The Hindu : Important precedents being set

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 24, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Important precedents being set

By Achin Vanaik

The U.S. is claiming the right to militarily attack and forcibly disarm a country on the grounds that it suspects that nation of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

IT DOES not matter what U.N. Resolution the U.S. gets. It is going to attack Iraq. Henry Kissinger spelt out the reason clearly enough. The U.S. credibility is at stake. After mobilising some 200,000 troops it cannot now call things off and bring them back home. The repercussions of such a `failure' according to these geopolitical masterminds would be disastrous and therefore cannot be allowed to happen. The argument is the same as that made by the former Clinton administration while justifying the assault on Serbia, not just through the rhetoric of helping Kosovars, but, more importantly, to preserve the `credibility of NATO' led by and obedient to the U.S. Compared to the importance of maintaining `credibility', other considerations such as the morality or otherwise of the proposed war, the possible deaths and injuries to enemy civilians or even to U.S. soldiers, are of no consequence.

Of course, as anyone willing to look beyond the surface explanations regarding `Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)' or the `authoritarian character of the Saddam Hussein regime' understands, there are deeper strategic considerations behind the U.S. determination to attack Iraq. These range from the politics of oil control to broader U.S. geopolitical concerns to position itself to redraw the map of the region in a way never attempted before but with the promise (if successful) of ensuring a depth and scale of dominance never witnessed before. But the issue of credibility comes in because the dynamic of preparations now established makes it virtually impossible for the U.S. to postpone the implementation of its geo-strategic plans to some later period.

In all cases of U.S. armed intervention since 1991 there has always been a clear disjunction between official justifications and actual reasons where the latter have always been strategic in character. Before the U.S. launched its ground invasion and air attack on Iraq in 1991, there were genuine opportunities of bringing about a peaceful diplomatic solution involving Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Thus, the Moscow proposal for securing a peaceful withdrawal which had elicited Baghdad's support a week before the ground invasion was contemptuously rebuffed by Washington because it would have enormously enhanced Russia's political prestige in the region when one of the U.S.' crucial strategic aims has always been to exclude any other major country outside the area, friend or foe, from exercising significant influence there. Similarly, when Baghdad declared it would withdraw if an international conference to discuss Israeli occupation of Palestine were held since exactly the same principles that were being applied to condemn its occupation of Kuwait also applied to the Israeli occupation, it was rejected by the U.S. Although such a conference would only be a talking shop, an Iraqi withdrawal on such grounds would have greatly enhanced Iraq's prestige when another strategic purpose of the U.S. was to prevent any local power from becoming too important or influential — the same reason why earlier the U.S. had backed Iraq in its war against the post-Shah revolutionary Iran.

In the Balkans, the U.S. interventions in Bosnia (now effectively a protectorate of the U.S. mediated via various `international' institutions) and in Serbia were both determined by deeper strategic considerations on the part of the U.S. to retain and reassert NATO as the lynchpin of the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe. The only other alternative security arrangement would have meant enhanced French, German and Russian importance in Europe and a correspondingly diminished role for the U.S. Though Slobodan Milosevic was ultimately quelled only with Russian help, NATO established its eminence in the Balkans and NATO's eastwards expansion served the dual purpose of strengthening U.S. political-military containment vis-a-vis Russia and of giving it greater leverage vis-a-vis Western Europe since Eastern Europe is politically and militarily closer to the U.S. than to the rest of the E.U.

It was Condoleeza Rice who immediately articulated the real strategic meaning of September 11, 2001. She likened it to the initiation of the Cold War. That is to say, the U.S. had now secured a `long-term enemy', the `war against global terrorism' akin to the `communist threat to the free world' that had earlier served so well as the principal cover for the U.S.' imperial ambitions and behaviour. Since any war, on terrorism or otherwise, means one is free to carry out surprise or pre-emptive attacks in one's own defence, while other governments were busy doing special pleading for why the war on Afghanistan was justified, the U.S. was busy claiming why its wider global war on terrorism was a just war project in which it was entitled to take all necessary protection measures. There is a direct line of continuity between this ideological justification immediately after September 11 and the subsequent articulation explicitly of justifiable pre-emptive wars in the U.S.' National Security Strategy doctrine unveiled one year later.

In these last three cases the main cover for strategically motivated intervention was `human rights' or some variant thereof, like the war on a selectively defined terrorism. But it is important that one also looks at the officially declared justifications for U.S. behaviour. In Serbia, a crucial precedent was set for the future. For the first time since the formation of the U.N., a permanent member of the Security Council whose own security was not at risk (and therefore no question of self-defence could even remotely be raised) bypassed the U.N. Security Council to militarily attack a legitimately elected Government involved in an intra-national conflict on the basis of declared humanitarian concern. It then secured post-facto sanction from the U.N. The precedent set by the U.S.' `war on global terrorism' in the wake of the September 11 attack has already been pointed out. Today, the U.S. is on the verge of establishing yet another important precedent. It is claiming the right to militarily attack and forcibly disarm a country on the grounds that it suspects that nation of possessing WMDs.

Again, the issue is not just the U.S.' obvious hypocrisy. It ignores, nay, shields Israel where the weight of evidence about it having a hidden but massive nuclear arsenal is overwhelming. The U.S. has itself used chemical and biological agents against Vietnam and Cuba. But in soon setting this new precedent it is sending a message to others such as Iran, North Korea and also Pakistan and India. To the first two the message is obvious — what it believed it had to do to Iraq can be done to them as well, though the North Korean case is tricky because it may already have a couple of bombs and can seriously threaten South Korea. A negotiated settlement between Pyongyang and Washington may well be the better option there.

To Pakistan and India the message is different. The U.S. is in effect saying we accept your being de facto nuclear powers for unlike the others you are our allies. But there is no carte blanche for you to do as you wish on the nuclear front. Keep your ambitions small and settle for operating under our hegemonic umbrella. Though neither the Indian Government nor its supporting chorus in the `strategic establishment' will oppose the U.S. assault on Iraq (even if they are unable to hide behind an appropriate U.N. Resolution) at least some sections are privately uneasy about both this new precedent and its possible implications as well as about an American power even more unrestrained by international norms or checks of any kind than ever before. And of course, there will also be those (not just the likes of Praveen Togadia) having no such reservations and more enthusiastic than ever about lining India up behind a U.S. out to reshape West Asia.

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