Academic View: The price of unilateralism

NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- If the Bush administration decides to wage war against Iraq unilaterally, that is, without the explicit approval of the U.N. Security Council, it will severely damage, if not destroy, the very institution that was established to safeguard international security.

Iraq, however, may be only incidental to the global geopolitical realignment brought about by the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The European community, led by Germany and France, no longer feels the need for the American security umbrella that justified our predominance in its affairs throughout the 50 years of the Cold War. At the same time, the absence of any present threat to its security, coupled with our growing strategic and economic interests in the Middle East and Asia, is shifting our focus away from Europe.

Moreover, recent events, such as the limited military role played by Western Europe in the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and now in the current war against terrorism, at least to this administration, also point to the region's reduced military importance. That said, France and Germany especially, want to have their own voice and play a greater role in determining Europe's destiny.

France, in particular, sees Europe as a counterweight to American economic and military power, and thus, the conflict over Iraq, among other things, has provided a platform for this vision.

Indeed, for France and Germany, American dominance threatens Europe's cohesiveness and may adversely affect their own national interests. And raising the stakes even higher for France and Germany is the imminent expansion of the European Union to include eight former East European nations, whose ties to the U.S. (because of its steadfast opposition to communism and their fears that France and Germany have a hidden agenda to dominate Europe) appear to be stronger than to Western Europe. These are the reasons behind President Jacques Chirac's irate retort to those East European countries seeking EU membership after they voiced support of the U.S. position on Iraq.

As Chirac famously scolded, they had "missed a good opportunity to remain silent." In the face of such tensions from within and without, the French and the Germans view the Security Council, as indispensable in checking American predominance and unilateralism.

There is no doubt that a superpower must act unilaterally and take the lead when it appears absolutely necessary, for example, when its national security is threatened.

Opposition to unilateralism then is not simply a matter of principle. In the case of Iraq, the question is whether multilateralism, through the efforts of the Security Council, has been exhausted, especially since the administration has failed to prove conclusively that

Iraq poses either a present or imminent danger to us. It is true that many countries have gone to war for even lesser compelling reasons. Saddam Hussein, has after all, violated every international norm of conduct. India, Pakistan, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea and South Korea, have waged war (as have the French against Algeria) without first securing multilateral permission. The issue is not whether these wars or the one being threatened, were, or are justified. Rather, it is that the United States, because of its unique position as the world's only superpower must, I believe, be held to a much higher standard.

A superpower has a unique responsibility not to misuse its enormous military and economic superiority.

The conflict over Iraq has widened the growing gulf among the Europeans themselves and between the United States and its old allies. Still, the Security Council and NATO remain absolutely indispensable to safeguarding international security. However flawed the Security Council, it is still the sole legitimate body in charge of international security. No matter how skeptical it feels about the Security Council, the Bush administration must not give up on it. In fact, if Bush believes the Security Council to be important enough to still turn to it in seeking legitimacy for the use force against Iraq or to contain North Korea, then how can he then discard it if its members refuse to abide by his wishes?

Other than the fact the Security Council provides political cover for reluctant allies to join us in our war efforts, we must work with other veto-bearing members such as Russia and China, whose support we will need sooner rather than later to resolve other international crises such as how to deal with North Korea or the dangerous India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir.

Moreover, a pre-emptive attack on Iraq without the approval of the Security Council will violate the principle established by the United Nations of non-aggression and, consequently, undermine our credibility and moral authority to tell other nations to stick to the rules when these rules suit us.

Finally, the strength or weakness of the Security Council is the sum of the efforts and commitment member states invest in it. Once we dismiss the Security Council as irrelevant, we, perhaps more than any other country (because of our global strategic interests), will be adversely affected by its impotence.

NATO is another institution that can become a potent force for peace. But NATO must modernize itself to become effective. While the combined European defense spending is around half of the defense outlay of the United States, NATO's capabilities in the area of modern warfare are weak. As a start to modernizing NATO, we should withdraw most of our troops from Europe, and invest large sum of the huge amount saved in updating NATO technologically.

That said, as much as NATO needs to modernize technologically, it also must adjust psychologically to the new security requirements in the wake of Sept. 11. NATO is the sole defensive arm of the transatlantic community and the most natural institution, as Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, recently argued, for meeting the challenges of terrorism and the proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction. In assessing NATO's future role, its former commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, recently appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" and stated that it can be the most potent organization to deal with terrorism. In this context, NATO should eventually integrate Russia into its security apparatus while focusing on peacekeeping in and around the European continent.

The conflicts that have arisen between the United States and the Security Council, on the one hand, and between the United States and NATO, on the other, have the potential to shape the future of international security for decades. The choice is ours.

How the administration resolves the conflict over Iraq will either render these institutions irrelevant or strengthen their powers by reshaping them to deal with grave threats to international security. We can work with our European allies -- both new and old -- and decide what sort of relations we want in the context of our and their evolving needs, and in so doing maintain our traditional ties, not only for their own sake but for the sake of saving and strengthening an old alliance. Or we can squander an unparalleled opportunity to lead with moral authority and thereby provoke other powers to gang up against us because of their fear of our unilateralism.

(Alon Ben-Meir is Middle East Project director at the World Policy Institute, New York and a professor of International Relations at New York University.)