The Hindu : Planning for a pre-emptive strike

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 02, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Planning for a pre-emptive strike

U.S. PLANS FOR a pre-emptive strike against Iraq with the aim of bringing about a change of regime would entail a violation of established international principles and cannot be condoned especially if it were to be carried out in a unilateral mode and were meant to serve a narrow, partisan interest. Even countries that have been closely allied with the U.S., and which agree with the perception that Iraq and its President, Saddam Hussein, represent a grave threat to world peace, are not prepared to endorse the plan at the moment. Close friends of the U.S. are currently engaged in efforts to persuade Washington to present its case before the U.N. as a prelude to the collective drawing up of an ultimatum and to act solely with the world body's consent if Iraq does not comply. It does not appear likely that an administration which has but reluctantly drawn in the legislative wing into the process of chiselling its Iraq policy will countenance the idea that the wider world should be drawn into the debate.

In laying out what has so far been the most forceful presentation of the administration's justification for a pre-emptive strike, the U.S. Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has referred to what are essentially two different sets of factors. One of these sets can be broadly categorised as consisting of factors that the rest of the world is genuinely concerned about. Included in this set are the facts that Iraq did have a chemical and biological weapons capability, that Mr. Hussein did not hesitate to order the use of this capability against Iranian soldiers and dissident Kurds and that Baghdad might be trying to re-build this capability after much of it was destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War or via the programme of intrusive inspections that followed from it. Under the terms of the agreement that ended that war, Baghdad did commit itself to comply with a regimen wherein international weapons inspectors could probe all facilities for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the missiles to deliver them, destroy and dismantle this capability and ultimately be able to truthfully certify that Iraq was free of these weapons. It is not solely Iraq's fault that the weapons inspection programme did not unfold as envisaged, but its need to comply has not been erased and the rest of the world is justified in demanding that Iraq submit itself once again to the programme for intrusive inspections.

For the U.S. administration, however, Iraq's non-compliance on the weapons inspection front is relevant merely as a supplement to the main thrust of its case for a pre-emptive strike. The main thrust of Washington's argument is that Iraq under Mr. Hussein, possessing a WMD capability as it does, poses a grave danger to world peace since it might use that capability once it has been sufficiently developed or that it might pass on the capability to state-less terrorist groups. For this reason, Washington argues, there can never been a stable and peaceful world order till Mr. Hussein is toppled from office and the regime in Baghdad re-cast. To most of the rest of the world, this case appears over-drawn. In this context, the other set of factors referred to in Mr. Cheney's presentation take on added salience. The U.S. Vice-President has spoken of how Iraq's possession of a tenth of the world's oil reserves in combination with the WMD capability it is developing would enable it to dominate West Asia and defy Washington's promotion of its own special interests in the region. Few people elsewhere in the world would be prepared to concede that this is sufficient justification for an action that would further destabilise a region rocked by conflict between Israel and the Arabs and would exacerbate rage and frustration in the Muslim world.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Cancellation and court

Planning for a pre-emptive strike

Kashmir — a way forward?

The PSLV-Metsat launch

Tibet: India's bridge to China