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[Previous entry: "Huh"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "In defence of HRW"] 29 March 2003: "Why I was, and am, in favour of this war"Diane commented the day before yesterday I wish Jurjen would tell us his reasons for supporting the war.I have been remiss in not doing this (at least, not doing it here; I've held forth at length over in the 3WA "Politics & Current Events" forum. I'm "Euromutt"). Actually, it's not so much that I support this war (though in certain aspects I do) as that I see no valid reasons to oppose it. As Von Clausewitz put it, "war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means." My personal interpretation of that is that war—or, rather, "military action," since war is term charged with certain legal connotations—is the tool all the way in the bottom of the diplomatic toolbox, only to be taken out when everything else has failed. But when everything else has, it's time to reach for that last tool. As far as the Iraqi government is concerned, the tools of diplomacy were effectively exhausted on 15-Jan-1991. This date was set, in UN Security Council resolution 678 of 29-Nov-1990, as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The deadline passed, and Iraq had not complied. Even the subsequent war demonstrated that the only thing that would extract compliance from Saddam Hussein was armed force; not "merely" the threat of armed force, but the real thing (and plenty of it). Diplomacy could not remove the Iraqi army from Kuwait, so armed force did. And this has set the tone for relations between the international community and Iraq ever since. In the words of the prison captain (played by Strother Martin) in Cool Hand Luke: What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men.Leaving the context of the film aside, that sums it up almost entirely. I don't think of myself as "pro-war" (in general) any more than I think of myself as "pro-abortion"; in my opinion, both are unpleasant practices, best avoided if at all possible, but situations can and do arise in which they are the least bad of the available options. Peace is a fine thing, but peace—genuine, sustainable peace—requires more than merely the absence of armed conflict; in the words of judge Antonio Cassese, the first president of the ICTY, It is universally acknowledged that peace without justice is no peace at all.During the Bosnian War, the international community's efforts were focused on "peace" at the expense of everything else, and this lies at the root of its failure. To tell a people who have been deeply wronged, as the Bosniaks were by 1993, "you must stop fighting, and then maybe we can look into redressing the wrongs that have been done you," and to expect them to accept that, is unrealistic. The crisis the United Nations was plunged into during the unmitigated disaster that was the Boutros-Ghali Secretary-Generalship was also due in no small part to misapplication of the UN's policy of neutrality. There was no good reason to be neutral in Bosnia; the government led by Alija Izetbegović had been recognised by the United Nations General Assembly, thereby making the self-proclaimed "Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina"—later redubbed "Republika Srpska"—a mere rebel breakaway with no legal standing. The fact that the UN failed to come the aid of a government which, by dint of recognition by the UNGA itself, was the only legitimate one, was another cause of Bosnian "intractability" during the war—"Why should we listen to the UN?" said the Bosniaks, "What has the UN done for us?" And they were right. Ultimately, the Bosnian War was not brought to an end by diplomacy so much as by the application of armed force—in which the US Air Force in effect supported Bosnian and Croatian offensives—to redress the military balance to the point that everybody was willing to return to the negotiating table. The Security Council or Sec-Gen Boutros-Ghali did not end the fighting in Bosnia, the Clinton administration did. However, by draping a NATO flag over the operation, Clinton spread the glory (and the complicity) around, and avoided charges of "unilateralism." The spectacular failure of the UN Security Council, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, and his special envoy Yasushi Akashi (who invariably addressed Karadžić—even after his indictment by the ICTY—as "Your Excellency" as if Karadžić were head of a recognised government) over Yugoslavia, not to mention Rwanda, brought the UN system damn near to the brink of collapse. Beyond issuing condemnations and one hollow resolution after another, the Security Council—and its five Permanent Members in particular—had utterly failed to halt the bloodshed in both countries. Indeed, in certain regards, it had facilitated it, for instance by imposing an embargo on arms imports; a measure that did not inconvenience the Serbs, who already had almost all the heavy weapons. While the replacement of Boutros-Ghali with Kofi Annan, and the latter's subsequent efforts to make a clean sweep and revitalise the system, seemed to herald a new dawn for the UN, it is becoming clear in retrospect that the cracks had merely been papered over. The essential problem remained that the Council—and the Permanent Members in particular—would consistently express agreement that something would need to be done about a given situation, passing a Chapter VII resolution to that effect, but in practice there would be no willingness to actually implement that resolution. Sometimes this would be caused by lack of will on the part of all Council members, as with the Bosnian "Safe Areas," which by the estimation of the UN Department of Peace-Keeping Operations, then headed by Kofi Annan, would take some 34,000 troops to implement effectively; none of the Council members which voted for that resolution pledged any troops toward that figure. All too frequently, however, implementation would be obstructed by one or more Permanent Members (in practice, France, Russia, China or any combination of those three) who are/were mates with, or owed money by, the government against whom the resolution was aimed. This problem—two-facedness on the part of Permanent Members—has never been addressed, let alone solved, and it continues to jeopardise the role of the Security Council. We have seen this in the opposition to the "smart sanctions" proposed by America and Britain; these were designed to tighten the sanctions on the Iraqi régime while alleviating some of the deprivations suffered by the Iraqi citizenry. The opposition, led by but not limited to Russia, was not interested in a more effective application of the sanctions; they wanted the humanitarian toll to become so high that the sanctions would have to be lifted altogether, opening the way for new business opportunities for their respective industries, delivered by a grateful Saddam. In fact, we have this attitude—mostly from Russia and France, tacitly backed by China—throughout the latter half of the 1990s. In short, they'd like Saddam to get away with it, but they'll vote for these hollow resolutions, hoping to string the Americans and the British along. This worked for a while, especially with the Clinton administration distracted by the Kosovo crisis during late 1998 and most of 1999, and of course the completely pointless "Zippergate" affair (when Republicans claim Clinton didn't do enough, ask yourself who denied him the opportunity to by wasting his time); of course, the Kosovo crisis was another example of Russian obstructionism to the implementation of a resolution—resolution 1199 (1998)—it had voted in favour of. However, NATO, with the US as its driving force, had already established its predominance in the Balkans as the international vehicle for crisis intervention. NATO went to war without explicit prior approval, and a joint proposal by Russia, China and Namibia condemning the operation was voted down 12-3. Thus, a pattern was emerging that to actually get anything done where the Security Council was involved was to get everyone to agree that "something should be done" and then do what you thought that "something" should be, explicit permission be damned. The fact that Slobodan Milošević is in a cell in the UN Detention wing in Scheveningen jail, where he belongs, is due in no small part to this "unilateral" action. The argument over resolution 1441 is not the problem, it is merely a symptom of a problem that has dogged the Security Council fairly much since the end of the Cold War; perhaps longer, but if so it became glaringly apparent during the 1990s. It is this: the Security Council supposedly has the exclusive authority to sanction interventions when there is a threat to international peace and security, yet it does not accept the concomitant responsibility to do so when intervention is plainly required; in other words, if only the Council can take action, then it must take action, and not—excuse my language—fuck about (lest anyone get smug, the US was guilty of this as well during the Rwandan genocide). As any first-year political science student will tell you, authority without responsibility is an unsustainable combination. When the dust settles on this war, this issue will need to be addressed and taken care of decisively. But that falls outside the purview of this particular entry. Suffice to say when that Kofi Annan stated in February that if it failed to make use of this last chance, and continues its defiance, the council will have to make another grim choice, based on the findings of the inspectors [...] When that time comes, the council must face up to its responsibilities.he wasn't implying that America and Britain were remiss in meeting their obligations regarding Iraq. And so, I return to the subject of Iraq. The Bush administration's intent against Saddam did not come out of thin air. The Clinton administration had a stated policy toward Iraq of "containment plus regime change," though it sought to achieve these goals by material support to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), backed by US air power. This limited approach was probably caused by the well-documented aversion in Congress (yes, Republicans included) to American body bags. The previous CinC CentCom, Marine General Anthony Zinni, put it as follows in his farewell speech in March 2000: But at the same time, there's the President, thinking out loud in a recent meeting and saying, "Why can't we ever drive a stake through the hearts of any of these guys? I look at Kim Jong Il; I look at Milosovic; I look at Saddam Hussein. Ever since the end of World War II, why haven't we been able to find a way to do this?" The answer, of course, is that you must have the political will—and that means the will of the administration, the Congress, and the American people. All must be united in a desire for action. Instead, however, we try to get results on the cheap. There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with $97 million worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely. That's what can happen when we do things on the cheap.Both candidates in the 2000 presidential election took this to heart, as this article—"In Saddam's Future, A Harder U.S. Line"—from June 2000 points out. Initially, the Bush team backed firmer support to the INC but as The Economist pointed out in May 2001: Once in office, the Bush administration recognised that the INC was not the only pebble on the beach. These days, the serious armed resistance to Mr Hussein comes from the Shia Muslim guerrillas in Iraq’s southern swamps. But since they are supported by, and often based in, Iran, America wants nothing to do with them.(As an aside, it should be noted that Iranian backing for the Shi'ite rebellion following the 1991 Gulf War was what caused the Saudis to panic and to demand the Americans allow the Iraqi government to crush the rebellion; see "Neighbours from hell", The Economist, 12-Dec-2002) At the same time, the second Bush administration was already concerned about Iraq's NBC weapons development programmes; in February 2001, weeks (not months) after taking office, CNN reported, in the article "Germany warns of Iraq nuclear threat" (!): Following the U.S. and British [airstrikes on 16-Feb] president George W. Bush said he would "watch very carefully" whether Saddam developed weapons of mass destruction and warned he would take "appropriate action" if he did so.It is evident, then, that "régime change" has been fundamental to the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq since before it even took office. That it has taken the form it has—that of a full-scale ground invasion—can be attributed to a number of factors, among them the glaring lack of any Iraqi opposition group which is both palatable to the administration and capable of toppling Saddam, and a concern that any NBC weapons the Iraqi régime might have, or might develop in future, could find their way into the hands of terrorists who would use them on United States soil. The aforementioned points do not serve to illustrate why I support this war, but they do serve to illustrate why I reject certain arguments against it. I reject the notion that America is acting "unilaterally" by taking action where the Council should be taking action but, hamstrung by France and Russia, isn't. Obstructionist behaviour isn't "multilateralist" just because it forces everyone to inaction, and especially not when it is to the benefit of the obstuctionist party. Moreover, if there has ever been more unilateralist behaviour than France threatening to veto any resolution even conditionally authorising force, and even before Iraq had spoken out on it one way or the other, I'd like to hear about it. (It even tops the betrayal of DutchBat III at Srebrenica by the UNPF Force Commander, French general Bernard Janvier; Janvier rejected three requests for close air support from the battalion, at a time when the Bosnian Serbs were holding several French airmen hostage. The French airmen were released after the enclave fell; the French claim there was no deal.) France may have cast itself as the champion of multilateralism, but what it has done is push multilateralism in front of an oncoming train, because of all the issues in the world on which to stake "multilateralism," this is the worst possible one. I have issues with the Bush administration, certainly. Its rejection of the Kyoto treaty on climate change was justified, but its refusal to engage in further talks which might have produced a better plan was not. Its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty was by the rules, but its failure to consult with its NATO allies before doing so was not; those NATO allies have traditionally relied on the protection provided by the American "nuclear umbrella"—indeed, the existence of the "nuclear umbrella" is the most important reason most of them have not sought to become nuclear powers themselves. And don't even get me started about the International Criminal Court and the administration's attempts to block the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (particularly the specious argument that the agreements in question would contravene the Constitution; see Article VI). But if there is one issue on which I agree with the administration, it is that Saddam Hussein needs to go. In fact, his elimination is long overdue. The man had shown himself to be a mass-murderer many times over, from the 1988 Anfal campaign, through the crushing of the 1991 rebellions to the ethnic cleansing of the Marsh Arabs over the past decade (while he was supposedly "contained"; more on that later). He has attempted to steal a sovereign nation—Kuwait—and when moves were made to wrest it from him, he fired missiles at another sovereign nation not even involved in the conflict—Israel—in an attempt to break the Coalition, even if it meant risking total conflagration in the Middle East. He still hasn't returned 600 Kuwaiti citizens abducted during the occupation, over a decade after he agreed to (part of the cease-fire accords). He has violated almost every international humanitarian law treaty his country has ever ratified, such as the 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1989 Convention on the rights of the Child. Probably the only he hasn't violated is the Procès-verbal relating to the Rules of Submarine Warfare set forth in Part IV of the Treaty of London of 22 April 1930, and that's only because Iraq doesn't have any submarines! To the claim that "inspections are working" I offer the following response; from the UNMOVIC 12th quarterly report: 33. The experts also reviewed the capabilities of casting chambers at the Al Mamoun facility. These had previously been destroyed under UNSCOM supervision since they were intended for use in the production of the proscribed Badr-2000 missile, but had subsequently been refurbished by Iraq. The experts concluded that these reconstituted chambers could still be used to produce motors for missiles of ranges significantly greater than 150 kilometres. Accordingly, these chambers remain proscribed.Emphases in bold mine. In the 1990s, "inspections were working" as well; but as soon as the inspectors were kicked out, Iraq went right back to manufacturing WMDs, sanctions notwithstanding. Saddam remains a threat; twelve years of "containment" have formed a setback, they have not stopped him. Moreover, "containment" is just a euphemism for "siege" on a national level, only with cruise missiles instead of trebuchets; conducting a siege is not only warfare, Chapter III of Sun Tzu's The Art of War teaches us that sieges are the worst possible form of warfare. As I say, I have issues with the Bush administration, but when it comes to taking down Saddam, this war is the only game in town. In the words of David Aaronovitch: [It] would be preferable if an invasion could be undertaken, not by the Americans, but by, say, the Nelson Mandela International Peace Force, spearheaded by the Rowan Williams British Brigade. That's not on offer. It has to be the Yanks.A sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur. Again from Annan's speech in February: [The UN's] founders were not pacifists. They knew there would be times when force must be met by force.This is strong language for a Secretary-General of the United Nations. I don't care if American firms benefit from this war; it's preferable to French and Russian firms benefiting from collaborating (and I use that word deliberately) with a genocidal dictator. I don't care if this war is no panacea; it's got to be an improvement for the Iraqi people, because it can't be worse. I support this war. I also support keeping a close watch on what happens after the war; this war is supposed to be for the benefit of the people of Iraq, and it's up to all of us to make sure that it does. |
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