Right now, instead of continuing their petty squabbling, the United Nations’ leading members should be working together to strengthen the organization created in 1945 to deal with just such a crisis. And the primary role should be played by the organization’s founding member, its largest contributor, its host country. After all, the attack on the United Nations was also an attack on the United States. Yet at this crucial moment the leadership needed from Washington is curiously missing. Not only the United Nations’ future is at stake. If the United Nations is forced to pull out its personnel–men and women who are working for the key U.S. goals of peace, security and development–American policy in Iraq will also be at risk.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and charismatic U.N. official who died in the bombing, symbolized the potential of the American relationship with the United Nations. In his extraordinary career, Sergio–my friend for more than 20 years–worked in many of the world’s most dangerous spots, including Bangladesh, Cyprus, Cambodia, Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Congo, Mozambique and East Timor. While loyally serving his organization, Sergio was usually advancing America’s long-term interests as well. He saw nothing strange or incompatible in this. On the contrary, he believed passionately that the ideals and goals of the United Nations and those of the United States were symmetrical, if not always identical. He was a great humanitarian, but he was also a seasoned and wise political operative whose final days were spent guiding a confused American mission in Iraq toward a strategy to deal with the chaotic political scene.
Service in Iraq for international civilian personnel is obviously getting much more dangerous. U.N. personnel are now a target. Who is going to protect them? The United Nations (and sister organizations, like the World Bank and the IMF) need their own protection force. The Americans will not want to stretch their forces any thinner, and in any case the United Nations cannot be surrounded by highly visible American soldiers.
The solution lies in the sort of diplomatic creativity at which Sergio Vieira de Mello was so brilliant. The Security Council should immediately authorize the deployment of several thousand troops to Iraq with a narrow but vital mission: protecting U.N. personnel and installations. This new force cannot be a “blue beret” U.N. peacekeeping force; that would take months to assemble and have all the problems associated with earlier blue-beret missions in dangerous areas. Rather, it would be what is called a “multinational force,” or MNF, like the forces that serve in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (and, in 1999, East Timor).
The best nation to lead such a group might well be Norway, an important NATO ally that is also a strong supporter of the United Nations. With a battalion of Norwegians at its core, and additional troops from such countries as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, such a force could protect the United Nations while working in close conjunction with the American command. But to create such a force, a new Security Council resolution is needed.
Last Thursday, a sorry day for American world leadership, senior administration officials said they would oppose any such Security Council resolution because it would violate the principle of unity of command. The only thing Washington would consider, they said, was a resolution similar to one proposed and rejected before the bombing, an invitation for other countries to join the American-led Coalition. The reaction from most diplomats (not just the all-too-predictable French) was fiercely negative; several told me privately that the American position was an insult to the memory of Vieira de Mello.
This problem can be solved by relatively simple creative diplomacy, if Washington and Paris work together instead of weakening the United Nations through their public bickering. Afghanistan provides one model; a U.N.-sanctioned International Security Assistance Force protects the capital city, Kabul, while the Americans fight in the rest of the country. Another suggestion, from former U.N. ambassador Thomas Pickering, is to create a new MNF that would report through a separate chain of command, but to the U.S. commander in Iraq–the so-called dual-hat authority, which has many recent precedents and keeps unity of command.
While French and Russian support will be necessary, the initiative should come from the United States. We have the most to gain from a successful U.N. mission in Iraq–and the most to lose if it fails. The sooner Washington realizes that and acts to strengthen the United Nations, the quicker the United States can reduce some of the risks and costs of the Iraq quagmire. This is not some abstraction; lives are at stake, and most of them are American. If Sergio were still alive, this (or something like it) is what he would be fighting for.
