U.S. Seeks 9 Votes From U.N. Council to Confront Iraq: The United States and Britain have decided that their strategy in the United Nations will be to try to persuade 9 of the 15 members of the Security Council to back a new resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, and then to challenge France, Russia or China to veto the will of the Council's majority, administration officials said today.
... Well, that's an alarmingly stupid strategy.
Does the administration seriously think that France wouldn't veto the resolution just because a resolution might have nine votes? France just told more than half of Europe that it should shut up and be guided by them. Why on earth would they let something as petty as a marginal majority stop them? To be sure, in the face of a majority, Russia and China might well abstain; they have somewhat less at risk, and neither of them is precisely averse to the US providing object lessons to their Muslim minorities. (Not that we would run around invading Russia or China; it's just the principle.) France, however, would exuberantly, gladly, enthusiastically slap that veto down, and then would get up and do a little apache dance on the table to punctuate the point.
And, to be perfectly fair, we haven't let even opposing supermajorities in the Security Council stop us from exercising a veto. Many many times, we've been on what would normally be the losing side of an argument, except that we simply exercised the veto, and that ended it. It's entirely likely that the rest of the council would simply view this as tit-for-tat repayment, as far as the vote itself goes.
So, really, if this is the administration's UN strategy, it's alarmingly stupid. Besides, how many carrots can they possibly offer all those wavering countries? Apparently all major countries concerned are offering lavish bribes -- er, pardon me, aid and fiscal incentives to go along with one position or another. And granted, the US is in a somewhat better position than France and Germany to offer extravagantly lavish bribes. (Of course, that's likely to run into severe Congressional resistance; when you are running a massive budget deficit is no time to be giving away what money you do have.)
Posted by iain at February 21, 2003 02:16 PM
