Influence of military is seen in adoption of UN resolution
WASHINGTON -- The adoption of the new UN resolution on Iraq followed months of intense lobbying from US military leaders seeking new international legitimacy to the task of stabilizing and rebuilding the country, according to Bush administration officials.
The military, not normally known for using such political influence, exerted itself after failing in past attempts to sway policy in the Defense Department, the lead US entity in Iraq, the officials said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard M. Myers, and other top brass pressed a skeptical Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other leading proponents of the war within the administration to turn to the United Nations. Myers joined forces with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a former Joint Chiefs chairman, to push the administration to do all it could to obtain UN support for peacekeeping in Iraq.
After months of rising violence and growing anti-American sentiment in Iraq, the military commanders convinced administration hawks -- who had initially opposed seeking UN backing -- that relinquishing some symbolic control of the postwar situation to the world body would go a long way toward ensuring ultimate success.
"The chiefs saw this as not a military necessity, but a political necessity," said one senior military official involved in high-level Pentagon deliberations, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said Myers, Marine Corps General Peter Pace, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the military's commanders in Iraq have been more forceful in closed-door meetings in recent months about the need to give the occupation less of an American-only face to avoid alienating Iraqis. They also pushed for returning power to Iraqis quickly and recruiting more international troops to add to the 24,000 now serving in Iraq.
The 15-member Security Council unanimously passed the new US resolution just days after Washington threatened to walk away from the world body. The United States acceded to the demands of France, Germany, and Russia to set a timetable for returning power to the Iraqi people.
Washington agreed to a Dec. 15 deadline for Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council to set a timetable for writing a constitution and holding elections. It also said that the US mandate would end with the creation of an Iraqi government and gave the UN more say in drafting the constitution -- two key concessions.
The resolution gave the White House a chance to attract more support from other nations -- both military and financial -- in rebuilding Iraq. But it also marked a setback for Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul D. Wolfowitz, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who opposed seeking UN support for the American-led effort and had said for months that previous UN resolutions already gave the mandate they needed to pitch in.
"The fact that they have gone back and did not withdraw the resolution as threatened last week suggested the neoconservatives in the administration are seeing their influence weakened day by day," said Stephen Schlesinger, director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York. "That is an important change in the way Bush is conducting foreign policy. The UN may not have military power, but it certainly has moral authority that is critical to rallying public opinion around the globe."
A defense official who asked not to be identified insisted that the military leadership has had no more influence in seeking a UN mandate for Iraq than any other government agency. He said that the political leadership as a whole gradually came to the conclusion that broader international help in Iraq was paramount to success there, where growing anti-American sentiment and guerrilla attacks continue to rise despite progress in other areas.
But military leaders have taken to making political as much as military arguments in their public statements about what it will take to succeed in Iraq, contending that greater cooperation both within the US government and between Washington and its allies is necessary.
"This isn't just a military fight alone," Myers, President's Bush top military adviser, told a congressional hearing in September. "It requires close cooperation between the Department of Defense and other government agencies, between US departments and agencies, and those agencies of our allies and our friends, and between the coalition that's in Iraq right now and the people of Iraq."
Ground commanders have also steadily argued that ceding control to Iraqis quickly is increasingly important to lowering the profile of the 130,000 US troops policing the country. Army General John P. Abizaid, the head of the US Central Command responsible for the Middle East, repeatedly has said that having Muslim troops participating in the stabilization effort would bring significant benefits.
The military's arguments appear to have won out.
"The administration seems to have realized finally that it cannot conduct the occupation alone and does not want to be seen as the sole power because that makes it the target of the guerrillas," Schlesinger said. "It's an important recognition that the UN has a role to play in our national affairs."
But it remains unclear how the new UN resolution will translate on the ground and whether other countries will provide significant military forces or money. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that the United States hasn't relinquished significant control to the UN even if it acceded to the demands of France and others to speed up a return to Iraqi sovereignty.
"The resolution means we are not going to get much help," he said. "It looks more favorable, but in making the mission feel fundamentally different, I don't think it will have much of an impact."
