AT WAR
Leading From the Front
A Canadian for liberating Iraq--and reforming the U.N.
BY BRIAN MULRONEY
Tuesday, October 21, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
The new and overriding predicate of American policy--foreign, defense, security, domestic--is to ensure that 9/11 never happens again. If the terrorists managed to mount a second such attack anywhere in the U.S., the consequences would be destructive for the nation and calamitous for the administration. The dominant unspoken thought of the president of the U.S. must therefore be: "I will take whatever action is required to protect America from attack so that it will not be said of me 50 years from today that I was asleep at the switch at a seminal moment in our history."
It is out of these new realities that the doctrine of unilateral pre-emption--so condemned by many allies--emerged. I believe an accurate translation of the doctrine is this: "If the U.S. has persuasive evidence that a country is either contemplating an attack on the U.S. or its allies, or harboring terrorists who might strike out at the U.S. or its allies, then the U.S. will--with Security Council approval or without--pre-emptively act to remove the offending government from office." And why is this doctrine so offensive to so many? Some fear the precedent, others the erosion of multilateralism, and others still a negative impact upon the United Nations.
Although the reality of pre-emptive action is new, so was the terrorist strike on America. What is also new is the suggestion that Security Council approval is--and has been--a sacrosanct precondition to action against a hostile state. The historical record is to the contrary. In any event, I would never have agreed to subcontract Canada's international security decisions and our national interest to 15 members of the Security Council. This would be a surrender of national sovereignty to which I'd never consent.
In fact, a coalition of nations--including France, Germany and Canada--mounted a massive air war against Serbia a few years ago without Security Council authorization, under President Clinton's leadership. There was no "imminence" of attack on any allied nation, nor did Serbia represent a threat to anyone outside her own borders. Why the reversal of policy when Iraq was involved, with the same nations piously insisting that Security Council approval had to be obtained before any military action could be initiated--and that the absence of any such approval had rendered illegitimate any military action against Saddam Hussein?
Some Security Council members opposed intervention in Yugoslavia, where many innocent people were dying, on the grounds of national sovereignty. Quite frankly, such invocations of the principle of national sovereignty are as offensive to me as the police declining to stop family violence simply because a man's home is supposed to be his castle. We must recognize that there are certain fundamental rights that all people possess--and that, sometimes, the international community must act to defend them. This is precisely what happened in Iraq, and no amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking will change the fact that the U.S.-led coalition acted in defense of the values contained in Security Council Resolution 1441, and the previous 16 resolutions, all of which Saddam had flouted.
It is obvious that the U.S.- and U.K.-led alliance is now in difficulty in Iraq. The quality of planning for the invasion clearly surpassed that of the occupation. But President Bush cannot, will not, and should not walk away from Iraq. The removal of Saddam and the threat he posed is a signal accomplishment, but more hard work and sacrifice than anticipated is still required.
Nothing is gained from nonparticipant allies smirking on the sidelines, whispering "I told you so." The recent Security Council resolution marked a promising beginning, introducing both realism and support into the equation at the council level for the first time since hostilities began. America now greatly needs allies that can re-establish a basis of mutual trust and candor, not fair-weather friends who are on its side when times are easy but invisible when the great challenges come. True allies must now--in spite of some legitimate misgivings--come to the assistance of the U.S.-led alliance by showing cooperation both at the U.N. and in Iraq. After all, the U.S. has come frequently to the assistance of these very same countries in the past, and as Canada's founding prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, once said, only partly in jest: "I need friends with me not when they think I'm right but when they think I'm wrong."
The Cold War glue that gave resolve to the Western alliance has cracked, especially, but not exclusively, over differences on Iraq, and that is undermining the capacity for multilateral solutions to the problems of the new century. As we look for a more secure world, the one constant is the pressing need for full engagement by the United States, not by itself but in the company of friends and allies with common concerns. Regrettably, the U.N. has become less relevant and less effective in harnessing the means for conflict resolution, prompting many to predict that it may go the way of the League of Nations. What is needed first and foremost to help retain both the leadership and the full engagement of the U.S. is a new sense of partnership and commitment with nations holding similar values.
Fifty-eight years ago, in San Francisco, statesmen gathered from around the world, facing decisions every bit as momentous as those we face today. Yet now, the U.N. is like a sheriff without a police force, unable to respond effectively to global conflict, even genocide; constrained by decision-making structures which were designed for a different age; and extending status and rights universally but with little regard to compliance with its own principles and resolutions. We know from history that international institutions that fail to act in the face of global crises gradually wither away. To help maintain world order, the U.N. needs more than a low-common-denominator consensus for action. It needs a decision-making structure that works and resources to give meaning and force to its resolutions.
In my judgment, the U.S. should instigate and lead a "San Francisco II," a major reform effort to establish new multilateral approaches that respect the principles of the U.N. Charter. It is vital for Europe, for Japan, for Canada and the world as a whole that the U.S. remains fully engaged as the bulwark for multilateralism. Without U.S. engagement, there can be no truly effective multilateral effort. But without close support and unvarnished counsel from its key allies, the U.S. will inevitably exercise its own will and choose the course of least resistance.
During the Cold War, the allies found common cause in the form of a clearly defined threat--the Soviet Union. The threat today of global terrorism may be as difficult to define as it is to locate, but it should, nonetheless, provide sufficient scope for commitment by all concerned. Above all, we must not allow our most precious values--openness and equality--to become a source of weakness in the battle against terrorism. And so, today, because the world needs strong leadership to deal with an enemy as diabolical as the world has ever known, the U.S. must reignite the power of international solidarity to ensure a world order that strengthens freedom and security for people everywhere.
Mr. Mulroney was Canada's prime minister from 1984-93. This is adapted from a speech he gave last night to the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, at Texas A&M University.
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