Will America fight an illegal war?
By James O. Goldsborough
Columnist
The San Diego Union-Tribune
signonsandiego.com
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October 24, 2002
The U.N. Security Council's split on a new Iraq resolution offers a chance to analyze national motives. Why are France, Russia and China opposing the U.S.-British resolution?
This kind of public split over war powers, surrounded by acrimony, is rare. Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has been a more harmonious place, and although differences surfaced during the Balkan wars, they were resolved without resorting to veto threats.
If France, China and Russia make an odd threesome, so do George Bush and Tony Blair. U.S. conservatives and British Laborites do not have a long history of wartime compatibility. Blair's nation and party are badly divided on Iraq, and it is only the pathetic state of the Conservatives that allows Blair to stick his neck out as far as he has done.
Blair is vulnerable, and should Bush, armed with his newly awarded Tonkin Gulf resolution from Congress, take America to war despite Security Council opposition, Blair's choice will be between going to war over public, party and Cabinet opposition or abandoning Bush.
British observers struggle to understand Blair's motives. The consensus is that he is an unreconstructed moralist and sees little difference between opposing Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and opposing Saddam Hussein.
Blair's problem is that many people see big differences in those two situations – in the legitimacy of military action, in the action required and in the consequences of action. In addition, war, when it came against Serbia, had full U.N. and NATO support.
War with Iraq is Bush's idea, and he is fortunate that Blair, if not Britain, has signed on for now. If war comes without Council or NATO approval it will have more in common with the Vietnam War than the Balkan wars.
Russia, China and France are resisting the U.S.-British resolution. Bush has told them to "get some backbone," but they see things differently. If some Americans accuse them of political and commercial motives for resisting the war machine, their commentators return the favor. Oil, Israel and world domination are frequently mentioned motives attributed to Bush.
Washington thinks the rejectionist three will crack. France, when it sees war is inevitable, will want in on the fruits of victory, it is said. Russia will cave because Moscow seeks its own pre-emptive move against Georgia and wants America off its case in Chechnya. Iraq owes Russia money, and Moscow needs good terms with any post-Saddam regime.
China will give in as soon as the price is right, we hear. China is tired of U.S. accusations of human rights abuses, and a U.S. war with Iraq without U.N. approval will give Beijing free hand to get tough wherever it wants – against religions, Tibet, Muslims in East China, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
Critics see no virtue in the positions of the Council three. The three are not seen, as U.S. church leaders are seen, as opposing war with Iraq on principle, because it does not meet the just-war criteria of Sts. Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. They are seen as simply holding out for the best terms to sell their war support.
This may be. Nations act out of self-interest and even ulterior motive. The Soviet Union profited from America's bleeding in Vietnam, America profited from Soviet bleeding in Afghanistan. Why wouldn't Moscow be happy to see America bleeding again in Iraq? If China sees its own strategic advantage in a Bush war in Iraq, Beijing may support the Bush line.
France is an interesting case. French President Jacques Chirac has been to the White House and Bush has worked the phones with him, but France has not budged. So far, it refuses to give Bush what he wants – the "automatic" right to go to war if Saddam does not satisfy him on arms inspections.
Will Chirac crack because he fears France will be frozen out of a post-Saddam spoils regime? Are the French acting out of principle or self-interest in opposing the single U.S. resolution and instead seeking two resolutions?
Here is the problem: The Security Council will pass a resolution sending arms inspectors back to Iraq unconditionally. Those inspectors will decide whether Iraq disarms and report back to the Council, which will recommend action based on those reports.
But what if the Council cannot agree? What if the three – or the three plus Britain, which is possible – say Iraq has cooperated, but Bush, seeking "regime change," says it has not. Without a second Council vote, Bush could start a war under the first resolution even though four of the five permanent members opposed war because Iraq was cooperating.
Under the U.N. Charter, the law of the land for all U.N. members, war is justified in two cases: in self-defense to repel armed aggression, and when declared by the Security Council.
Bush would be circumventing the charter by launching "pre-emptive" war even though neither legal condition for war was satisfied.
The U.N. Charter is a principle worth defending. If Bush goes to war in violation of the charter, the other Security Council members have the responsibility to oppose that war and expose it for what it will be: a war in violation of U.S. and international law.
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James O. Goldsborough is foreign affairs columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a member of the newspaper's editorial board, specializing in international issues.
Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek Magazine. He is a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. |
