What is the role of the United Nations in the Iraq crisis?
The United Nations has played a central role in the US-Iraq conflict since 1990, when the US used bribes, threats and punishments to ensure Security Council endorsement of the Gulf War. Since then, the US has manipulated the UN for its own political goals of war and sanctions against Iraq. Madeleine Albright, then-US Ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of State was not shy in declaring, in 1995, that “the UN is a tool of American foreign policy.” Even so, Bush administration ideologues have objected to UN centrality, or even UN involvement, in the Iraq crisis as a matter of principle. This is particularly clear in the case of the economic sanctions that have devastated Iraq since the end of the Gulf War. While virtually every other country in the UN would support lifting sanctions and allowing Iraq to rebuild its shattered country, the sanctions remain in place because governments are afraid to defy the United States. (For more on sanctions and their impact, see question 26.) Much
