After Saddam, the real work begins: with the arrival of U.S. Marines in Baghdad, President Bush's plan for revitalizing Iraq now will be implemented—with the United Nations on the outside looking in

Insight on the News, April 29, 2003 by James P. Lucier

President George W. Bush promised in his news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Belfast that the United Nations would play a "vital role" in a post-Saddam Iraq. But he did not mean that the organization would be a significant agent in determining the governance or future of the country. Indeed, White House sources immediately made it clear that he meant no more than that the United Nations would be allowed to deliver humanitarian resources to the Iraqi people who have suffered from the economic failures of Ba'ath Party socialism, Saddam Hussein's successive wars, systematic tyranny and the misappropriation of resources for the construction of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The president was not about to legitimize the United Nations as an engine of reconstruction. In a joint statement released by Bush and Blair at Hillsborough Castle, the two leaders said: "As early as possible, we seek the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority, a transitional government run by Iraqis.... [It] will be established first and foremost by the Iraqi people with the help of members of the coalition, and working with the [U.N.] secretary-general." Clearly, the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, would work from the sidelines.

"The U.N. brings to the table a number of very important and useful functions, such as its expertise in child survival, refugee health, immunization, refugee assistance and the world food program, feeding centers and the like. That can be helpful to the Iraqi people," says House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). "But on the governing side it becomes much more problematic," he tells INSIGHT. "Nobody who witnessed the events in the U.N. Security Council of the last three months can be very sanguine about a dominant role for the Security Council in the governing of Iraq. It is quite clear that the commercial conflicts of interest by France and Russia make Security Council participation in the interim governing structure problematic."

Nevertheless, Annan, French President Jacques Chirac, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder moved immediately to try to undermine a dominant role for the coalition forces in Iraq's reconstruction. In New York City, Annan insisted, "I do expect the U.N. to play an important role, whether it is the issue of political facilitation leading to the emergence of a new or interim administration." Annan then appointed a Pakistani, Rafeeuddin Ahmed, as his special adviser on Iraq, with a portfolio including "political facilitation." As INSIGHT went to press, the contentious quartet was to meet in St. Petersburg with Blair to try to leverage its strategy against coalition policy.

In the United States, the controversy has been mirrored by a debate on whether the Department of Defense or the State Department should take the lead role. Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a liberal Republican on the committee, argued implicitly for Foggy Bottom to get the lead role. "We must internationalize our policies for rebuilding a postwar Iraq, even as we retain full control on the security side, ideally with the involvement of the U.N., NATO, the EU [European Union] and countries in the region. The best way to do that is through a new United Nations resolution authorizing the necessary security, humanitarian, reconstruction and political missions in post-conflict Iraq," they announced in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

But Bush has another vision. The White House long has made clear not only its concern about the disintegration and chaos that could result in a postwar vacuum, but also problems likely to result from creation of political and economic structures that would mimic the failed social institutions of neighboring countries. The president quietly has made clear to insiders that he wants none of the outdated, collectivist economic-development concepts that dominate the Security Council and, in fact, most of the U.N. member nations.

White House planners emphasize that reconstruction for the benefit of Iraqis cannot take place unless an economic framework is put in place that actually works. They note that planning for a post-conflict transition based on free-market and republican principles began months ago, first in a White House committee headed by Elliot Abrams and then moving to the Pentagon shop run by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

On Jan. 20, the president set up the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Pentagon under Feith's direction, but in liaison with an interagency working group from the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the State Department, the Office of the Vice President, Treasury, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Central Command and the CIA. Later retired three-star general Jay Garner, who had directed humanitarian aid to the Kurds in the early 1990s, was appointed head of the office and sent to Kuwait to work under the commander of the Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks. In February, Feith laid out the administration's five planning goals in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: