Washington Snatches Diplomatic Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

By Ian Williams

In early January, it looked as if the U.S., still flushed with the success of a unanimous vote for Resolution 1441, was on track to get the war it wanted, when it wanted. By the middle of February, however, what passes for American diplomacy looked like a train-wreck. And, without advertising its climb-down, the Bush administration was struggling desperately for a second resolution, which it had previously maintained that it neither needed nor wanted.

One of the more significant warning lights on the track was Richard Butler, the combative Australian diplomat who headed UNSCOM, the original U.N. weapons inspection team. He pulled his inspectors out four years ago, on the eve of a Clinton-ordered U.S. bombing campaign, and was Saddam Hussain’s bête noir. Peace groups in the West and pro-Iraqis demonized Butler as a tool of American intransigence toward Iraq.

At the end of January, however, Butler warned that Washington was promoting “shocking double standards” with its plans for unilateral military action. Knowing Hussain as he does, Butler claimed he had no doubt that the Iraqis had weapons and were trying to cheat the new inspectors, but that even he robustly denounced the illegality of a U.S. attack not authorized by the U.N. Such an attack, Butler added, with what many would regard as a recently acquired sensitivity to Arab feelings, would sharpen the divide between Arabs and the West.

“The spectacle of the United States, armed with its weapons of mass destruction, acting without Security Council authority to invade a country in the heartland of Arabia and, if necessary, use its weapons of mass destruction to win that battle, is something that will so deeply violate any notion of fairness in this world that I strongly suspect it could set loose forces that we would live to deeply regret,” he warned.

The alleged former American stooge even questioned the sincerity of Washington’s aim of disarming Iraq. No one there proposed dealing with other countries, he pointed out, alleging that there are suspicions that Syria has chemical or biological warfare capabilities, while outright U.S. allies like Israel, Pakistan and India, he said, have nuclear arsenals and have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Butler even threw in the point that the five permanent Security Council members among them have the biggest arsenals of nuclear weapons and showed no rush to divest themselves of them. “Why are they permitting the persistence of such shocking double standards?” Butler questioned—presumably rhetorically.

His points were echoed across the world in February. Huge demonstrations in the streets and less spectacular but equally effective speeches in the U.N. Security Council eroded Washington’s claim to have the multilateral authority to take military action.

Moreover, almost every occasion where the U.S. tried to seize the initiative has only compounded the damage. Firstly came the report back by Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the heads of UNMOVIC, successor to UNSCOM, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), respectively. Both resisted the pressures upon them to give “balanced” reports, which manifestly disappointed the hawks in Washington. Although they were disappointed with the substance, Blix and El Baradei said, Iraq was cooperating with the inspections.

Washington, which had hoped that their reports would provide an immediate casus belli, began bullying the Europeans and others on the Security Council. Unfortunately for them, however, the bellicosity of the hawks was in inverse proportion to the quality of the evidence. The U.S. had assured everyone that it had conclusive evidence. When asked where it was, they and the British began talking about “patterns” of Iraqi behavior as being sufficient to attack.

Colin Powell’s presentation to the Security Council on Feb. 5 was widely carried in the U.S. media, and had boosted support for war to its highest level among the American people, who have a far higher degree of trust for the secretary of state than for the president. His presentation convinced the already converted, but left the agnostic equally so. The mixture of phone intercepts, satellite pictures and human intelligence reports was (apart from the alleged al-Qaeda links) not inherently implausible for anyone who had followed the history of Baghdad’s attempts to defeat U.N. inspectors. However, none of them were quite the smoking gun Powell needed. In American legal terms, he had enough to persuade a grand jury of his case against Iraq, but almost certainly not enough to convince a trial jury—which was what he was inviting the Security Council to be.

At the time, other delegations did not contradict his assertions of Iraqi skullduggery. There are not many people, after all, who would put themselves on the line for the dubious proposition of Iraqi innocence. Nevertheless, the responses were not as awe-stricken as the White House may have hoped.

Most delegations, in fact, expressed a general hope for “all countries” with any useful information to share it with the inspectors immediately—which was diplo-talk for a rebuke to the Americans for sitting on information that may have been useful.

Interestingly, they all tactfully ignored the most far-fetched part of Powell’s testimony, which they assumed was scripted by the White House for domestic consumption by an American audience notoriously unable to tell Arabs and Muslims apart: that is the allegations of close Iraq–al-Qaeda ties.

Washington’s case for war was dealt another blow when Blix and El Baradei reported back on Feb. 14. While far from giving a clean bill of health to Iraq, they explicitly rebutted some of Powell’s allegations. “All inspections were performed without notice,” Blix said, for example, “and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.”

Leaving aside any possibility of clandestine production, the UNSCOM chief’s major concern was that Iraq still could not explain what had happened to the chemical and biological weapons that it had admitted to having once possessed. “One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist,” he cautioned. “However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.”

Blix concluded his report on chemical and biological weaponry with some wryness. “We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programs continue to exist,” he noted. “The U.S. secretary of state presented material in support of this conclusion. Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.”

However, Blix left little doubt about where he thought the main blame lay. “If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament—under Resolution 687 (1991)—could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided. Today, three months after the adoption of Resolution 1441 (2002), the period of disarmament through inspection could still be short, if ‘immediate, active and unconditional cooperation’ with UNMOVIC and the IAEA were to be forthcoming.”

His report ended with a less than ringing endorsement of the Ba’athist regime, but perhaps also an implied rebuke of the U.S. intelligence agencies that, “with the closed society in Iraq of today and the history of inspections there, other sources of information, such as defectors and government intelligence agencies are required to aid the inspection process.“

When French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin addressed the Security Council on Feb. 14 the diplomats, press and staff clustered in the rows behind the actual delegates burst into applause: the first time this had happened since Nelson Mandela spoke there.

Many of those applauding may not have listened as closely as they should. When De Villepin said, “We do not exclude the possibility that force may have to be used one day, if the inspectors’ reports concluded that it was impossible to continue the inspections. The Council would then have to take a decision, and its members would have to meet all their responsibilities,” he was almost certainly leaving wiggle room for France eventually to support a resolution authorizing force.

Crying “Wolf”

The American problem, as with the “orange” terrorism alert, was a classic case of crying “wolf.” Almost from the beginning White House officials have noisily termed every resolution, every deadline, every report as a diversion from what they so palpably craved—an invasion. This puts Colin Powell at a huge disadvantage, since, of course, in the Security Council he has to stick to the disarmament brief, which presumes that war is a means to disarm Iraq. His would-be scriptwriters in the White House, on the other hand, regard “disarmament” as an excuse to secure regime change, Israeli security, revenge for Bush Senior or simply a chance to show military machismo to a hitherto unappreciative world

So De Villepin could happily ignore all that subtext and score irrefutably logical points, such as that “the option of inspections has not been taken to the end and that it can provide an effective response to the imperative of disarming Iraq; [and] that the use of force would be so fraught with risks for people, for the region and for international stability that it should only be envisioned as a last resort.”

However, he pointed out, it was “premature recourse to the military option” which would be fraught with risks: “The authority of our action is based today on the unity of the international community,” De Villepin argued. “Premature military intervention would bring this unity into question, and that would detract from its legitimacy and, in the long run, its effectiveness.…Such intervention could have incalculable consequences for the stability of this scarred and fragile region. It would compound the sense of injustice, increase tensions and risk paving the way to other conflicts.”

In other words, while France thought that Saddam Hussain had not yet been given enough rope, once he had the noose should be pulled close, and France would be prepared to help tug on it.

As we go to print, London and Washington are about to submit the “second” resolution which they hope will authorize military action if Baghdad does not comply with a tighter set of demands. If they get their resolution—which British Prime Minister Tony Blair, beset at home and abroad, apparently persuaded Bush to go for—then the date for hostilities is pushed toward the end of March.

If they don’t, they then face the prospect of invading Iraq in the teeth of the openly expressed disapproval of much of the world, and certainly without the active cooperation of key countries in the area.

Interestingly, while the decision was made to go for the resolution, Under Secretary of State John Bolton was in Israel meeting Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu, to whom he pledged that the U.S. would “deal with” Iran, Syria and North Korea after Iraq. While the American media, which one would have expected to be interested in a senior administration official promising war without end, totally neglected the statements, we can be sure that some of those delegations at the U.N. were wondering which U.N. resolutions were about to be enforced against Syria and Iran. The one ordering Israel to quit the Golan Heights, perhaps?

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.