Robert Tracinski on Hans Blix:
Robert Tracinski on Hans Blix:
It turns out that Blix has failed to present us even with the satisfying drama of being obviously ineffectual. Instead, he has done what career diplomats do best: please everyone a little. He has been just tough enough to avoid being dismissed as a cream-puff by the United States; just accommodating enough to the Iraqis to seem like he is not "in America's pocket"; and just balanced enough in his appraisals to allow the French and Germans to declare that the inspections are "working."Nothing totally new or spectacular, here, but this is a great summation of Blix's role in all this. I've recently had a number of debates with people who have insisted that Blix believes that Iraq is cooperating, while I think Blix has made it clear enough that it isn't.A perfect display of Blix in action was his performance over the weekend, when Blix declared that Iraq's token dismantling of a few missiles was "a very significant piece of real disarmament" — while also acknowledging that Iraq's disarmament has been "very limited so far." Blix always manages to achieve this kind of balance. The pattern is: Iraqi cooperation has improved, but they must do more. This kind of statement is like a Rorschach test: everyone is free to see in it what he wants to see. The Bush administration can point out that Iraq is not fully cooperating; the French and Russians can point out that the inspections show signs of "progress"; the Iraqi regime can point out that the inspectors have still found no "smoking gun."
If anything, this ambiguity just shows that Blix's real purpose has not been to discover whether Iraq has disarmed -- as he was mandated to do by UN 1441 -- but to stave off war, regardless of the findings of the inspection team. Which begs the question: what was the point of assigning Blix a task he wasn't going to do in good faith? What's the point of any of it? More and more, the UN is proving itself to be nothing more than an ineffectual nuisance, plain and simple.
Posted by Matt at March 12, 2003 4:04 PM
