Analysis: The U.N. Military Role in Iraq

Sept. 3 -- Asking the U.N.to play a military role in Iraq may or may not be part of the solution.

The basic problem is that the United Nations has no forces of its own, and each U.N. command and multinational force has to be built up in a different way and around a different mission.

The fact that a U.N. flag flies over the result does not mean that it represents anything other than a coalition operation with all of the military problems involved.

The United Nations could provide powerful political cover. A U.N. operation clearly is not an occupation. It would reassure many Iraqis and other nations that the nation-building operation has become international, will not represent some effort to impose U.S. views on Iraq, and will transition to full Iraqi sovereignty as soon as possible.

At the same time, a U.N. multinational force under U.S. control is not a U.N. operation. This has been clear ever since the Korean War, and few nations can be unaware of the end result in the Balkans.

Iraqis may well see such a multinational force as nothing more than an extension of a U.S. occupation by other means. Certainly, those Iraqis who now attack U.S. forces will have no incentive to stop their attacks, and those Islamists — like al Qaeda — who attack the United Nations on ideological grounds are scarcely going to shift positions.

As a result, unless the U.N. resolution broadens the United Nations' nation-building mandate as well, the political facts on the ground in Iraq, and the alignments of hostile forces, are not going to change. The shift will rather be to a "coalition of the willing" under a blue flag.

Paying in Blood or Dollars

This immediately raises the question of who is the new " willing," although the phrase "more willing" may apply better to the military reality.

In effect, Washington is asking for help from those who have largely refused help earlier, and doing so at a time it is clearly in trouble and any forces contributed can become a target all over Iraq.