Coherent EU foreign policy would provide counter to US power

WORLD VIEW: Now that the UN has passed a resolution lifting sanctions against Iraq, it seems a good time to make an initial assessment of the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Diplomatic comment at the UN this week spoke of the need to move on. The resolution is a compromise that stops just short of legitimising a war which did not have Security Council approval. It is nevertheless seen as a victory for US diplomacy, reflecting the balance of power on the ground - but also confirming the Bush administration's need for international support after the disastrous failure to bring reconstruction, humanitarian aid and public order to Iraq.

US officials now describe the swift military victory as a "catastrophic success" which did not provide for these functions. Evaluation of the war depends much more on its political outcomes than on military predictions made during the course of it.

However well-informed, they differed greatly as to the war's duration and intensity. Its critics made the following political points:

Its confused objectives, strung between disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and breaking its links with terrorism, concealed a neo-imperial desire to topple its regime and reconfigure the Middle East in line with US strategic and economic, including oil, interests.

Containment and intrusive arms inspections could have achieved disarmament just as well.

Because there was so little evidence of direct connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, a war would stoke anti-Americanism and provoke "100 Bin Ladens", as President Mubarak of Egypt put it.

Islamist movements would be bolstered, intensifying the dangers of a "clash of civilisations" they want to provoke with the West.

Israel's strategic position would be strengthened, facilitating the Sharon government's refusal to accept the internationally agreed road map, and the Bush administration would not be willing or able to enforce Israeli compliance as a presidential election approaches.

The UN would be damaged, perhaps fatally, by a war mounted without a Security Council mandate, confirming US unilateralism and hyperpowerdom.

Transatlantic relations would also be damaged, notwithstanding European divisions on the war, which US neo- conservatives believe it is in the US's interest to encourage.

The war's objectives remain confusing, despite the temptation to justify it retrospectively by the allegedly universal relief that Saddam is no longer in power. In fact he is almost certainly still alive and there are signs that the Baath organisation has survived and is organising resistance to the US occupation. Liberation has been dimmed by looting, lawlessness and the collapse of basic infrastructures.

Weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found, despite the surrender of senior officials who must know where they are if they exist and the presence of thousands of US inspectors. The new UN resolution encourages Britain and US to keep the Security Council informed of their activities in this regard and pledges to revisit the relevant previous resolutions, including in its review of implementation of this resolution in 12 months time.

US strategic policy in the Middle East has been set out by President Bush in several speeches since the war. He has pledged to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to promote democratisation in the region.

The more realpolitik, if unspoken, reasons for the war included a fear that the instability of regimes in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere would be taken advantage of by Saddam Hussein, especially if economic sanctions against him were relaxed.

The UN resolution recognises the US and Britain as occupying powers. It provides for oversight of their administration of Iraq's oil industry, which will be managed by a development fund controlled by a US-appointed board, headed by an American, Philip Carroll, former chief executive of Shell Oil.

The American economist Jeffrey Sachs, writing in Thursday's Financial Times, argued that if the US is to convince critics that this was not an oil war, it will undertake not to decide unilaterally on reconstructing or privatising Iraq's oil industry, respect existing contracts and provide for an independent legal process to deal with disputes.

It should make its dealings transparent, unlike the major contracts issued without competition to major US companies such as Bechtel, Halliburton and Fluor, all of them with intimate contacts to the Bush administration. Many observers, he concludes, believe that without such guarantees, the US's money-drenched political system has already crossed the line from such cronyism to "naked imperialism, a system in which public outlays for military adventures are motivated by the private accumulation of wealth and the blood of the poor is shed for private gain".

A week in which some 100 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco and security alerts are increased in the US and elsewhere after warnings of renewed al-Qaeda attacks tells a story about a war designed to put an end to that organisation and its activities.

The more they are successful, the greater the danger of civilisational conflicts and their mindsets. Already the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is under severe strain, as the Sharon government disputes its obligations under it.

The UN has not been fatally hurt by these events, which demonstrate that it would probably have to be reinvented if it had been. It has been shaken badly, nevertheless. The readiness of France, Russia and Germany to go along with this week's resolution, having secured significant concessions, shows there is still life in their multilateral ambitions to curb the US's unilateralism. Seasoned observers believe it is incapable of reform but that may be too cynical or pessimistic a view.

It would be open to the EU, as it debates its future security and defence policy after the war, to seek UN reform, including more effective EU mandating of its representatives there and a clearer role for the EU itself as a regional actor under UN auspices. Kofi Annan's call this week on the EU to send peacekeeping troops to bring the appalling war in the Congo to an end illustrates the potential involved.

It may not suit the US to have a more coherent EU foreign policy, but that may be the best way to moderate US power after such an ill-advised war.