War is never the preferred solution to international disputes, and it isn’t the right answer now for the situation with Iraq.
For the past 12 years, Iraq has been under the terms of an armistice that halted the Persian Gulf War. At the time, U.N. resolutions ordered the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capability. Since 1991, Hussein has repeatedly hampered the inspectors from doing their work, and in 1998, he threw the inspectors out altogether.
There are some in President George W. Bush’s administration who are very eager to send the U.S. military into Iraq immediately and be done with Hussein once and for all. Congress is close to giving Bush the unfettered ability to attack Iraq at will. Bush himself made a national speech Monday evening laying out his case for unilateral U.S. action. Nothing Bush said, however, was new or surprising.
We do not argue with the fact that Hussein is unfit to rule a nation, but it is not the responsibility of the United States to force Iraq to comply with U.N. sanctions. Worse, to do so would undermine U.N. authority and destabilize the region, threatening America’s security.
Instead, the best suggestion would be to take the compromise proffered by France of a two-stage resolution in the U.N. Security Council. The first stage would demand complete disarmament and inspections to force compliance.
The United Nations should unequivocally tell Hussein that inspectors must be allowed in any place, at any time, under any circumstances and with no warning, until the world is convinced that Iraq no longer has weapons of mass destruction. There should also be a trigger for a second resolution that would enumerate the consequences of renewed stonewalling.
One of the benefits of this method is that it gives Hussein enough rope to hang himself. On the one hand, if he complies and disarms to the satisfaction of the United Nations, so much the better. Everyone would win — the world could avoid war, Hussein’s power would be preserved and the sanctions would end.
However, should Hussein once again deny inspectors access or try to impede their work, the world would have clear “causus belli” — reason for conflict. The Security Council can then authorize U.N. forces to militarily disarm Hussein.
Should military action come, the aim of any attack must be the same as the aim of the resolutions: Disarmament first, regime change a distant second, if at all. It is only in the case of extreme resistance to inspectors’ entry that the international community should consider removing Hussein from power by force.
The deal currently being hammered out between Iraq and U.N. weapons inspectors must be allowed a chance to work, and the United Nations itself must be allowed to enforce its own resolutions. If the United States acts unilaterally, it will undermine its own security and the force of international law that it relies on when demanding that the United Nations act against Iraq.
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Daily Emerald
October 7, 2002
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