The End Of Days

As I write, the UN Security Council is struggling to arrive at a decision that will almost certainly determine the kind of world we, and several generations after us, will live. This is on whether or not to pass a strongly-worded new resolution to demand that Baghdad allow UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and carry out highly intrusive inspections of all sites without let or hindrance from the Iraqi government.

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this demand. Iraq did agree in 1991 to weapons inspections that were designed to unearth and destroy all weapons of mass destruction owned by it and all facilities for their production in the future. Opinions differ on how thoroughly unscom was able to carry out this task, but the fact remains that in October 1998, days before it withdrew its personnel from Iraq, it reported that the task remained incomplete. Since then, four more years have elapsed in which there has been no inspection of Iraqi weapons sites and production facilities. Fears have therefore mounted that Iraq may have used this period to restock its arsenal of chemical and biological (though not yet nuclear) weapons.

These have gained a new edge, especially in the US, after the September 11 attacks of last year. Although there's no evidence to suggest that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been sheltering Al Qaeda members or in any other way helping them with their designs, the possibility that these two bitter foes of the US may join hands has become a nightmare that is increasingly difficult for Americans to live with. The possibility—and it is no more than that as yet—certainly exists, so the US' fears need to be assuaged. The resumption of really effective weapons inspection is one quick way of doing so.

Where there is, as of now, no agreement among the permanent members of the council, is on whether a new resolution is really needed, and if it is, on how it should be phrased. The US wants a single, extremely tough resolution that issues an ultimatum to Iraq to declare and destroy all of its weapons and production facilities within a matter of weeks and, if it baulks at doing so, to allow the US and UK to attack Iraq without any further authorisation from the council. Russia, and possibly China, do not see the need for a new resolution because they believe that existing resolutions, of November 1998, March 1999 and December 1999, provide sufficient authorisation for fully-effective weapons inspection to be resumed. France has tried to bridge the divide by proposing that the council pass two resolutions, the first requiring Iraq to comply with weapons inspection fully, and the second authorising the use of 'all other means', i.e. force, if the council determines that it has failed to do so.

Baghdad has, in the meantime, tried to pre-empt any fresh resolution by agreeing to allow inspectors back into Iraq under existing resolutions. On October 1, even as the Security Council met to debate its future course of action, Iraqi diplomats held a meeting with Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and current head of unmovic, and agreed to allow absolutely unrestricted access to all sites and documents tagged by the inspectors without any need for prior notice, except for the presidential palaces, where prior notice would continue to be needed. This satisfied Blix but it has not satisfied the Bush administration.

The negotiations have begun to yield some fruit. Russia has softened its opposition to a new resolution and hinted that it might agree to the French proposal. Britain has, on its part, made the US tone down some of the most peremptory features of its original draft.Today, therefore, the issue before the council has boiled down to just one: should it pass a resolution that cedes the right to determine whether Iraq is cooperating fully to the US and UK and allows them to attack it if it is not, or should it keep this right firmly within its own hands. There can be no two opinions on what the council should do. If its members wish to live in an international state system that is ruled by law and not by the subjective perceptions and interests of one country, then it must reject the American resolution and support the French alternative. To do otherwise would be to make the US prosecutor, judge and hangman in the case of The World vs Iraq. It would, therefore, legitimise America's claim of a Manifest Destiny to rule the world.

The Bush administration is already making this claim. Like its predecessor, it has always insisted that the previous resolutions provide sufficient legal justification for attacks on Iraq by members of the council claiming to act on its behalf. But in his UN speech on September 12, Bush went a long way further. He invited the UN to join the US in using force to topple Saddam's government. If it did not, the US would go ahead on its own. On October 2, a bipartisan resolution hammered out for passage by the US Congress explicitly endorsed 'regime change' in Iraq as a reason for authorising the president to take the nation to war.

The permanent members of the Security council wear a particularly heavy mantle of responsibility. There is abundant evidence that the US, howsoever mistakenly, believes it will be safe only if Saddam Hussein has been removed from power, and is therefore not particularly interested in getting Iraq to comply with the UN resolutions. It will therefore almost certainly exploit any ambiguity in the wording of a new resolution to become the judge of Iraqi compliance, find it wanting, and unleash war on it. Thus, any new resolution that does not make it absolutely clear that the right to declare war on Iraq for non-compliance rests solely with the world body, will facilitate the destruction of the United Nations itself. The world will then be plunged straight back into Hobbes' State of Nature.