Jun 17 2007
Is there a just war?
Christian theologians have agonised for centuries over this question. Today the western world is convulsed by it, as people argue and counter argue over the intervention of the US and the UK in Iraq.
??I believe the liberation of the Falklands and Kuwait were just wars. I found supporting them was easy, because we knew the wishes of most people in those countries had been violated by the aggressor. The liberating forces were invited in and welcomed when they reached their destination. Today Falkland Islanders and Kuwaitis will still express gratitude for the actions of brave soldiers from the UK and the US.
It is more difficult when an invasion violates sovereign territory of another country where there has been no recent??annexation or other disruption from outside. The invasions these days are based on three possible defences:
1. The world community as expressed by the UN thinks they are "rogue states" behaving in ways dangerous or unacceptable to the rest of the world. The "rogues" are given warnings and advice on what they have to do to become acceptable in their conduct through the passing of resolutions. If they ignore them they may be subject to military enforcement of the wishes of the international community. This only applies in?? practise where the main powers, especially the US, wishes to enforce the resolutions and thinks it can do so without unacceptable damage to itself.
2. Leading countries think they may be threatened by the "rogue states" if they do not take pre-emptive action. A "rogue" seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction may trigger?? a military response.
3. The states concerned are behaving badly towards their own citizens, who would cry out for international help if they had the power to do so - the doctrine of the unacceptable tyranny.
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As we see, the problem with going to the aid of a repressed minority like the Kurds, or even a repressed majority within the Iraqi people against the tyranny of the dictator’s party, is the lack of subsequent agreement by the Iraqi people on how to govern themselves, and on the justice of the invasion. The invaders have to answer the difficult question, is the resulting violence better than the organised violence of the former dictator? The answer is "Yes" for some but not for all.
The UK government made its position much worse politically, because it stressed the weapons of mass destruction argument to justify the intervention, only to discover its intelligence was wrong. The US government kept opinion with it for longer, because it stressed the need to remove the dictator, but then lost support because it did not have a successful plan for creating peaceful successful government in Iraq after the victory.
One of the difficutlies with any of these three approaches to justifying a war is the random nature of the targets. If the oppression of people within a state, and the evil deeds of a dictator, is the main motive for external intervention, then the case for military action against Zimbabwe is?? strong. On this occasion the lack of strong UN support, and the lack of strong support for action from neighbouring African states, is used to justify inaction by the west. It’s a different approach to Iraq, and does show up the uselessness of the UN. It may imply our governments have learned something from the problems in Iraq, or it may merely??remind us there is no oil in Zimbabwe.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I rarely disagree with you - but: intelligence on WMD was not wrong, it was distorted to justify the war.
The ‘War on Terror’ will certainly make interesting history. It is a highly confusing subject, as people look for clarity on the reasons for war it becomes far easier to take in the various conspiracy theories doing the rounds, rather than try to make some objective analysis on what happened.
Firstly I believe we have to look at the politics of the Middle East and the recent history of the region. You have the ultra-conservative Wahhabi’s and other gulf Arabs, the Ba’athists or Arab Socialists and then more recently the Shi’ite regime in Iran. None of these ideologies really see eye to eye with one another and have fought on several occasions. The most recent Arab conflict was the first gulf war, when NATO and her allies liberated Kuwait. The Saudi’s didn’t like the look of Saddam and were more than happy to have US forces stationed in the desert. The Clinton years saw a regime of UN inspections and sanctions on Iraq that hurt the Iraqi people at the same time as they weakened Saddam. When Saddam assused the US of espionage and kicked out the UN inspectors Clinton launched a bombing campaign that attracted little Western attention. When Bush came to power there were only ever three options on the table as far as Iraq was concerned. Firstly to keep the sanctions in place and Iraq weak. Secondly to lift the sanctions. Thirdly regime change and a new Iraq.
Russia was now gaining in strength and sealing a major arms deal with Iran in definance of the USA, in retaliation for the proposed ‘Son of Star Wars’ missile defence shield, which was to be sited in Europe against Russian wishes and without the opportunity for Russian cooperation. Leaving Iraq in a weakened state next door to a newly resurgent Iran, now on a program of uranium enrichment and civil nuclear power that the West believed may hide a WMD program, probably did not look good, in that Iran may be able to have caused civil unrest and possibly Shi’ite revolution. Lifting the sanctions, and thus allowing Saddam to re-arm (bearing in mind even if NATO didn’t arm Saddam it was likely the Russians would have) would not have been popular with the Arabs in the gulf states, not to mention the Israelis, both of whom have good diplomatic relations with the USA. It was likely from the start that the Neo-conservatives in the USA would have preferred the third option of regime change. US public opinion could never have been persuaded to just do this, the infamous ‘baby incubator’ lie was rolled out in order to persuade them to partake in the liberation of Kuwait. Not to mention that ‘regime change’ has no legal basis in international law.
Now let’s consider US politics in relation to defence spending and foreign policy post Cold War. The collapse of the USSR left a power vacuum in the world, the USA was now the only superpower. The Clinton administration cut defence budgets and lessened Cold War orders for defence technologies such as the F/A-22 Raptor. The Neoconservatives, once called the crazies by many serious political commentators, were gathering momentum. They claimed that traditional conservative foreign policy of propping up dictatorships that were friendly to US interests was immoral and stood against long term US interests of peace and security in the world. The Neoconservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century argued that the USA had a window of opportunity to make the world a safer, more stable and better place. They criticised defence spending cuts, suggested that the US government meet Cold War commitments regarding the purchase of F/A-22 Raptors and that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a project the UK had sunk