U.S. policy on Iraq has been stalemated all year. Stalemate, in this situation,
              does not imply stability, as conditions in Iraq remain in an actively deteriorating
              humanitarian crisis and Washington is increasingly isolated from more and
              more of its allies. While no country or group of countries has yet expressed its
              willingness to go head to head with the U.S. in an overt challenge to the
              decade-long economic sanctions, support for the policy is rapidly eroding.

              The latest version of stalemate showed up in the Security Council’s inability to
              agree on who should be appointed to chair the new UN Monitoring,
              Verification and Inspection Commission (with the user-unfriendly acronym
              UNMOVIC) that replaced the discredited UNSCOM. Faced with a month
              of submitting over twenty-five candidates, without agreement from the
              Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw up his hands and appointed
              Rolf Ekeus, the first chief of UNSCOM and currently Sweden’s Ambassador
              to the U.S.

              Annan claimed that in the absence of Council unanimity, he was simply
              proposing the person he viewed best qualified of the assorted candidates.
              That may be. But it was a selection designed as well to placate growing anger
              in Washington over the SG’s perceived tilt towards Baghdad — a perception
              based on Annan’s failure to adequately acquiesce to Washington’s own
              demands — in a move unlikely to have any serious effect.

              Russia, China and France objected to Ekeus’ appointment, and the chance of
              a veto was quite high. The objection was not about Ekeus personally; he was
              widely viewed as professional and competent, and while he was aggressive in
              searching for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program components, he
              rarely engaged in the deliberately provocative affronts to Iraq’s dignity and
              sovereignty that became a hallmark of his replacement, Richard Butler. faced
              with objections, the Security Council appointed Hans Blix, the former head of
              the International Atomic Energy Agency as the new head of UNMOVIC.

              Iraq may well refuse to deal with Blix. And if Iraq refuses to allow Blix into the
              country, the U.S. may have a field day. The Clinton administration could then
              use Iraq’s rejection of Blix to maintain exactly the status quo it wants —
              blame Baghdad for refusing to allow weapons inspections, and maintain the
              crippling economic sanctions by claiming that it’s all Iraq’s fault for rejecting
              UNMOVIC. Ambassador Holbrooke said in early January that the U.S.
              would never agree to a candidate acceptable to Baghdad. That means they
              want a candidate guaranteed to fail in real inspections, but who could serve as
              a great standard-bearer of Iraqi intransigence. If they can just maintain that for
              the next ten months, it means getting through the 2000 election campaign
              without having to worry about a tricky Iraq crisis derailing the Gore
              juggernaut.

              In fact, the selection of the new UNMOVIC chief is far less significant than
              the deficiencies in the entire resolution that created it. Contrary to erroneous
              reports (some mendacious, others ignorant, a few both) the UN’s newest Iraq
              resolution does not lift the sanctions. It creates the new arms inspection
              agency, it tinkers around the edges of some implementation regulations of the
              Oil for Food Programme, it poses hypothetical possibilities of future
              conditions under which some sanctions might be partially and temporarily
              suspended — what it does not do is lift the sanctions. The Clinton
              administration made some procedural concessions to its friends on the
              Council, but U.S. sanctions policy remains qualitatively intact.

              The only significant U.S. policy shift included in the resolution was
              Washington’s acceptance of the principle of incremental easing of sanctions in
              return for evidence of Iraqi cooperation with arms inspections, rather than
              holding compliance on WMD prohibitions that has been part of its policy
              demands for years. But that is only a statement of principle on easing. The
              continuing U.S. claims of perpetual sanctions remaining in place against Iraq
              until Saddam Hussein is out of power, until human rights are restored, until
              Saddam Hussein is gone, until "the end of time" (pick your date, pick your
              Bush or Clinton administration official) remain very much in place.

              The resolution’s key points were in the primacy of place given to the weapons
              inspections, and to the conditionality and both temporal and substantive
              limitations on the severely qualified offer to "suspend" sanctions. It was also
              particularly important that the narrow vote passed the resolution in the face of
              abstentions by three of the five permanent members of the Council. The UK
              had taken the diplomatic lead in the Council in pressing for the resolution’s
              passage, largely because of some unease about the increasing sharpness of the
              contradiction on Iraq policy between London and its presidency of the
              Council, a traditional time for countries (especially the Perm Five) to assert
              Kodak moments of high-profile diplomacy.

              But why is the U.S. still pressing this failed sanctions policy at all — and why,
              after a year of status quo in the Council, did Washington feel compelled to at
              least look like they were prepared to move now? Domestic politics and the
              elections play a key role. The Clinton administration, fearing attacks from the
              Republican right-wing as the U.S. moves into election frenzy, is eager to look
              like it is "doing something" — anything — against international enemies, real or
              imagined (or created). And despite the recent spate of Y2K Bin-Ladenist
              hysteria, Saddam Hussein remains the most reliable of Washington’s demons
              du decade. That meant looking like they were getting past the yearlong UN
              paralysis.

              Of course the spin-doctors can morph anything against Iraq into something
              against the Iraqi bogeyman. That’s always good politics in Washington. In an
              election year it’s even better. As White House spokesman Joe Lockhart put it
              on the day the resolution was signed, calling on Saddam Hussein to accept the
              new arms agency, "if he doesn’t do that, he continues to live in a world of
              sanctions." Not the Iraq people, of course, only the ubiquitous "he."

              So far in the already frantic run-up to the 2000 election, no candidates are
              making Iraq an election priority. Among the Republicans, condemnation of the
              Clinton administration for not "being serious" about providing "real" aid to the
              London-based talking shop known as the Iraqi opposition emerges
              periodically, but no one has yet raised it to a campaign slogan. As for the
              Democrats, whatever Al Gore’s effort to

              distance himself from the personal failings of the Clinton White House, he is
              certainly holding to hard-core Clinton foreign policies. Bill Bradley has shown
              no indication he has any interest in Iraq, beyond claiming to support the
              current strategy. Criticizing the substance of Clinton’s unrelenting anti-Iraq of
              crippling sanctions and just-beneath-the-radar-screen bombings policy,
              except to claim it is not sufficiently "anti-Saddam," is hardly likely to help any
              candidate in the early stage of the campaign.

              But that could change if "stalemate" remained a continuing reproach. Because
              beyond the partisan political factors, the long UN stalemate was also partly
              caused by Washington’s existing policy inertia. Two factors combined to
              make the years-long sanctions-plus (relatively low-level) bombings policy
              acceptable: First, the lack of viable and politically attractive alternatives (read:
              it’s hard to find a telegenic, risk-free and successful strategy to overthrow
              Saddam Hussein in Baghdad but keep his regime conveniently in place). And
              second, the current policy is not yet costly enough to its proponents. The U.S.
              anti-sanctions movement, while stronger than ever, has not yet created the
              conditions in which major political figures are compelled to challenge the
              sanctions policy for their own political survival. What changed over the course
              of 1999 was primarily a growing concern in Washington regarding the
              dwindling support among Council members (and other close allies, including in
              the Middle East) for its increasingly unpopular status quo. That discomfiture
              was magnified by incremental unease in the Clinton administration over
              periodic grassroots-driven media attacks, and the initial murmurings in
              congress, about the civilian-slaughtering impact of U.S.-driven economic
              sanctions.

              Some anti-sanctions activists fear that the new resolution will make their work
              more difficult, as the media repeats the false —whether sloppy or ideologically
              driven — claim that the resolution "lifts the sanctions." Certainly Republicans
              and the right-wing of the Democratic Party will likely parrot that line, using it
              to condemn the Clinton administration for abandoning the noble anti-Saddam
              Hussein crusade. Ironically enough, it may be the Clinton administration itself,
              in an effort to defend its record of being as hard-line as the next guy against
              Baghdad, that may help out the anti-sanctions effort by insisting loudly and
              publicly that whatever the claims of Bush Junior, John McCain or the other
              Republican also-rans, resolution 1284 does NOT lift sanctions!

              And of course, if Baghdad refuses to allow Hans Blix into the country and the
              stalemate remains, so much the better. Clinton can claim credit for holding out
              for serious inspections, the Republicans lose some of their argument about the
              lack of inspections, and sanctions remain comfortably in place. Comfortable
              for the Clintonites, that is; for Iraqis, it means thousands more children
              sacrificed to U.S. election spin.

              Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and author
              of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN.