L'Express du 11/12/2003
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
"Iraq is the strategic failure of Europe"
propos recueillis par Jean-Michel Demetz
The invasion of Iraq, was it justified? Can one rebuild a stable state on the ashes of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein?
While the victors find nowhere traces of WMDs and American opinion is becoming more doubtful, the scholar MICHAEL IGNATIEFF, professor at Harvard, one of the theoreticians of the policy of the rights of man and of the reconstruction of the state (nation building) in zones ravaged by war, responds affirmatively. He explains why he feels that neither France nor Europe grasped the significance of what was at stake in the Iraq affair.
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF is a liberal, which is to say, in the accepted usage in North America, a man of the Left. This Canadian, son of an aristocratic Russian emigre who became a diplomat in Ottowa, grandson of a minister of the Tsar, demonstrated against the Vietnam War in the 60s.
Today, this scholar, opposing George W. Bush generally, defends the American intervention in Iraq. In the name of human rights. After passing through Cambridge and the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, as well as Oxford, he teaches at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University, where he directs the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. His sojourns in the Balkans and in Afghanistan have nourished his written works and his courses. His last book appearing in France is Kabul- Sarajevo: the new frontiers of the empire.
Q.Why would an intellectual of the Left like you support the war in Iraq? And, seven months after, do you regret it?
A.I supported this intervention in the name of human rights. The question, in my eyes, was to know where the long term interests of more than 26 million Iraqis lay. But, also considering the power demonstrated, the debate has become a referendum on American power instead of what is best for the Iraqi people. Although the last months have been difficult, I clearly prefer to see the Americans in Baghdad rather than Saddam Hussein.
[answer continued]I went to Iraq, to Kurdistan, in 1993, and what I saw of the campaign of terror organized by the regime influenced my judgment. Yes, I would have prefered an intervention with the support of the UN, at last acting; yes, I would have prefered a provisional administration under the UN in Baghdad. But that wasn't possible. In part, because of France. The foreign policy of France troubles me.
Q.Why?
A.The French can defend their historic interests in the Middle East. Chirac has a personal history in the region (the nuclear reactor sold to Saddam, the oil....) So be it. But the problem is that the French, in November of 2002, engaged to support resolution 1441 of the UN in a multi- lateral framework, and, in January 2003, decided no longer to do so.
[answer continued] When I hear Dominique de Villepin sermonize to Colin Powell on the horrors of war---- in passing, what irony! Powell is a veteran of Vietnam, while Villepin has never fought--- then I understood that France was in the wrong. Unhappily, the position of the French had a ricochet effect: each rallied to a project to stop American power.
[answer continued] And everybody forgot the thirteen years of violations by Iraq of UN resolutions. Multilateral action on resolution 1441 became impossible. Understand me well In the world after the Cold War, the middling powers have more freedom of action in order to have an independent foreign policy, and that is their right.
[answer continued] Today, most multilateral initiatives- the International Court of Justice, the treaty on the interdiction of personnel mines, etc.- come from outside the United States, and that is great. The error of France isn't to seek to have an independent policy; its error is to pretend to defend the multilateral framework and yet not take action.
This is what made Americans angry, to see France refuse to dispatch a single policeman to the region to put pressure on Iraq and, at the same time, pose as a schoolmarm. It is necessary to link words and deeds. Or keep quiet. But on the crucial question of the application of the UN resolutions, if one is not ready to send troops, one can't pretend to be in the discussion. It is a question of credibility.........
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