In the interim, to help restore and maintain order we must bring the international community into Iraq to create a multinational force that will give international legitimacy to the occupation, reduce animosity toward American soldiers and ensure that Iraqi spontaneous efforts to restore order themselves through local protective societies and militias don't degenerate into warlordism or mafia-style syndicates. At the same time, we must prevent the ideological multilateralists from exploiting the agony in Iraq to advance their own personal agenda of expanding and strengthening the United Nations at the expense of U.S. leadership. Dealing with the multilateralists will require all of our diplomatic skills as they attempt to hide behind and exploit the interests of the French and Germans for whom it is "payback" time, looking to use the United Nations to extract every conceivable concession from the United States.
The challenge, then, is to make appropriate use of the United Nations without allowing it to be hijacked and exploited, under the pretext of helping Iraq, to further ideological agendas and particular national interests. Bringing the United Nations into Iraq as just another occupying force not only will not improve the situation, it likely will make it worse. The United Nations' record in so-called "peacekeeping" undertakings in hot-conflict zones is poor.
There is a vital role for the United Nations in Iraq, but that role must be carefully worked out in consultation with the Iraqis. Iraq is not a U.N. mandate and should not be turned into one. The United States should remain the occupying authority in Iraq until such time as Iraq can be turned back over to the Iraqis and the new Iraqi government can invite the United Nations into the country to assist in the reconstruction. Bringing international troops into Iraq in the interim under U.N. auspices, therefore, will require working out some kind of joint force structure in which U.S. military remains under U.S. command.
Now is the time to focus our attention on three primary priorities that we can accomplish quickly without letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
As many as possible of the 400,000 Iraqi military who are willing, suitable and reliable must be recalled to active duty immediately, and Iraqis must begin taking over security within a few weeks.
Local elections must be held as soon as possible, and the popularly elected local officials who emerge must select regional assemblies that, in turn, should select national assemblies that can be organized within a few months. These assemblies must be given the power of the purse and must take charge of conducting consultations and negotiations with the U.S. government to determine how and how much U.S. money will be spent on Iraqi reconstruction.
The oil industry must be quickly broken into real private joint-stock companies, complete with Iraqi CEOs and Iraqi governing boards of directors, in which every Iraqi is an equal shareholder. This is the fastest way to rejuvenate Iraq's international trade and one means of beginning to implement Bush's idea of a free-trade zone for all of the Middle East.
These three structural and institutional steps provide the core of a plan to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis quickly. There is no time to lose.