Informed Speculation

I’ve been meaning to post, but have never got around to it, on the increasingly autocratic Russia under Putin. Corruption is rampant, and freedom is disappearing. Yet the IAEA, instead of referring Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council, is letting Russia lead another round of negotiations.

The Wall Street Journal reminds us of Russia’s previous work with a Middle Eastern regime that wasn’t playing by the rules:

Paul Volcker’s inquiry found that Russia was by far the greatest beneficiary of Saddam’s largesse, taking in $19.3 billion in Iraqi oil deals and doing $3.8 billion in so-called humanitarian assistance, much of it diverted to military purposes. (By comparison, the French did a mere $4.4 billion in oil deals and $3 billion in humanitarian assistance.)

Mr. Volcker also found that Saddam steered millions of dollars worth of oil allocations to well-connected Russian officials and institutions. Among them were the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Zhironovsky’s Peace and Unity Party, the deputy prime minister of Russia, the son of Russia’s ambassador in Iraq, the president and prime minister of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, the Russian Political Science Academy and the Russian Ministry of Emergencies.

Also apparently on the take: Russia’s presidential office, which was allocated 21,350,000 barrels of oil, according to Iraqi records. In the end, Oil for Food became a bubbling revenue stream the Kremlin steered to its preferred domestic clients while using its veto powers at the U.N. Security Council to advocate on Saddam’s behalf. It’s possible that more reliable mechanisms could be found to ensure the transparency of a prospective Iranian-Russian arrangement. But the Oil for Food story suggests that Russia isn’t the fittest country in the world to monitor and administer Iran’s enrichment programs.

The U.N. is institutionally incapable of achieving anything of note. Thank God for unilateralism…we may yet have to resort to it again.