UN Security Council To Bush - We Don't Trust You

That's the message behind the tacit backing of Germany, France and even the UK for Chinese and Russian resistance to language which could be later used as justifying a military option against Iran.

As the Bush administration struggles to rally international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program, China and Russia are working to take the most powerful diplomatic weapon off the table: the military option.

Moscow and Beijing insist that a U.N. sanctions resolution under negotiation in New York should avoid language that could be used as a pretext for a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. They have received the tacit backing of the United States' key European partners, Britain, France and Germany.

...The effort to constrain the United States underscores lingering distrust over the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 without explicit Security Council approval, analysts said. It follows a similar push to prevent the United States from adopting U.N. resolutions that one day may be used to punish Sudan and North Korea with stronger sanctions or military force.

"People are afraid it's a slippery slope; that if they agree to sanctions today, they give the authority for military intervention tomorrow," said Edward C. Luck, a Columbia University historian who studies the United Nations. He said the political dispute over the use of force has eroded the council's credibility. "It is a sign of weakness and division," Luck said.

The U.N. debate over the use of force in Iran coincides with a realignment of power in the region that is already diminishing the prospects for U.S. military action against Iran, analysts say. U.S. and NATO military setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan are eroding public support in the United States for military action in the region. And the United States' European allies are firmly opposed to any U.S. military action in Iran.

The Bush administration maintains that though it never takes the military option off the table, its diplomatic campaign to rally support for sanctions against Iran and North Korea is not a cover for launching new conflicts.

But Russian and Chinese diplomats note that the United States insisted it was committed to diplomacy in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. When the United States and Britain failed to secure U.N. backing for a more forceful response, they turned to a 12-year-old resolution as the legal basis for the invasion. Resolution 687 set out the terms of a cease-fire ending the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"We learned our lesson from what happened in Iraq and that's why we want to be very clear," said a Chinese diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow's former ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in March that the debate over Iran reminded him of the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. "That looks so deja vu," Lavrov said. "I don't believe that we should engage in something which might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis."

An attitude which is both totally understandable and utterly regretable. Bush's deceiving and incompetence over Iraq has ensured that, at least as long as he is in charge, the U.S. has given up an important leadership role. There will be no more internationally-approved military responses under U.S. leadership for the forseeable future.