Currency Lad seems to be down on someone called Saddam Hussein. It’s not clear who’s being referred to here. Certainly not the Saddam Hussein who collected $300 million from the Oil-for-Food fund, courtesy of the Australian government statutory authority/official privatised monopoly AWB (formerly the Australian Wheat Board). That’s a beatup of no interest.
I’ve generally been an admirer of Currency Lad, but this is truly dreadful stuff. Either he should stop insulting his readers with moralising about Saddam* and present an honest realpolitik line, or he should condemn without reservation those who financed Saddam’s arms purchases, and those who either encouraged them or looked the other way.
To be clear in advance, this includes all those who colluded in evading sanctions, whether they were from France, Russia, the US or elsewhere. However, as we now know, AWB operated on a scale that dwarfed the petty operators about whom we heard so much from the pro-war lobby until recently.
* Or anything else. If you’re willing to swallow this, your opinions on ethics aren’t worth considering regardless of the topic.
John Quiggin 
“”Of course none of these compares with the model success story that is Iraq today, where there is freedom, rule of lawâ€?
compared to when Saddam was there and there was freedom, rule of law?”
Hang on, you’re the one making the case for the trillion-dollar war costing hundreds of thousands of lives – if the case consists of ‘it’s no worse’, it’s not a very good case. At any event, it’s certainly possible to mount a case that things are indeed worse – less personal security, lower standard of living, collapse of society into tribal fiefdoms etc etc. You might recall that Jefferson’s inalienable rights led off with ‘life’, followed by ‘liberty’ and ‘the pursuit of happiness’. I tend to think Iraqis would agree with that hierarchy. In terms of ‘liberty’ we have continued torture, arbitrary arrest and death squads to match the Hussein regime. We also have an Islamic state where under Hussein religious (although not political) minority views were tolerated. Women are now forced in many areas to remain indoors where before they had a relatively secular society. As for the third self-evident truth – not much happiness being pursued, methinks. To make your case for initiating and waging war you need to show that things are or will be better – best of luck.
“What action could any dictator take against his own people that would induce China to agree to military action against said dictator?”
China approved military intervention against Iraq in 1990. Why? Because Iraq had illegitimately invaded another country. China has also approved numerous UN peacekeeping interventions. Not all such interventions have been resounding successes, but some have eg Cyprus.
The US has in fact been the chief user of the veto in the security council – more vetoes than all the rest combined. To turn your question back on you, what action could Israel take against the Palestinians or its neighbours that would induce the US to authorise military intervention? The big victor out of the recent Israeli elections was Avigdor Lieberman’s racist party whose policy is the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel – 20 percent of the population. I somehow doubt we’d be seeing a Kosovo-like intervention there. Or against any other friend of the US murdering its own people eg Indonesia’s well-documented slaughters from Suharto’s coup to the present day?
If it were the case that the US has a history of foreign interventions in support of freedom and democracy, your argument in favour of ditching the UN Charter may have some merit. In fact, of course, the history of US interventions is the reverse – from the ouster of Mossadegh’s elected government in Iran through the replacement of numerous Latin American democratically elected governments by homicidal dictatorships, to support for military rule in Pakistan.
I do not say the UN is perfect or ideal, merely that the system initiated by the UN charter is at least a system. When the Vietnamese ousted Pol Pot, the US and China colluded in the UN to impose sanctions on Vietnam as punishment for invading their genocidal neighbour. But in the absence of any respect for multilateral systems in international relations, might is right becomes the sole issue. Given the US history of intervention to replace democracy with tyranny, it is difficult to be confident that unchecked use of US military might will result in an improvement to the sum total of human happiness.
avaroo- so you’re saying that the decision not to ‘remove’ Gamal Abdel Nasser was a bad one? Because, unquestionably ‘we’ could’ve (wouldn’t have even needed to trump up evidence of WMD). This is an interesting take. Out or morbid fascination, on what exactly are you basing this profoundly obtuse judgment?
Relatedly, your belief in the altruism of our leaders is heartwarming if staggeringly naive.
““The circumstances under which a state can legitimately take unilateral military action are that it is under attack, or is in real imminent danger of attack (ie troops massing on border or missile launched) or that the security council agrees.â€?
So the British and US attack on Nazi Germany was illegitimate? ”
Mustn’t … feed … the … trolls
Dammit!
I hesitate to address Avaroo’s comments for reasons that should be painfully obvious, but I can’t let the above pass.
1. Britain (and France) declared war on Germany in 1939 to honour their treaty commitment to Poland, which Germany had invaded.
2. Germany declared war on the US (not vice versa) in December 1941.
3. The “invasion of Germany” by the Allies (USSR, US and Britain in order of importance) occurred because Germany refused to surrender unconditionally in a war that Germany started by invading Poland, then invading the USSR and then declaring war on the US.
On another thread Avaroo provided a clue about the sources of her information about the world.
“Nuff said.
Avaroo, please stop trolling, or you’ll go on automoderation. Hint on interpretation: if you’re doubtful about whether something you say is trolling, then it probably is.
“Hang on, you’re the one making the case for the trillion-dollar war costing hundreds of thousands of lives”
Not at all. In fact, if EVERYONE had told Saddam that his actions were unacceptable, war might have been unnecessary.
Your idea that things really weren’t so bad under Saddam, people were basically happy is ludicrous. Iraqis desire freedom no less than you do.
So on China, you agree that it isn’t likely to “approve” military action in say, Darfur? Or against North Korea? No matter what KimJong-il does to the North Korean people? Or if you can imagine a situation where china would take action against Kim Jong-il, what would he have to do, that he hasn’t already done, to cause China to take such action? Dictators around the world have little to fear in the way of China getting on to them.
As to the UN being a “system”, yes, but then the mafia is too.
Here’s what you said on the issue of what is “legitimate” use of force:
“The circumstances under which a state can legitimately take unilateral military action are that it is under attack, or is in real imminent danger of attack (ie troops massing on border or missile launched) or that the security council agrees.�
Nazi Germany, of course, met NONE of those conditions against the US or Britain.
“Nazi Germany, of course, met NONE of those conditions against the US or Britain.”
It seems you are deaf to voices other than your own, which is hardly surprising given the volume of delivery. Your remarks about the legitimacy of military action in the second world war have been addressed by Katz.
“if EVERYONE had told Saddam that his actions were unacceptable, war might have been unnecessary.”
What actions? Amassing WMD? Yeah, right. But that was why the COW leaders said repeatedly we were going to invade. They expressly rejected ‘regime change’ as the reason, or relieving the suffering of the Iraqi people – those excuses only came into being when it turned out the weapons inspectors were right all along – there were no WMD. So the long-suffering people of Iraq weren’t in the equation.
As I have demonstrated previously, length and depth of suffering and tyranny don’t actually cut it when it comes to US policy, othewise we’d be seeing interventions in the Congos and Indonesias and Burmas of this world. If Kim Jong-Il was a mate of the US, they wouldn’t give a toss about his policies – in fact we’d be hearing all about how he kept crime rates low and how wonderful the synchronised gymnastic team events were. In fact, that’s the sort of nonsense we were fed about S Hussein before he fell out with his backers in Washington. The ferocity of his tyranny declined after the first Gulf War – it was back when he had the full support of the Reagan administration he was a truly monstrous threat to his neighbours and citizens.
So, if you’re prepared to accept evidence as the basis for an argument, the US behaves in exactly the same way China does as an international actor – in what it perceives as its own best interests. Other reasons advanced are pretexts and window-dressing. The US could not in fact give a tinker’s cuss about the oppressed peoples of the world, any more than China could. They both behave pretty much like mafia dons. Having a system of international law and conflict resolution makes us all safer, in just the same way having a domestic system of law does. Mafia dons still exist, but they have to moderate their violence and occasionally they lose out. You are arguing in favour of giving one gang absolute untrammelled power – don’t see how that makes any of us safer.
PrQ,
I hope you will forgive me for pointing out that the linked articles all ante-date the invasion and decision to disband the army – though, granted, not the increased insurgent activity. They do, therefore, inhabit a grey area of hindsight. I note you have not addressed the issue of trying to break the atalemate.
.
Hal9000,
The current Chinese CP government will (IMHO) never approve an intervention in another country regarding the repression of their own people for the very simple reason that they are extensively doing it in Tibet, Xinjiang and most of the other provices, particularly those either currently or formerly majority non-Han Chinese. This is why the UN has not taken action in Darfur, Kosovo and many other places and one of the reasons why it took no action in Rwanda and will take no action against Mugabe, no matter how bad he gets.
During the cold war period your position on the US not giving a tinker’s cuss would have been right – as everything was seen through the prism of the struggle for hegemony with the USSR – the “He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch” attitude was strong.
The difference now is that the US is learning that it is in their interests to have stable democracies with which they can trade to mutual benefit.
It is not difficult to find autocratic regimes that China is currently supporting. It is getting more difficult (but not impossible) to find ones that the US is supporting. Their actions in critising several of the governments of the former Soviet Union states over the last couple of years, despite having strong interests in trying to woo them, is, thankfully, becoming more typical.
I would also suggest chilling a little bit – I did not take avaroo’s comment on the crack pipe as anything more than a joke.
.
Majorajam,
“Grown ups like Kennedy and Eisenhower wouldn’t have seriously considered an invasion of Iraq…”. I suggest you look at the history of a rather swampy part of Cuba – The Bay of Pigs. A little action there was planned under one and executed under the other.
AR, it’s true that, in the leadup to the war I focused more on the ostensible case for war (WMDs) than on other arguments. In this respect, I was misled by my belief that Blair was sincere with respect to the UN process, rather than merely going through a charade as we now know.
But I still deny that there was any reliance on hindsight in making these arguments – opportunity cost reasoning is the standard mode of economic analysis. If you care to go over the archives in detail, you’ll find all the relevant points being made, though not collected in a single piece.
So, I reject the idea that I should address the stalemate question on the magical assumption that the war would have zero financial or military opportunity costs. Once these are taken into account, it’s clear that the cost of an invasion, based on reasonable ex ante estimates, exceeded the costs of an unsatisfactory resolution of the stalemate wrt Saddam.
I should mention a further alternative policy, which I think might have had a chance of, at least, a better form of containment. The US should have offered to join the International Criminal Court, in return for changes that would allow charges to be brought against Saddam.
I suggest you look at the history of a rather swampy part of Cuba – The Bay of Pigs. A little action there was planned under one and executed under the other.”
While it is true that the Bay of Pigs was a ridiculous disaster that can be sheeted home to Ike and JFK, it is a different sort of disaster than Iraq (or Vietnam).
The Bay of Pigs was a clandestine operation run by the CIAwhich was supposed to give the US president deniability.
CIA operations are called “executive action” for a very good and constitutional reason: the President was not compelled to approach Congress for authorisation, i.e., there was no legislative oversight of the executive.
The CIA under Dulles had pulled off some impressive-looking (but in the long term disastrous) covert actions during the 1950s. Dulles looked like he had the golden touch. Ike was unduly impressed by Dulles’s apparent success, as was JFK when presented with the Bay of Pigs as a fait accompli.
PrQ,
I did not think at the time that the UN was going to approve action – China and
the U.S.S.R.Russia would have made sure of that for their own, internal and external reasons unrelated to the situation. The US simply needed to ensure that the resolutions passed had enough wriggle room to, on their interpretation, cover military action – which they got. To say that is insincere while ignoring the Chinese, Russian and ultimately French role in the UN process is to be at least a little one sided. If all of them had spoken clearly to Saddam that his behaviour wrt the inspectors was unacceptable then a war may not have been needed.There were also costs involved in continuing the stalemate, so it is just the balance of costs that is the question, not an assumption of zero financial or military costs. Granted, given the way it has turned out it may well be that these costs were balanced towards maintaining the stalemate indefinitely, but if it had been well managed, who is to say?
You cannot maintain both that Bush is incompetent and that it was doomed to fail – if it had been well managed it is quite possible that it would have succeeded (which it still may, albeit at great cost).
.
Katz,
The difference between an executive and a legislative action is a fig leaf. If anything, an executive action is worse as blame can only be sheeted home to the executive and not the legislature. Blaming Dulles would be like blaming Cheney – interesting, but what is the point? If they are “grown ups” then they take responsibility for their own decisions.
But AR, I’m not trying to defend their thinking. I’m trying to explain their thinking.
Success at the Bay of Pigs would have obviated the requirement to explain the success. Because it would have been sold to the world as the “spontaneous uprising of Cuban patriots.”
Failure compelled JFK to explain to very angry survivors why the US Navy stood off the coast of Cuba and did nothing to defend or rescue the adventurers and mercenaries employed by the CIA when the whole thing turned pear-shaped.
Short answer: Dulles and the presidents he misled weren’t grown-up, they behaved like spoiled children.
I would agree – I was responding to Majoram’s comment about “Grown ups like Kennedy and Eisenhower…”. If you are going to do this sort of thing you do it – not p!ss about. At least GWB actually did it – even if it may have been a c@ck up (jury still out on that one – but the cost has blown out).
AR wrote,
“The difference now is that the US is learning that it is in their interests to have stable democracies with which they can trade to mutual benefit.
It is not difficult to find autocratic regimes that China is currently supporting. It is getting more difficult (but not impossible) to find ones that the US is supporting.”
AR, I’m not very convinced that this is the case at anything siginificantly more than a rhetorical level.
Where US interests coincide with a democratic govt, or democratic developements, it likes to make much of it, but where they don’t, I haven’t seen much pressure exerted despite interests.
Lebanon was an example of this supposed trend. The US was vocal in stating that free democratic elections where impossible with Syrian presence in Lebanon, but Iraqi elections with a much larger US presence were celebrated.
I don’t think it’s getting any more difficult to find ‘autocratic regimes’ that the US supports. US support for Egpyt has not been influenced by the lack of democracy. And SA remains one of the least democratic regimes around, but it suffers little of the pressure directed towards a state like Syria.
Democratic elections in Palestine have resulted in the US actively trying to undermine the result.
I wish you were right, but it seems that support for democracy can only follow from a more important consideration – that of not conflicting with US interests, or being largely irrelevant to them.
AR what about democracy in South America?
It looks if it doesn’t allow America’s interests esp business to have their way democracy be damned.
Analysis: How the US ‘lost’ Latin America
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4861320.stm
“In pursuit of American interests, the US has overthrown or undermined around 40 Latin American governments in the 20th Century.”
Yes quite the champion of democracy our US.
Simonjm,
Please actually read what I said about the end of the cold war.
I might add, however, that this was a war that I am glad the US won.
Michael H,
Lets look at your examples in order:
Lebanon vs. Iraq – do you seriously doubt that the Syrians bastardised that electoral process and that the US allowed the other where the previous ruler would not? The Iraqi process might not have been perfect, but it was much better than any of the elections held in Lebanon prior to the Syrian departure.
Egypt – granted the support there has been little more than rhetorical, but at least the rhetoric is there now where it was absent under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter etc.
Do you mean South Africa? I would not agree it is undemocratic – skewed, yes but the government does come close to representing the will of the people.
Palestine – without US encouragement there can be little doubt the elections would not have been held – Israel would have seen to that. Yes, the result was unexpected (perhaps naively) but all the US has done (AFAIK) is to announce the terms on which they would deal with them – and not unreasonable ones.
The events in the former Soviet Central Asia are good examples – apparent US interests lie with keeping in with the existing governments for straegic and other reasons related to Afghanistan. They have been prepared to rock the boat and support the opposition – something they would not have done in past years.
It is not perfect, by any stretch, but at least there are signs of improvement. And I would strongly contend that their influence is better than China’s or Russia’s.
Andrew, I think by SA Michael H means Saudi Arabia. If so, I agree with his point, but as a matter of general practice would urge him – and everyone else – to spell things out to avoid this sort of misunderstanding. There are far too many acronyms used on blogs (grumble, gripe, whinge) – IMHO, of course.
“Your remarks about the legitimacy of military action in the second world war have been addressed by Katz. ”
Actually, they haven’t. At no point has Katz indicated which of the 3 conditions he listed himself as legitimizing military action, Nazi Germany met.
“What actions?”
Have you never read the UNSC resolutions against Saddam? They included NUMEROUS conditions Saddam had to meet to avoid a resmption of hositilies.
“They expressly rejected ‘regime change’ as the reason”
regime change had been US policy even during the Clinton years, all 8 Clinton years.
“or relieving the suffering of the Iraqi people”
No, the UNSC resolutions addressed the suffering of the Iraqi people.
In fact, one of the requirements of the UNSC resolutions was that Saddam stop killing his own people.
Andrew addresses the point about China quite well. Thank you Andrew. I couldn’t have and wouldn’t have said it as well myself.
“I did not think at the time that the UN was going to approve action – China and the U.S.S.R. Russia would have made sure of that for their own, internal and external reasons unrelated to the situation. The US simply needed to ensure that the resolutions passed had enough wriggle room to, on their interpretation, cover military action – which they got. To say that is insincere while ignoring the Chinese, Russian and ultimately French role in the UN process is to be at least a little one sided. If all of them had spoken clearly to Saddam that his behaviour wrt the inspectors was unacceptable then a war may not have been needed.”
well said
AR Chavez would tell you that there has been no substantive change since the end of the cold War and if you did read the BBC piece you would see he is not the only one.
Andrew, I don’t “seriously doubt that the Syrians bastardised that electoral process and that the US allowed the other where the previous ruler would not?”. But that is purely a matter of different interests isn’t it? US interests wee served by removing Syria from the picture, which was more about Syria than about Lebanon. That the US chose the argument of ‘foreign presence’ as it’s main objection, simply contrasted with Iraq even more sharply.
It’s true that with regards Egypt, “at least the rhetoric is there now where it was absent under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter etc.”, but I think that only serves to underline my point – the previous policies were at least more honest. What can we say when the stated policy is so openly at odds with practice. Surely not that “the US is learning that it is in their interests to have stable democracies”, only that it finds rhetorical reference, minus substantial action, to the concept to be useful in some situations.
I’d be more inclined to accept your proposition if you could think of examples were the US pushed democracy despite substantial harm, or risk of it, to its interests. You suggest this with the former Soviet regions, but support for an opposition rather than incumbant Govt’s is no indicator of anything like that.
That’s a pretty artful dodge Andrew Reynolds. Ignore 9/10ths of the retort and take issue with the bon mot. Well I’m not adept in argument by obfuscation, so I’ll fall for the tactic.
Let’s see, take one Soviet client state with the ability to host myriad nuclear missiles and situated less than 100 miles from our border. Equate it to a country half-a-world away under restrictive UN sanctions, reluctantly cooperating with weapons inspectors but in any case having zero capability or intention to threaten the US or even its international interests. Check. Now, ignore the fact that the country with the nukes had just emerged from a civil war and had a viable opposition to install. Still with you. Finally, postulate on the back of zero evidence that the Bay of Pigs operation involved zero strategic planning as part of a campaign of mass deception, thereby equating it with Iraq.
Agreed. If you allow all that then maybe I was wrong to contrast Kennedy and Eisenhower with the current brain trust.
“I’d be more inclined to accept your proposition if you could think of examples were the US pushed democracy despite substantial harm, or risk of it, to its interests. ”
When would democracy outside the US EVER be harmful or risky to US’ interests?
Michael H, on the issue of Syria being in Lebanon, it wasn’t terribly against US interests for Syria to continue to run Lebanon. We could have certainly lived with the status quo there quite well.
“When would democracy outside the US EVER be harmful or risky to US’ interests?”
Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia – just to name a few of the more prominent current examples where the US is actively trying to undermine the sacred will of the people.
“Have you never read the UNSC resolutions against Saddam? They included NUMEROUS conditions Saddam had to meet to avoid a resmption of hositilies.”
Remember what I said about capitalising words – it makes you sound like you’re raving. I take it you are talking about resolutions at the time of the first Gulf War. The legal consensus is that there was no such authorisation prior to the 2003 invasion – see http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/347 and elsewhere.
“They expressly rejected ‘regime change’ as the reason�
regime change had been US policy even during the Clinton years, all 8 Clinton years.”
Your point being? Please list the invasions of Iraq undertaken pursuant to that policy… The US also has a policy of regime change in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.
Prior to the invasion, all COW leaders made it abundantly clear that WMD was the sole justification, and htat Saddam could stay in office if he produced the weapons he didn’t have. They could hardly do otherwise, since that would be an express breach of the member sovereignty provisions of the UN Charter you seem so to despise.
Majorajam is correct.
Kennedy’s and subsequent US administrations learned how to cope with Castro’s Cuba.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco burnished Castro’s charisma, rendering him practically invulnerable to successful domestic rebellion. These were the sunk costs of the Bay of Pigs.
Nevertheless, Latin America was largely inocculated against the seductions of socialism.
However, a glimpse of Latin America post-Bush reveals a very different story. While he has been tilting at windmills in far-off Greater Mesopotamia, America’s back yard has sprouted some very unwelcome regimes and Castro is now regarded as an elder statesman and hero in much of Latin America.
In short, as Majorajam suggests, Kennedy learned how to be a grown-up after his flirtation with “executive action”, and was probably in the process of rethinking the US commitment in Vietnam when that train of thought was rudely interrupted in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.
“Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia”
In not of of these is democracy against US interests.
“I take it you are talking about resolutions at the time of the first Gulf War.”
and the 12 years following that ceasefire. You DO know that there were actually 19 UNSC resolutions over a period of 12 years, don’t you?
“The legal consensus is that there was no such authorisation prior to the 2003 invasion”
Sorry no, Read UNSC 1441, including all resolutions recalled in 1441.
“Your point being?”
That you were incorrect. Regime change had been US policy for YEARS. It not only wasn’t rejected by the Bush administration, it remained the policy during the Bush administration.
“Prior to the invasion, all COW leaders made it abundantly clear that WMD was the sole justification”
sorry, no, as even a cursory reading of 1441 will show.
“Castro is now regarded as an elder statesman and hero in much of Latin America.”
But not in Cuba. My guess is that 9 out of 10 Cubans, offered the chance to leave Cuba for the US, would take the offer.
avaroo wrote, “When would democracy outside the US EVER be harmful or risky to US interests?�
When there was the failed military coup in Venezuala, someone thought it was enough in US interests to publicly recognise what they mistakenly thought was the new regime. How was that for indecent haste? Next time they’ll remember to wait and make sure the coup is successful.
And the US made a very great deal about the importance of Syrian withdrawal in Lebanon. I agree it was an important principle, but one that apparently didn’t apply in Iraq.
I’d still be interested to see if anyone can come up with a significant example of the US putting democracy ahead of it’s interests, in line with the rhetoric.
Avaroo, you ask when democracy would ever not be in US interests, without noting the several instances in which the CIA has been implicated in assisting in the overthrow of democratically elected regimes- Iran and Chile’s are two such indisputable examples. Prior to that you equate the rationale for fighting WWII with the rationale for flouting international opinion to invade a more or less neutered country, justified by trumped up charges of illegal weapons possession and ‘collaborative’ relationships with terrorist organizations.
Now- let me see if I can make this plain: there are intelligent people that still defend this misbegotten policy, even if they typically rely on offensive arguments of one type or another. These asinine outbursts of yours do not put you into this category, rather, the category of bridge-dwelling, wall-walking, people-eating, humanoid. Cut it out.
Katz- I appreciate the support however, I am speaking not to policy mistakes which are not unique to any government or any time, but to the criminal negligence, epidemic corruption and gross incompetence that characterize this administration and its governance. I would be happy to engage in debate about America’s policies of the 20th century and for the most part would defend them (warts and all). But from where I sit, the contrast between then and now is not so much apples and oranges as apples and comic books. There is simply no comparison and anyone that tries to fall back on 20th century legitimacy to frame our current bout of lunacy is kidding themself (or trying to kid others).
“Read UNSC 1441, including all resolutions recalled in 1441.”
This issue has been discussed ad nauseum in this blog and elsewhere.* The key is that the resolution did not authorise ‘all necessary means’, which is the wording used to authorise military action. Which is why Blair tried so hard to get an explicit resolution.
* For example, https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2003/03/09/compromise-of-straw/
“Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia�
“In not of of these is democracy against US interests.”
Avaroo are you saying that the US is OK with what democracy has brought about in these cases?
Simonjm,
Do you think China is OK with what they have brought about in North Korea, Burma, Laos and Zimbabwe? They are just the recent ones. If we go back in history to the cold war period the list gets longer than many people’s arms – an absolutely uniform history of the support of oppression, slaughter and mass murder.
Sure, the US government is not perfect and at times it is far from perfect – it is a government – but it is a damn sight better than most and, IMHO, improving.
Also, a little recognition that the US has saved our bacon before (gratitude is probably a bit much – they waited until they were attacked) may not be out of order.
An interesting point I just saw on UN resolutions is that the US, having twisted 1441 so drastically is now having trouble getting any sort of resolution on Iran, for fear that it will claim authorisation for a pre-emptive strike.
AR it would be interesting to compare the track records to see which has the worst record since the end of the cold war as far as blood directly on hand or indirectly through allied states especially when one side thinks it does no wrong and rationalizes it’s doctrine of necessity but condemns others for doing the same thing.
Is it indeed a win to say our side has killed or caused less human rights abuses than the other side when it should be that ours hasn’t been doing this at all?
Also as far as China is concerned why should it only be a comparison from the end of the cold war, why should that be a justification for the US to get a clean start? It’s alright to bring down democratically elected governments, support right wing death squads etc when we are up against another super power but we should forget about that now? It is certainly within living memory and in fact many of the players are still around.
Historians will no doubt look aback at this period as business as usual for power politics, maybe the sophistication of the propaganda has improved but the rationalizations concerning national moral superiority are still the same.
Sure the US has done good but when it sprouts this self-righteous BS like it doesn’t play dirty or power politics with other countries I find it too much to stomach. Especially from a nation that cannot even join the World Court.
We can be grateful for past support but it takes a real friend to tell the other that regardless of past good deeps it doesn’t justify present injustices or abuses.
You had better get used to the power politics of China -& to a lesser extent a resurgent Russia- Pax America is coming to an end and funnily enough it is they themselves that hastened the end.
Can i bring things back to, well somewhere near the middle of this thread, where I think it was at its most useful.This was the point where AR asked PrQ what he would have done if he believed ‘that’ invasion of Iraq was not the answer then what was. Quiggan gave a very good answer: i hadnt considered all of his opportunity cost reasonings. However I was not fully convinced by the idea of modified sanctions, with future opportunity to take Saddam to the ICC. I want to throw out a different answer.
Imagine that instead of an illegitimate invasion we had a legitimate intervention. Is this too far off the planet? This intervention would have the: Same primary intention as the COW invasion: to remove Sadaam. Significantly different secondary intention: True self determination for Iraqi’s.Significantly different tactics (though almost certainly with a military element.) Significantly different parties involved.
The reason why I eventually decided not to support the CoW was because I deeply doubted the motivations behind the movers and shakers in the coalition. This is also the reason why Tony Blair remains, for me, the most convincing promoter/apologist for events in Iraq. It is also the reason why I believe that a significantly different intervention -underpinned by ethical motivations and executed via tactics that followed from such motivations- would have come up with a significantly different result.
Its impossible to say that everything would have turned out well in this alternative Iraq. Similarly, it was impossible to say to what extent and exactly how things would devolve in our actual Iraq. I would argue that a certain level of uncertainty is actually neccsary in that, from a certain point one has to give genuine control to the Iraqi (or whoever.)
Yeah, it would be messy. Yeah, it would take quite a while to gather sufficient international support for such an intervention. however, as has been pointed out, once WMD’s were discredited there was no great rush in ousting Saddaam. Yeah, there are good reasons why this sort of intervention and nation building is generally treated with a ten foot pole. But there are also bad reasons. Cowardly reasons, which the pro-war camp have fairly successfully, if hypocritically made clear.
Such a Utopic interventionist philosophy would obviously have numerous future applications. How would Darfur look now do you think? what about N.Korea? And the best part is that none of this would entail rejecting diplomatic and political actions.
I haven’t spelt out the details of such an arrangement as im not sure I have the detailed knowledge, but clearly it would heavily involve the U.N. And clearly this would involve reform of the U.N as well as reform of some of its chief detractor’s attitude. It could be that national interest (specifically that of U.S and of China) proves too big an obstacle but wouldnt it be worth a shot?
So, tell me, am i a dreamer? Or perhaps a flawed logician?
Karana,
The normal criteria for a legitimate intervention is an explicit UN Security Council resolution, with the “all necessary means” wording included. There is no way that Russia or China would have agreed to that under any circumstances based purely on internal repression – otherwise Chechnya or Tibet becomes a legitimate target for a UNSC resolution. This is where the concept of legitimacy, conferred by the UNSC, falls down, rendering the UN a paper tiger in these matters.
Andrew, this argument ignores the facts. The proposed second motion at the UNSC didn’t fail because of a Russian or Chinese veto, it failed because a majority of UNSC members rightly concluded that the purported basis (the presence of WMDs) had not been established.
And it seems a bit rich to be blaming Russia or China for hypothetical vetoes when we know that Bush and Blair were going through the motions of a process they had no intention of respecting
“And it seems a bit rich to be blaming Russia or China for hypothetical vetoes when we know that Bush and Blair were going through the motions of a process they had no intention of respecting ”
Spot on JQ.
This is just one of many examples of the mouthpieces and apologists of the COW redacting reality.
It’s hard to know where wishful thinking ends and mendacity begins.
Either way, such behaviour makes intelligent debate very difficult in that the first task always has to be to disentangle the fantasies and phobias of COW apologists from actual facts as understood by “the reality-based community”.
PrQ,
I was responding to Karana’s specific question about trying to get together a ‘legitimate’ reason for the invasion – from my reading she was asking about that specifically. My response, is, I think correct – no matter what you do to convince the other permanent and temporary members there is no way the Russia or China would agree – for reasons unrelated to the merits of the arguement. Therefore, no point.
The other argument has been (and indeed is being) played out on other threads.
Surely the issue here is that war is such an unalloyed evil you need a very good reason indeed to entertain starting one as legitimate policy – and no such very good reason has ever been adduced with respect to Iraq. The reasons actually put forward by the warmongers were entirely spurious and as such no basis for any kind of UNSC authorisation. The results of the unauthorised action bear out the considered opinions of the majority of member nations of the UNSC – reflecting the majority of world opinion. The Iraq case, far from showing the UN to be an obsolete and obstructionist institution as suggested by some posters on this thread, points to the wisdom of following world opinion and avoiding military adventures whereever possible. It should be noted that similar causi belli are being mounted for some sort of adventure in Iran, which, should it proceed, will be an even worse catastrophe.
Hal9000,
If war is an “unalloyed” evil then there would never be any reason for it – it would always be evil – clearly, from what you say next, this is not your belief. Your use of the term “warmongers” also shows you are not approaching the argument objectively.
Majority opinion is not always right and, when the ‘majority’ includes the governments of brutal dictatorships, wielding a power of veto, I would be disinclined to follow it blindly.
I have, as far as I can remember, never said the UN is obsolete. It has useful functions and is very good as a guide – but I will never accept it as a leader in its current form.
I would agree with you on Iran, though. The costs of invasion there would be obscene and the nuclear question can, I believe, be dealt with by less costly methods.
I’d agree with Hal9000.
War is evil, but that doesn’t mean that there are not even greater evils that might require recourse to war as a last resort.
And that is what it should be, a last resort. Which is why the Iraq War is indefensible. It was never a last resort, just a preferred one.
In the context of my statement I think that Andrew’s point is correct and I do realise the relative impotency, not to mention immorality of the security council as currently constituted. I was going to get into that in my last post until i started to worry I was approaching ‘rambling’ length.
What I am looking for is something beyond the ‘normal’ criteria for a legitimate intervention. I admit that this is a medium to long term objective and may be too idealistic to apply to the Iraq situation. My main point is that we never got a chance to find out. I think much of the UN, multilateral crowd were spooked by the mixed (and deadly) results from interventions through the 90’s. So they gave up the territory of aggressive (not pre-emptive) intervention to the neo-cons and their company. This left pro-war people able to legitmately claim: “if we had done it your way Sadaam would still be in power.” It is somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory to claim…well…he hasnt really killed anyone for 10 years or so.
Let me put it this way, what would it take, in practical terms to create a legitimate intervention?
Would we need the support of all UN members, or even a majority? Would it have to exclude the U.S, China and Russia? Is this possible? Can it be under the auspices of the UN?
These question have two answers, a practical, realpolitik line as well as an ethical one. Also, bear in mind i am sidestepping legal arguments for the time being.
Hal9000: I think you have indeed put your finger on the central issue, but i would dispute your formulation of it. I agree that war is an evil. It is a deadly, unpredictable evil and I agree you need a darn good reason to wage it. I cannot agree that it is an unalloyed evil and I can not agree that there was not a good enough reason present in Iraq. And I cannot agree that there is not a good enough reason present in a number of countries and regions around the world.
Opression and tyranny, particularly when they involve torture and murder, are justification for war.
A big caveat: War/Military intervention should be considered as a next to last option – waiting to see what happens does not generally count as an option. I tend to think this was the case in Iraq, though I would like to hear how people think modified sanctions or anything else might have played out.
Moreover, I think one thing that the Iraq invasion proved, was that a military victory over Sadaam and the Baathists was quite an easy task. it was the side-effects of this victory which have created the quagmire we now know. This is precisely where I think a legitimate force would have acted very differently and I think would have cut off most of the chaos. Looting could have been largely prevented for example as it was not completley unexpected.
My argument is a kinf of parallel to another argument, one which I think is no longer valid. The argument says that if CoW troops withdrew -not immediately but tactically- then many of the conditions of the insurgency/civil war would be removed, yet the (very) basics of democracy would remain.
What to do in Iran? I dont know. But i do know that one succesful ntervention changes the ballgame entirely.Yeah, there is a large element of dangerous uncertainty in this, but I think it is the kind of uncertainty which affects national interest more than genuine global stability. Aren’t we better than that?
Oh, and AM, as it happens I am a he. And a rambling he at that.
Karana,
I think the only way for that to happen would be if we had another invasion of a foreign country – Kuwait 1990 was the most recent overt one. As the UNSC acted resolutely and quickly on that it is likely to be (and hopefully will be) the last.
I’m not sure this thread is going anywhere, but here’s my final 2 cents’ worth on the foregoing discussion. To paraphrase John Pilger, the proponents of war are generally those who will never have to see the mutilated bodies, experience the bowel-voiding terror of a bombardment or wait in anguish outside the crowded morgue to identify a loved one. My own view, as correctly identified by Michael H, is that there are circumstances where it must nevertheless be resorted to and this is what the UN Charter clearly identifies. One of those clearly identified occasions is as a response to being attacked by a foreign power. Which, BTW, permits the Iraqis to resist the COW.
The whole question of ‘humanitarian intervention’ has been alluded to in a number of posts. I think it’s possible to distinguish a number of different scenarios here. First we have the kind of intervention we’ve seen in the Solomon Islands, where in response to a collapse of law and order a sovereign government invites foreign forces in to restore peace. Second we have the kind of intervention seen in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where neigbouring countries respond to threats to their own security generated by civil war by combining to intervene to restore peace and governance. Finally we have the Kosovo intervention, which most closely resembles the Sierra Leone and Liberian interventions, being outside the UNSC and being justified by the sudden exodus of refugees, but where a foreign power intervenes on one side of a conflict. Of these, the Kosovo intervention is the most troubling, in that the scale of Serb atrocities in the province appears in hindsight to be out of all proportion to the bombing campaign carried out by NATO, and the end result appears to have been the ethnic cleansing of Serbs out of one of the provinces of Serbia. (Interestingly, the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait following the 1990 Gulf war was a similar scenario in terms of scale to what the Serbs were accused of in Kosovo but attracted little attention and no sympathy for the many innocent victims.)
The two circumstances in the world today most appropriate for ‘humanitarian intervention’ are Congo and Burma, where genocide, slavery and other abominations are commonplace. In neither is intervention likely to occur, because the strategic interests of no major military power are at risk. In the case of Congo, of course, foreign powers have intervened as belligerents in ongoing wars for purely commercial purposes. Ongoing war facilitates the extraction of rare mineral assets free of taxation and, with the substitution of slave labour for capital equipment, free of risk.
The most positive development in deterring gross human rights violations of recent times has been the development of the International Criminal Court, able to try genocidaires, torturers and their ilk from any nation. The most vociferous opponent of this has of course been the US, for declared reasons that are entirely spurious and real reasons that, with developments in Iraq and elsewhere in the ‘global war on terror’, are easy enough to guess.
The arguments in favour of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the context of hostility to a system of international criminal justice can thus be seen only as camouflage for the reality of a rogue military hyperpower. Why else would the US be spending far more now in real terms on its military than during the Cold War, when there was a genuine adversary literally capable of converting the continent of North America into a pile of glowing ashes? Why else would the US outspend the combined military budgets of the rest of the world?
In the context of Iraq, the ‘humanitarian intervention’ mantra has long ago lost all connection with reality. The situation played out at Falluja, where all males of military age were refused exit and then the town was reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment fairly closely resembles the scenario at Srebrenica, except the killing was done from a longer range. The gross breaches of Geneva conventions inherent in the targeting of hospitals at Falluja passed seemingly without notice. At one time bombarding hospitals was the acme of barbarism – remember Nurse Cavell and the HS Centaur?
So no, I don’t reckon the humanitarian intervention argument with respect to Iraq holds any more water than the average collander.
i agree, the CoW are in no position to make an argument for humanitarian intervention.
But no, I don’t think this invalidates a hypothetical pre-war case for humanitarian intervention in Iraq. Or a futurecase for the DRC or Burma.
The first is a colander the second a teapot.
Otherwise, well said.
“Andrew, this argument ignores the facts. The proposed second motion at the UNSC didn’t fail because of a Russian or Chinese veto, it failed because a majority of UNSC members rightly concluded that the purported basis (the presence of WMDs) had not been established. ”
Let’s be clear. There was no vote on any resolution after UNSC 1441. Therefore, there was no failed resolution after UNSC 1441.
“Imagine that instead of an illegitimate invasion we had a legitimate intervention. Is this too far off the planet? This intervention would have the: Same primary intention as the COW invasion: to remove Sadaam. ”
This would have ben a great idea, but how would you have brought this about?
“Significantly different secondary intention: True self determination for Iraqi’s.”
I’d be all for this.
“Significantly different tactics (though almost certainly with a military element.)”
Sounds good.
“Significantly different parties involved. ”
Your best idea yet. Which patries would you suggest?
“Avaroo are you saying that the US is OK with what democracy has brought about in these cases?”
I’m saying that democracy outside the US is never against US interests.
“The key is that the resolution did not authorise ‘all necessary means’, which is the wording used to authorise military action.”
It did if you read the entire resolution, which means all the resolutions recalled in 1441 also. You cannot ignore those. They were recalled for a reason.
“And the US made a very great deal about the importance of Syrian withdrawal in Lebanon.”
Yes, Syria had no business in Lebanon. The US was hardly the only one to recognize this.
“I agree it was an important principle, but one that apparently didn’t apply in Iraq. ”
One situation has nothing to do with the other. Syria fully intended to occupy Lebanon forever and wasn’t there to establish democracy in Lebanon in the first place.
Hal,
About the rules of engagement:
You make no distinction between a country’s being ruled by a popular or tyrannical government and the distinction isn’t trivial. For example, are Baathists and Baathist supporters (including foreign Arabs) justified in their killing of COW allied Iraqis, or even COW soldiers, when their end game is to reinstate the erstwhile hegemony of their sect? Do you really think Shiite’s would’ve felt the country “attacked” if, during the atrocities committed against them in 1990, the US had swept in and occupied portions of Iraq or the whole enchilada? As I hope you would agree, this is not small grey area.
As regards Kosovo, you say:
And what of the reduced population of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia- another Serbian “province”? Talk about historical revisionism. In light of Srebrenitza et al, should the world community have awaited irrefutable evidence of a second genocide perpetrated in the name of “Greater Serbia” before acting? (even presuming the ISC would be able to determine the evidence’s irrefutability in under a decade) Hardly. Once a nation shows itself to be as incapable of civilized conduct as Milosevic’s Serbia had circa 1998, it forfeits the benefit of the doubt. As regards the Palestinians, by supporting the Iraqis against their adopted country they came to be seen- rightly I might add- as agents of a foreign state. This was justification enough for their expulsion (but not at all to say that sympathy for their plight is out of order).
Hal,
My comment didn’t want to post in full. The remainder is here.
As regards the ICC, you said:
“The most positive development in deterring gross human rights violations of recent times has been the development of the International Criminal Court, able to try genocidaires, torturers and their ilk from any nation. The most vociferous opponent of this has of course been the US, for declared reasons that are entirely spurious and real reasons that, with developments in Iraq and elsewhere in the ‘global war on terror’, are easy enough to guess.”
Point of clarification: US opposition to the ICC has nothing to do with its newfound predilection to torture people and commit human rights abuses. International institutions of this type have been regarded with skepticism by many Americans for generations. The sentiment is neither contained by national borders- US federal government institutions have also been regarded by many Americans with skepticism for generations, (in some cases in the extreme, see Oklahoma City).
To some extent, I sympathize. The problem with the ICC is that there is nothing international about justice- see average public opinion of a just end for Milosevic in Belgrade and Tirana. Worse, its practice reflects a balance of cynical calculations of their interests of international powers rather than anything that could be remotely equated to justice. On that basis, I find the faith many people vest in the vainglorious institution curious.
THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THE LONG WAR
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/04/the_first_insta.html
Is the war on terror to become like the war on drugs never ending?
Even with the US out of Iraq, they won’t be leaving Saudi Arabia, and with Israel drawing up new borders with a screw you attitude for the Palestinians we better get used to it.
When Iran gets Nukes that will make the equations interesting or if Pakistan implodes becoming a Islamic fundamentalist state.