Regards, Ivan
Posted on 09/27/2002 5:24:10 AM PDT by MadIvan
Only Saddam Hussein, and any would-be emulators, need fear George Bush's foreign policy
MUCH of the time, foreign policy is made by hints, bribery, threats and, in this televisual age, soundbites. This week it was made in a pair of substantial documents—America's new “National Security Strategy”, outlining George Bush's foreign-policy thinking, and the British government's “assessment” of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The first was intended to reassure, the other to scare. The truly scary thing is that much of the reaction to these documents—in soundbites, naturally—has got them the wrong way round.
Mr Bush's “strategy”, which is the sort of thing every administration gets round to assembling, contained nothing seriously new (see article). What caught the attention, though, was one element that had been mentioned before but not fully fleshed out: the notion that, if America saw that a country or organisation was developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons for use against it, then it would be willing to take pre-emptive action to deal with that threat. In other words, it would not wait until thousands or millions of people had been killed. Such action need not only mean war, the report stressed, and would not necessarily be done by America alone. But if a unilateral military strike were absolutely necessary, then Mr Bush said he was willing to order one.
The question is: should you be scared by that, or reassured? First of all, some distracting arguments need to be cleared away. This does not, as some say, set a “precedent” for future invasions by any Russia, China or, indeed, Iraq. Despite the fine words of the United Nations Charter deploring the use of force, dozens of its signatories have used “pre-emptive” attacks during the past half-century: the Soviet Union on many occasions, Israel, Iraq, many African countries, India, Pakistan and the United States itself (in Grenada, for example), among others. And how good it would have been for the world, most people still think, if the democracies had pre-empted Hitler back in the mid-1930s. Second, it does not entail America giving itself new “rights” or flouting existing sources of “legitimacy”: all Mr Bush has said is that, in extremis, he will act. So would many other countries, in their own extremity.
First and foremost, this is reassuring to Americans: if someone is building a suitcase nuclear bomb to be exploded in Chicago, the president will not wait for years of debate and piles of reports from international study-groups before doing something to stop it. Yet it should also reassure other people. They should be reassured by the promise that such a move is very much a last resort. But they should also be reassured by America's willingness to threaten it. For the point of the threat is old-fashioned deterrence: that by declaring your willingness to act, you will make it less likely that you will ever need to act. Such deterrence, in so far as it works, will help protect others too—especially as America, both in its general values and explicitly in this document, stands for freedom and democracy, not imperial conquest or dictatorship.
Saddam Hussein: a worked example
In the end, the basic issue is whether you trust America to act more-or-less wisely, or whether you think it (or Mr Bush personally) is in fact a Wild West cowboy. Given the careful, determined response Mr Bush gave to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, and given the fact that for all the words about “regime change” he has done nothing precipitate against Iraq, it is hard to find any evidence of cowboy tendencies, at least on his part. It ought also to be reassuring that his new security strategy is packed to the brim with idealistic language about peace and prosperity for all, and full of declarations of intent to work with allies, reinforce non-proliferation treaties, operate through multilateral organisations and so on.
But should you believe such words? Scepticism is always in order when a government speaks, especially when strategy documents thud into the world's awkward realities. Iraq does, though, offer a case-study in how things might work. For it is hard to imagine a better current example of when to consider pre-emptive action as an alternative to containment: a murderous dictator and declared enemy of America who has been building stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons for 20 years, and is trying to develop nuclear weapons too.
However, far from blundering unilaterally into an invasion on a presidential whim, Mr Bush has placed the United Nations at the heart of his strategy against Saddam Hussein. His closest ally, Britain, this week laid out in painstaking detail the evidence of Mr Hussein's weapons programmes, his deceit, his evasion of weapons inspections and his use of such weapons in the past. The dossier (see article) contained only a few new facts but much that should be scary to those unfamiliar with Mr Hussein's past record. Now, Britain and America will try to persuade the Security Council to pass a new resolution threatening force unless Mr Hussein fulfils his past promises to disarm, which over the past 11 years have been the subject of 16 UN resolutions. The threat of invasion is being used as a last-but-one resort; the threat of a unilateral invasion is only a last resort. Mr Hussein, it is to be hoped, is now scared. On this evidence, nobody else needs to be.
Regards, Ivan
Unlikely to occur. He has Rob Reiner doing his reading for him after all. ;)
Best Regards, Ivan
Admittedly, I read it nearly every week. When I started reading it, it was because it was right wing. Now it's because I keep up with what the Left is up to. It may turn yet again. Odd.
Regards, Ivan
Well I can't read the Guardian, Indie or Mirror, they make me physically ill. The Economist is bearable reading to keep an eye on the Left, if only for the Books section at the end.
Regards, Ivan
This is true - I do rather miss the book reviews. Do they still run the "Bagehot" and "Lexington" columns?
Yes indeed. Bagehot is not what it once was however.
Regards, Ivan
Why did the Economist become pro-socialism? It is a lot more government interventionist than ever before. Very often they presume the government ought to intervene in the economy to "manage" it. This wasn't what I remember from 10 years ago.
Regardless of their false assumptions, it is still a well written magazine with excellent dry humor. How many other magazines make you laugh out loud in their political analysis?
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