UK prime minister Tony Blair's speech at his constituency of Sedgefield on 3 September 2002, in which he came out in support of action against Saddam Hussein, appears to confirm the inevitability of the American government's war on Iraq.
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With the exception of Tony Blair, the Bush administration seems to have won little international support for its promise of 'regime change' in Iraq. But the lack of support for the US strategy over Iraq coexists with the absence of any clear opposition to waging war.
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Debate over US policy is not fired by opposition to the war so much as by doubts about US timing and strategy. Should America bomb before or after a discussion in the UN Security Council? Should America let the Europeans play a larger role? Should the aim of the war be just the removal of Saddam Hussein, or should there be a long-term nation-building commitment?
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While public discussion about the war remains restricted to policy presentation, timing and strategy, the US hawks' position will be strengthened. It will appear that the opponents of war have a weaker and even less coherent position than its advocates.
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For example, if President George W Bush's opponents agree that Saddam is evil and cannot be trusted, then it makes little sense to delay attacks until receiving evidence that he has weapons of mass destruction. It is therefore perhaps no surprise that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld has equated gripes about evidence of Iraq's weapon capability with the appeasement of Nazi Germany.
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The anti-war doom-mongers assert that war against Iraq may be difficult to win, or that it may further destabilise the Middle East. This does little to question the legitimacy of US military action. The experiences of the 1991 Gulf War, NATO action in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the US conquest of the Taliban in Afghanistan, suggest to American planners that war today is a relatively straightforward policy option.
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Europeans arguing that the consequences have to be thought through are met with Rumsfeld's claim to uphold Churchill's mantle, putting 'what is right' before what is popular, and with vice-president Dick Cheney's assertion that 'the risk of inaction is far greater than action'.
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Against the apparent policy caution of their opponents, the 'hawks', like Pentagon advisor Ken Adelman, take the moral high-ground. Why worry about upheaval in the Middle East where there is nothing but a string of corrupt and repressive regimes? Maybe the war could bring down the Saudi regime, but why would the peace camp want to support a reactionary undemocratic regime that represses women and Christians?
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Today, the doubters appear to be 'appeasers' of the repressive Sheikdoms, whereas the US hawks appear as the advocates of democracy, freedom and women's liberation. Because US foreign policy is presented as the promotion of democracy and 'popular liberation', the State Department finds it hard not to boast of its overt and covert involvement in 'regime change' across the globe from Belarus to Zimbabwe.
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War is increasingly becoming the easiest option - but this is not merely because the hi-tech forces of the USA can easily take on isolated and weak non-Western states. The key factor making war a more attractive option than diplomacy is the collapse of any popular support for the principle of non-intervention.
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 | | After the Kosovo war, commentators praised US unilateral military action |
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This right, enshrined in the UN Charter, protects the independence and right of self-government of small states. Over the past 10 years, war and coercive intervention have received a boon of good publicity. The right of non-intervention has been replaced by a right for Great Powers to intervene where they feel the cause is a 'just' one.
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Military intervention by leading Western states has a moral legitimacy that has been lacking since the colonial period. Today, interventionist 'action' on the side of 'right against wrong' is a moral command that trumps international law and UN Security Council mandates, while military 'inaction' and diplomacy are held to be the policies of 'appeasement', condoning moral 'evil'. This pre-emptive shift can also be seen in Pentagon discussions of re-establishing assassination squads to attempt to capture or kill foreign leaders.
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Liberal advocates of high-minded interference in other states' affairs have long asserted, without courting controversy, that international diplomacy based on respect for the equal rights of state sovereignty has been the UN's 'systemic defect'. This is the essence of the new Bush doctrine of 'pre-emptive action', which asserts that when it comes to some states, like Iraq, diplomacy and weapons agreements are not enough.
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In the words of Bush: 'We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialise, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.'
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The liberal columnists who have condemned UK prime minister Tony Blair for acting as Bush's loyal apologist conveniently ignore the fact that much of the language of the US hawks derives from Blair himself. Cheney's catch-all legitimisation for US unilateralism, that 'the risk of inaction is far greater', repeats Blair's language at the time of the Kosovo war.
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President Bush's West Point speech in June 2002, which set out the need for pre-emptive action over Iraq, used Tony Blair's emphasis on the importance of moral values to justify Great Power intervention: 'Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree…. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.'
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In the wake of the Kosovo war, many commentators and analysts praised US unilateral military action, without calling on UN Security Council support, as an example of 'good international citizenship'. Bush and his advisors cannot claim to have developed the doctrine of pre-emptive action, nor the demand for the rewriting of international law to allow waging war against 'evil' dictators for the liberation of oppressed people.
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If opposition to a war against Iraq is to go beyond questions of tactics, there is a need to re-establish an anti-war tradition that can challenge the assumption that the West has a duty of trusteeship over 'unruly' regions, such as the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa.
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Once non-Western governments are seen as less legitimate, and to have less protection in international law than Western states, it is but a small step to Bush's assertion of a moral right to 'liberate' their peoples by sending in the B-52s.
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David Chandler is senior lecturer in international relations at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. He is the author of:
- Constructing Global Civil Society: Morality and Power in International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
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- From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention (Pluto Press, 2002)
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- Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton (Pluto Press, 2000)
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And he is the editor of:
- Protecting the Bosnian Peace: Lessons from a Decade of Nation Building (Routledge, 2004)
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- Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
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Read on:
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
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