Would Iraq attack be the beginning of the end of the US empire?
Reasoning against Iraq 'catastrophe'
By ERIC PRIDEAUX
Staff writer
Few were the world leaders who, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, withheld moral support
for the United States. Longtime friends and onetime foes, Christians, Jews and many Muslims alike
sang as in one chorus: They would root out terrorism where it lurked. It seemed the birth of a new
world consciousness.
'The only change of regime in Baghdad that is acceptable is one accomplished by the Iraqi people,'
says Danish peace mediator Jan Oberg.
Time has passed, however, and the U.S. now struggles to cobble together a coalition of support even
as it threatens to wage war against Iraq, a country it accuses of ties to terrorists and brands as a
menace to Mideast stability.
Two major allies, Germany and France, have urged the U.S. to give U.N. weapons inspections more
time. Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, recently declared: 'There are no serious reasons for war
with Iraq.' Even in the U.S. itself, opinion polls by ABC News and The Washington Post have found that
54 percent of Americans are concerned that their administration will move too hastily to take military
action against Iraq. The chorus, not long ago so harmonious, is now shrill with the voices of critics.
Few critics anywhere are as informed on international conflicts as Jan Oberg, a Danish-born doctor of
sociology and co-founder of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF), a
group of 80 volunteers that conducts analyses of wars around the world and mediates between
adversaries. Oberg has worked on conflicts in the Balkans, Burundi, Somalia, Georgia and
Israel/Palestine. (Members of his Swedish-based organization include former U.N. Assistant
Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck, who quit the U.N. to protest sanctions against Iraq, and Nur
Yalman, a Harvard University professor of social anthropology and Middle Eastern studies.)
During a recent fact-finding mission to Iraq, 52-year-old Oberg met with a broad range of officials --
among them Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, U.N. administrators and diplomats from France and
Russia. In his talks, he encountered a common refrain: A U.S. invasion will spark 'catastrophe' -- not
only within Iraq, but across the region.
To war planners in faraway Washington, most of whom have a much less intimate knowledge of Iraq,
such considerations appeared secondary, said Oberg. 'The less you know about the place,' he said, 'the
easier it is to bomb it.'
Visiting Japan this week to deliver a series of lectures at Tokyo's International Christian University,
Oberg explained why he believes a war in Iraq would unfairly punish the country's already impoverished
population, provoke 'a new Cold War' -- and possibly even spell 'the end of the U.N. as a
peacekeeping organization.'
What are some concrete alternatives to a U.S.-led assault on Iraq?
Point one, I think there must be a willingness to consider non-war options; to get out of the intellectual
prison that is called 'war is a solution,' mentally and psychologically. We must be willing to say there
are alternatives and then explore them.
Point two, there must be direct contacts between the parties, mediated perhaps by the European Union,
the U.N. or any good-will country with integrity. Japan could take an initiative. Scandinavia could take an
initiative. Or India. Or individuals such as Nobel Peace Prize awardees. I would like to see 20 such
people go to Baghdad, and then go to Washington to just tell the story, tell what they have seen at
both places and make a few proposals on how we can avoid war. They have the intellectual capacity and
the moral standing to do so.
It is mind-boggling that the U.S. does not have an embassy in Iraq. Without personal contacts, without
dialogue, meetings, visits, we cannot see each other as human beings. When we cannot see each other
as human beings, that's when it becomes easy to kill.
I think we should set up a group of countries and/or NGOs who could at some point get a conference
going for the Middle East that resembles the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the
OSCE, which can tackle economic, security-related, political and democracy issues -- as well as cultural
and military affairs -- for the whole region. It would be in cooperation with Europe, the United States,
Russia and China -- a kind of all-issues, all-countries conference that might last five-to-10 years.
With Iraq's record of aggression in mind, are there not cases when outside military intervention is
justified?
Philosophically, there are. If I see a child running in the way of a bus, I'll grab the arm of that child and
I certainly won't wait around for dialogue! When we know there is going to be genocide and decide that
by killing 10 people we can prevent a million people from being killed, then yes, there are arguments
for it. But that is not the case in Iraq.
Why not?
Saddam Hussein has committed terrible crimes, but so has the West. The Western sanctions have
killed between half a million and one million innocent Iraqi people -- and these are U.N. figures, not
my own, not propaganda.
These 12 years of sanctions have turned what used to be a highly developed, middle-class society into
one on the level of Lesotho, in terms of the U.N.'s human-development index. The sanctions have
destroyed the education system and the health system and made Iraqi people dependent on the U.N.
food packages that are in turn distributed by the Iraqi government. That means the people are much
more dependent on Saddam Hussein than they were before.
If we (members of) the United Nations, pushed by the U.S. to keep up the sanctions for 12 years, have
done this, we have committed gross violations against human rights, and I don't think we have the
moral capital to say Saddam Hussein has violated human rights. We've done worse ourselves.
To what degree is the current crisis a humanitarianism conflict?
Human rights are not a main concern. That's only the official public-relations stance taken by the U.S.
administration. The main concern is strategic. That is, access to the world's finite energy resources -- in
concrete terms, oil. And it is not only a matter of consumption in the U,S. -- which is at a perverse level
per capita -- but also a matter of securing control of the world's finite fossil fuels to prevent them from
being controlled by Russia, China, India or the Third World in the future.
(U.S. ally) Saudia Arabia has the world's largest known oil deposit, whereas Iraq is No. 2. This means
that if (the U.S.) does move in and control the oil, all the world will be dependent on Washington for
access to oil. We'll all become dependent on Mr. Bush, or successors to Mr. Bush. This is not a world in
which I want to live.
If the U.S. does gain military control of this region, do you foresee Russia and China accepting that
situation?
In the short run, there wouldn't be much opposition because they don't have the resources to object.
But in the long run, there is no doubt that other countries -- including many in Europe -- will feel they
have to gang up against the Americans. NATO may very well fall apart. What is so interesting about the
Iraqi conflict is that it is leading Europe to finally realize we don't have that much in common with
Washington. I think looming large is a new Cold War between a white capitalist, liberal and extremely
militarist West and, of course, countries like China and the gigantic Russia. Those two will be forced to
come closer.
And Japan will be forced closer to them than to the U.S.. At some point Japan will realize it can't forever
be dependent on the United States and U.S. foreign policy because the U.S.will become more
isolationist, more arrogant, more militarist. Militarism should not go down well with today's Japan. At
the moment, it's not easy to be allied with the United States, and it's going to get worse.
Played out a few steps, geopolitically, where does this take us?
It's the beginning of the end of American empire. In historical terms, there are three basic factors
leading to the decline of empires. Take the Roman Empire, or that of Britain. A country overextends
itself. It becomes intoxicated with its might. Then, it becomes a militarist power that by sheer physical
force gets whatever it wants. That will exhaust its material resources.
Then there is the factor of legitimacy; empires go down when they are no longer considered legitimate
in the eyes of others. I speak with everybody I meet around the world: politicians, taxi drivers,
diplomats, business people. . . . I have not come across a single person in the last six months who
thinks that George W. Bush's policies are good, just or legitimate. I have very conservative friends who
have always loved America who today say, 'He is crazy and dangerous, and of course it's oil he's going
for.'
If the U.S. continues having wars -- yesterday with the Balkans, then with Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq,
then with North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia -- then it'll be the end of the United States as an empire. I
can't tell you when. Some would say 10 years, some would say 20 years. But we're not talking 50 years
or 100 years. This is not going to be the century of the United States.
Many critics of U.S. policy argue there can be no resolution to any Middle East conflict without changes
in Washington's support of Israel. What is your view?
Why are we looking for nuclear weapons where we don't find them, even when we know that Israel has
them? We let Israel have them. This is a violation of (1991's) U.N. Security Council Resolution 687,
according to which the Middle East should be a region free of weapons of mass destruction.
You cannot have one set of principles for Iraq, and a completely different set of principles for Israel
and a third type for Pakistan, which does not have a constitution but does have nuclear weapons.
Another feature of Western foreign policy that has attracted wide criticism is the United Kingdom's
unflagging support for the United States. What is your view?
France and Germany are drifting toward a more European global perspective than an alliance or loyalty
to the Bush regime. Germany's Schroeder, particularly, is signalling that he will accept no participation
by his country in a war. And then there is Tony Blair. In his understanding of the world, you get
somewhere with bombing. It's a sad rerun of British imperialism or colonial thinking. I don't know where
it comes from -- in his case, he may think he's out fighting evil or something, but intellectually, he's a
disaster.
He's a disaster also for the idea of an E.U. common foreign and security policy. Officially, all the E.U.
countries are supposed to speak with one voice. With somebody like Tony Blair, that becomes
impossible.
Given Saddam Hussein's record of repression of his own people and hostility to Iraq's neighbors,
should he be deposed by either covert of overt methods?
The only change of regime in Baghdad that is acceptable is one accomplished by the Iraqi people. It
can have no legitimacy if it is done from the outside, but only if it is through democratic, non-military
mass mobilization.
That's the only way other authoritarian leaders have fallen in the past, leaders such as Milosevic (of the
former Yugoslavia), the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile and
leaders of communist countries in eastern Europe. They all fell through massive protests and civil
disobedience.
Then what can the West do?
Very little. We are at a cul de sac, a situation in which there are no good ways out. A U.S.-led assault
could lead to civil war. It could lead to social explosion, in which all the poor loot the few rich houses
that exist. It could lead to lots of occupying Americans being killed. All 25 million Iraqis have weapons
in their homes! It could cause the Palestine issue to blow up. Or an eruption of Arab streets, in which
Arabs around the world revolt in solidarity, not with Saddam Hussein but with the people of Iraq. And it
could lead to soaring oil prices, plus terrorist attacks on countries that support the U.S. assault.
The Japan Times: Jan. 26, 2003
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