The absurdity of the U.N. Security Council

WASHINGTON--America goes courting Guinea, Cameroon and
Angola in search of the nine Security Council votes
necessary to pass our new resolution on Iraq.

The absurdity of the exercise mirrors the absurdity of
the United Nations itself. Guinea is a perfectly nice
place and Guineans perfectly nice people. But from the
dawn of history to the invention of the U.N., it made
not an ounce of difference what a small, powerless,
peripheral country thought about a conflict thousands
of miles away. It still doesn't, except at the
Alice-in-Wonderland United Nations, where Guinea and
Cameroon and Angola count.

For a day. As soon as their votes are cast, they will
sink again into obscurity. In the meantime, however,
we'll have to pay them off. Their price will be lower
than Turkey's but, then again, Turkey is offering
something tangible--territory from which to launch a
second front. Guinea will be offering a raised hand at
a table in New York.

The entire exercise is ridiculous, but for
unfathomable reasons it matters to many, both at home
and around the world, that the United States should
have the permission of Guinea to risk the lives of
American soldiers to rid the world--and the
long-suffering Iraqi people--of a particularly vicious
and dangerous tyrant.

It is only slightly less absurd that we should require
the assent of France. France pretends to great power
status, but hasn't had it in 50 years. It was given
its permanent seat on the Security Council to preserve
the fiction that heroic France was part of the great
anti-Nazi alliance rather than a country that
surrendered and collaborated.

Half a century later, that charade has proved costly.
In order to appease the French, we negotiated Security
Council Resolution 1441, which France has thoroughly
trashed and yet which has delayed American action for
months.

Months for the opposition to mobilize itself,
particularly in Britain where Tony Blair is now
hanging by a thread. Months for Saddam to augment his
defenses and plan the sabotage and other surprises he
has in store when the war starts. Months, most
importantly, that threaten to push the fighting into a
season of heat and sandstorms that may cost the lives
of brave Americans. We will have France to thank for
that.

France is not doing this to contain Iraq--France spent
the entire 1990s weakening sanctions and eviscerating
the inspections regime as a way to end the containment
of Iraq. France is doing this to contain the United
States. As I wrote last week, France sees the
opportunity to position itself as leader of a bloc of
former great powers challenging American supremacy.

That is a serious challenge. It requires a serious
response. We need to demonstrate that there is a price
to be paid for undermining the United States on a
matter of supreme national interest.

First, as soon as the dust settles in Iraq, we should
push for an expansion of the Security Council--with
India and Japan as new permanent members--to dilute
France's disproportionate and anachronistic influence.


Second, there should be no role for France in Iraq,
either during the war, should France change its mind,
or postwar. No peacekeeping. No oil contracts. And
France should be last in line for loan repayment,
after Russia. Russia, after all, simply has opposed
our policy. It did not try to mobilize the world
against us.

Third, we should begin laying the foundation for a new
alliance to replace the now obsolete Cold War
alliances. Its nucleus should be the ``coalition of
the willing'' now forming around us. No need to
abolish NATO. The grotesque performance of France,
Germany and Belgium in blocking aid to Turkey marks
the end of NATO's useful life. Like the U.N., it will
simply wither of its own irrelevance.

We should be thinking now about building the new
alliance structure around the United States, Britain,
Australia, Turkey, such willing and supportive Old
Europe countries as Spain and Italy, and the New
Europe of deeply pro-American ex-communist states. Add
perhaps India and Japan and you have the makings of a
new post-9/11 structure involving like-minded states
that see the world of the 21st century as we do:
threatened above all by the conjunction of terrorism,
rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. As part
of that rethinking, we should redeploy our bases in
Germany to Eastern Europe, which is not just
friendlier but closer to the theaters of the new war.

This is all for tomorrow. The imperative today is to
win the war in Iraq. However, winning the peace will
mean not just the reconstruction of Iraq. It will mean
replacing an alliance system that died some years ago,
but whose obituary was written only this year. In
French, with German footnotes.