The Proper Role of the Untied Nations in Iraq

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
May 3, 2004
THE PROPER ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS IN IRAQ
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for many months the President's critics have asserted the situation in Iraq would improve if only the administration would cede control over the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq to the United Nations.
While the presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator Kerry, has yet to offer a detailed plan for Iraq, he has made it abundantly clear it involves transferring a significant measure of authority to the U.N. In fact, on December 3rd of last year, he noted:
Our best option for success is to go back to the United Nations and leave no doubt that we are prepared to put the United Nations in charge of the reconstruction and governance-building processes. I believe the prospects for success on the ground will be far greater if Ambassador Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority are replaced by a U.N. Special Representative for Iraq.
The U.N. is an immensely valuable organization, and America's significant contributions to the U.N. are a worthwhile investment. The U.N. is often the only entity that can bring international humanitarian relief to needy and impoverished societies across the globe, and its employees and volunteers deserve the highest praise for their selfless acts to bring comfort to the downtrodden.
When civil authorities in dysfunctional states collapse, the U.N. has sometimes averted humanitarian disaster. It can bring relief to failed states in isolated backwaters of the world where the major powers are unlikely to intervene themselves.
The U.N. in such cases plays a critical role and deserves our support for its important efforts. But the United Nations is not a blue-helmeted knight here to slay the dragons of aggression and evil. When the stakes are high and the threat of violence is real, the United States is too often helpless in the face of danger.
Before I turn my attention to the specific reason that Americans should be wary of abandoning Iraq to the United Nations, let me dispel a myth about the administration's foreign policy.
The President's critics often refer to America's efforts in Iraq as unilateralist. This politically expedient fix is an insult to the thousands of men and women from the 30-plus countries who are risking their lives to bring peace and democracy to the people of Iraq. If the President's critics still believe his policy to be a go-it-alone approach, let them repeat that assertion to the families of the Italian, Spanish, Polish, British, Danish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Thai, Estonian, South Korean, Japanese, and Salvadoran soldiers and aid workers who have given their lives in Iraq.
Some say United Nations oversight in Iraq would confer legitimacy to the coalition's occupation and reconstruction of that country. I find that hard to believe. Given its role in sustaining the Saddam Hussein regime via the alleged mismanagement of the Oil for Food Program and the refusal to enforce its own resolutions, the United Nations is not in a position to lend legitimacy to a free Iraq. In fact, I think it could be argued it would take away legitimacy from a free Iraq. The only thing that can confer legitimacy in Iraq is a series of national elections. However, these elections must not occur too soon as democracy cannot be turned on at the flip of a switch. But they will come in due time. If we stay the course, by December of next year the Iraqis will likely elect the most representative government in the Arab world.
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I might say to put that in context it was 12 years between the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution being adopted.
So the Iraqis will have gone from liberation to election in under 1,000 days and even though we have 24-hour television these days, that is still a remarkably fast evolution from dictatorship, brutal dictatorship to representative government.
The Oil for Food scandal highlights another reason we should not rush to put the United Nations in charge of Iraq's reconstruction. Although we do not yet know the full story, we can draw some initial lessons.
First, an organization that apparently so mismanaged the Oil for Food Program cannot be trusted to manage a $34 billion budget for Iraqi reconstruction.
Second, the alleged corruption of some United Nations officials and member states raises a serious concern about the U.N.'s commitment to its stated mission. Instead of sanctioning Saddam Hussein's regime, a number of United Nations officials and foreign diplomats may have used the Oil for Food Program as a slush fund to enrich themselves while allowing profits and goods to be diverted away from needy Iraqis and toward the Saddam Hussein regime.
Free Iraqis have ample reason to be wary of entrusting their future to those who allegedly had no qualms about doing illicit business with their oppressor.
United Nations control will not stop the violence in Iraq. Quite frankly, the United Nations is not capable of managing the security situation in Iraq. Terrorists do not respect blue-helmeted peacekeepers because the U.N. has proven itself to lack either the firepower or the will to quell violent uprisings. In Somalia, when Aidid's thugs took to the streets, United Nations peacekeepers stayed in camp while American troops fought to restore order.
How can we expect United Nations forces that fled from Somalia's untrained gangs to confront the professional fedayeen and suicidal radicals behind this insurgency in Iraq? Few seriously believe the U.N. can be trusted to provide security for the Iraqi people. Indeed, the United Nations has demonstrated its inability to provide security even for itself. The U.N.'s own scathing report on the bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad last summer documented the culture of complacency and poor planning within the U.N.'s security forces. The United Nations has already cut and run in Iraq in the wake of the August bombings of its headquarters. How can the Iraqis trust the U.N. not to abandon them yet again to the lawless insurgents who seek to derail the democratic process?
There is a further problem subjugating American foreign policy authority to the United Nations Security Council. The veto-wielding permanent members of the security council were chosen because they were simply the world's major powers at the time the United Nations was established. It therefore does not accurately reflect the distribution of world power today, and its composition discriminates against the current major powers that share principles of democracy and of freedom.
For example, Communist China is a permanent member, but democratic Japan, the world's second largest economy, is not. Newly democratic Russia is a member, but neither Canada nor Spain, democracies with twice the size of Russia's economy, is a member; nor is Italy, with an economy four times as large as that of Russia; nor is India, the world's largest democracy.
Even France, although democratic, often has different strategic and political interests than the United States. As evidenced by the Oil for Food scandal, it is possible that France, sometimes a more zealous competitor than an ally, had a significant financial stake in the continuation of the Saddam Hussein regime.
When the security council deliberates, there are often too many cooks in the kitchen and all of them have different tastes.
If the United Nations takes a larger role in Iraq, so too will the general assembly. I am not convinced that will be a good thing. There are, to be sure, responsible nations in the general assembly but, frankly, they are few and very far between.
The irony that so many authoritarian regimes are represented in such a democratic body is often lost on American politicians who so desperately seek approval of our foreign policy from this very body. The general assembly, in fact, provides funds for despotic member states to pour sand onto the clogs of international peace and stability. These regimes are unremittingly hostile to the United States and to democracy, and they will continue to exploit their authority at the U.N. to halt freedom's progress.
Sudan, Syria, and Iran did not oppose the liberation of Iraq because they wanted to peacefully resolve the growing international crisis. They opposed the war because they didn't want to see a precedent whereby their own tyrannies could be undermined.
The ability of rogue states to thwart the U.N.'s efforts to do the right thing is exemplified by the United Nations Human Rights Commission whose members include-listen to this, the United Nations Human Rights Commission whose members include Cuba, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, among others.
Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch has called the commission a rogue's gallery of human rights abusers-that is the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations-and correctly noted "an abusive country cannot honestly pass judgment on other abusive countries."
So does Senator Kerry really want to give these nations a say in Iraq's future? Does he expect them to share America's interest in a free and stable Iraq, even though a democratic Iraq would undermine their own authoritarian rule? Why do some American politicians want the fox to guard the henhouse?
If the President's critics still believe that authority in Iraq should be transferred to the U.N., then we should have waited for the United Nations' approval before liberating Iraq. Let them explain to the American people why they have such trust in the UN.
Let them explain why China, France, or Russia deserves a veto over U.S. foreign policy.
Let them explain why the very countries that allegedly negotiated clandestine oil leases with Saddam Hussein deserve a say in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Let them explain how an organization that cannot manage its own finances deserves to manage those of the Iraqis.
Let them explain why an organization that cannot provide for its own security should be entrusted with stabilizing Iraq. There are many things the United Nations can do well, but I don't believe managing Iraq's fragile transition to democracy is one of them. I wish the United Nations could be helpful on issues that are critical to American security, but it is unsuited to that mission.
I support the United Nations. I hope it can reform itself and prevent the worst abusers of human rights from sabotaging its laudable efforts to protect the rights and dignity of mankind. I want the United Nations to play a role in Iraq's reconstruction, and I hope it will send humanitarian teams and election monitors to assist in building democracy on the ruins of tyranny.
But the United Nations is not a collective security organization, and it cannot replace America as a defender of liberty and democracy in conflicts that are important to American security because too many of its Members share neither our principles nor our interests.
Entrusting democracy in Iraq to the blue-helmeted bureaucrats at the United Nations is not a plan, it is a fantasy.