Steven Den Beste sets out his scenario for a unilateral US invasion of Iraq

The way that war will begin is that President Bush will pick up his telephone, call General Franks, and say, “OK, Tommie, go for it.” And then American (and British) jets will begin major bombing, and shortly thereafter American (and British) troops will move into Iraq from multiple directions. The war will be brief, and we’ll win.

The fatal flaw in this scenario is in the parentheses. President Bush can’t pick up his phone and order British troops to invade Iraq. Any British participation will require, at a minimum, a Cabinet decision, which in turn will certainly produce demands for a public debate, which will result in a demand for a UNSC resolution. Blair knows this, as does the US Department of State, which explains the recent backing away from Jan 27 as a deadline.

And at this point, the whole thing starts to unravel. In email, Den Beste argues that British participation is an optional extra (which would justify the parentheses). Even in strategic terms, this is unclear – some of the things the British are providing, such as in-flight refuelling, are apparently indispensable in the short run. And in tactical and political terms it’s silly. The British and Americans are co-operating closely on the premise of a joint invasion. A call from Bush saying that American forces only should invade would produce chaos. More importantly it would trash the alliance between the US and Britain which, from the British side, is entirely premised on the idea of a ‘special relationship’ which gives the British government leverage over American policy in return for fairly reliable, and tangible, support.

Admittedly, there’s an element of ‘peace by timetable’ about this argument, but I don’t have a problem with this – war and peace are not symmetric in this respect.

The other interesting thing that became clear in my email discussion with Steven Den Beste is that the rift between the US departments of State and Defense has re-opened. State, which is, as I’ve noted responding to the concerns of the British is trying to slow things down, while Defense is trying to stick to the timetable. Den Beste, who seems to be pretty well attuned to the thinking of the hawks within the US Administration, writes

What has become increasingly clear over the last year is that the State Department as a whole is in serious disrepute with the White House, in part because it’s coming to be seen not so much as America’s foreign policy agency towards the world, but rather as the world’s foreign policy agency toward the US.

Many now suspect that the career bureaucrats in State identify more strongly with the nations they’re assigned to study than with their own. In some cases it appears that they’ve actually been bought.

I think it’s useful to observe that, however much State and Colin Powell are distrusted by some, they won the debate in 2002 about the need to take the UN route and focus on weapons of mass destruction. I suspect they will win again in arguing for delay.