invaded Saddam Hussein's Iraq for the second time. In the buildup to war, many questioned the wisdom of embarking on military action without multilateral approval. This reluctance to support military intervention was built, in part, out of a fear of the impact of unilateral action on the spirit and practice of multilateralism--hence the efforts by the Bush administration to attempt, albeit in vain, to secure Security Council approval. Few doubted the likely efficacy of the coalition military machine in toppling Hussein. The 1991 Gulf War, the various Balkans ventures, and the Afghanistan campaign had silenced most skeptics of the utility of high-technology weaponry even in asymmetric warfare. Even fewer would have argued that Iraq would not be a better place without Hussein's--as indeed it is. And not many could have anticipated that the United States would have to relearn the lessons of UN peace support missions in its post-Saddam operation, or that the value of the world organization could extend beyond symbolic political niceties to practical assistance with the messy business of winning the peace. However flawed it may seem to its critics in the Bush administration, the system of global governance has emerged enhanced from the difficult events over the past twelve months, while the United States has recognized the political and practical limitations of acting unilaterally. Ironically, the Bush administration is to thank for this, coupled with the imperative of dealing with transnational terrorism in Iraq. Thus, an important but unintended outcome of the U.S.--led invasion of Iraq has been a significant strengthening of the multilateral case for governing a new post--September 11 era. Relearning Old UN Peacekeeping Lessons? By the time of George W. Bush's State of the Union address in January 2004, (2) more than 590 U.S. and coalition soldiers had died in Iraq--250 of which were the result of hostile actions perpetrated since the U.S. president declared major hostilities over on 1 May 2003. (3) Why has the coalition battled to stabilize Iraq? And with the benefit of hindsight, could things have been done better? Answers to these questions are important in understanding what role the UN and other multilateral institutions might have played and could still play. First, the coalition's difficulties are related to the nature of Iraqi society, which the coalition is attempting to transform. Under Hussein, the government of Iraq was a totally arbitrary, almost feudal, system. Baghdad's rule was founded on a pyramid of fear linked with an associated circle of reward. Fear and the consequences of perceived error were palpable and pervasive among civil servants. The circle of reward was an elite system of Ba'athist nepotism and personal patronage run by Hussein and his cronies. The effects of his regime were amplified by the decade and a half of UN-sponsored and U.S.-maintained sanctions, which created an enormously lucrative network of smuggling and contraband and ensured that everything was traded at a premium. Accordingly, with more than forty years of military and Ba'athist rule, it will take some time for the Iraqi people to fully comprehend the impact and responsibilities of their new freedoms. Iraqi society is experiencing a dramatic transition from dictatorship to something different and as yet unspecified. Second, the postconflict, preinvasion planning was poor, partly a result of what has been described as political resistance in Washington to a colonial-type role. But one cannot be a bit pregnant. The scale of the military intervention should have demanded a comparably well-thought-out peacebuilding approach and not the haphazard and continually changing course of action that has ensued. …