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President Bush's speech to the nation on Monday may have helped him win congressional authorization to invade Iraq if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein, but he's having a harder time with the international community. Indeed, the parts of Bush's speech that went down best abroad appear to be those that emphasized that war is neither imminent, inevitable nor preferable. And the Guardian reports that even some members of the U.S. intelligence community expressed skepticism over some of the dots connected by the President.
The European inclination to see a war as potentially more dangerous than any threat currently posed by Saddam Hussein will be reinforced by a CIA assessment released this week suggesting that Iraq poses no imminent threat of conventional or non-conventional attack on the U.S. — but that this could change if he's invaded.
Still, the Bush administration appears to have won the Europeans over to the idea that the Security Council needs a tough new resolution setting out exactly what is required of Iraq and establishing a clear mandate for effective UN weapons inspections. Even the Russians look set to accept the principle of adopting a new resolution, now that the U.S. appears more inclined to accept the French proposal that the Security Council set tough terms for inspection, but save the authorization of force for a second resolution if Saddam fails to comply. But the U.S. and France continue to differ over just what the first resolution should demand. They're likely to reach agreement over Washington's insistence that Saddam be made to declare his current weapons of mass destruction before the inspectors return, and to submit to intrusive, anywhere-anytime inspections that include Saddam's "presidential sites" — a demand to which Iraq is hinting it will submit, as demanded by its Arab neighbors. But the French and other Council members are unlikely to yield to the U.S. demand for "armed inspections" (inspectors accompanied by troops) or for the right of the U.S. and other permanent members to send their own inspectors to accompany the UN teams.
Still, once he has congressional authorization to bypass the UN if he sees fit, President Bush may brandish that threat in the hope of scaring other Council members to concede — but it's likely to be a game of brinkmanship, because UN authorization remains the most commonly cited precondition among U.S. allies for supporting an invasion. Congressional critics have made pursuing the matter through the UN their precondition for backing Bush, and even Tony Blair may need to UN-sanctioned war in order to deliver his support. The British leader was warned this week by his solicitor general that backing an invasion of Iraq for purposes of regime-change would be a breach of international law.
After Saddam
Just how and by whom Saddam Hussein should be replaced is the focus of another fierce Iraq debate in the Bush administration. The Pentagon civilian hawks who've driven the Iraq campaign within the administration support the call by some Iraqi opposition groups for a "provisional government" for Iraq (comprising exiled opposition groups) to be recognized right now, and installed in the course of an invasion. The State Department says parachuting in a government formed abroad is a recipe for civil war, and prefers the reins of power (and the considerable spoils attached to managing an oil-rich country) to be in the hands of the UN until democratic elections can be held. The hawks use the example of De Gaulle's role in exile to make their case; the doves appear to be avoiding the temptation to draw the comparison with the ready-made governments the Soviets installed in Eastern Europe in the wake of the retreating Nazis. And nobody's even talking about Hamid Karzai, the exiled Afghan leader installed by the U.S. in Kabul, whose grip on power is looking pretty shaky.
The Sharon Factor
Throughout the war on terrorism, Tony Blair has periodically been required to play the role of a kind of substitute Secretary of State, saying some of the things that domestic political concerns and Bush administration infighting prevent Colin Powell from saying out loud. It may be worth noting, then, that Blair and his government are increasingly alarmed over the state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs as the Iraq invasion season approaches, and have demanded that both sides be compelled to start final-status negotiations over Palestinian statehood by year's end. That suggestion has been firmly rebuffed by the Bush administration, but in making his rounds of Arab capitals to rally support against Iraq, Blair's foreign secretary Jack Straw is echoing the demand for urgent action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Monday's Israeli raid in Gaza that killed 14 Palestinians has dominated Arab media in a week when the Bush administration is trying to rally Arab support against Saddam. The U.S. has urged restraint on Israel for fear that an upsurge of violence will turn already skittish Arab allies even more strongly against an Iraq invasion, and President Bush has invited Sharon to Washington next week for talks. But Sharon has his own ideas about what Israel needs to do during an Iraq war, and they may not be exactly what the Bush administration had in mind.
The Al Qaeda Factor
Two attacks in as many days on U.S. forces in Kuwait by elements believed to be linked with al-Qaeda raises fears that bin Laden's network may be planning its own Iraq campaign, aimed at harassing U.S. forces gathering in staging areas around Iraq. And through a series of propaganda broadcasts by its top leaders that have coincided with signs of new activity in the Gulf region, the bin Laden network is doing its best to signal the U.S. that it remains an ongoing threat.