Posted on 04/30/2002 by Juan Cole
International Law and the Building Iraq Campaign
It is a mistake to believe that multilateralists accept “rhetoric, promises, and declarations (especially with regard to Iran and Iraq).”
I know of few informed persons who would like to see the Saddam Hussein regime continue in power. I am not, however, the international community, and I am not comfortable with allowing Mssrs. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to substitute themselves for it.
The key point is that in the wake of the two World Wars, the first of which cost 8.5 million soldiers’ lives, and the second of which cost 61 million lives altogether, an international community did come into existence. The United Nations Charter, the Security Council, and NATO were all set up as institutions in hopes of introducing some law and order into the jungle of unbridled state sovereignty. The United States is signatory to the UN Charter and to several other instruments of international law.
As a result, the United States may not unilaterally go to war against another state in the absence of a recognized casus belli without betraying the very ideals it championed in 1945. Everything alleged of Iraq with regard to WMD programs can also be alleged of India, Pakistan, France, China, Russia, Israel, and perhaps Kazakhstan. NATO has not invoked Article 5, indicating that Iraq is so much a threat to any NATO member that it may be regarded as a threat to all; and the Security Council likewise has not authorized military action against Iraq. The European Union seems likely to oppose a war on Iraq. With regard to the remark, “The flip side of the coin to criticism of unilateralism is, of course, allowing policy to be diluted to the lowest common denominator,” it is not clear that our NATO allies (Gerhard Schroeder? Jacques Chirac?) are “the lowest common denominator” in world affairs, nor that the Security Council members are. Schroeder has already backed off his post-September 11 stance of “unlimited solidarity” with the US over the Iraq issue.
As an army brat myself, I am proud of the achievements of our men and women in the armed services, who have saved us from dire threats to our liberty. I strongly support our military effort in Afghanistan. I must also admit that the Pentagon itself has not always been the highest common denominator in adherence to international legal and ethical norms. I am in particular critical of the role it played in Latin America through much of the twentieth century, and would not wish to see it unrestrained on the world stage.
One question is whether a military doctrine that allows the US simply to fall upon any country it does not like the looks of, will over the long run contribute to international security or detract from it. US leaders are often insufficiently aware of the power of their example. India justified very nearly going to war with Pakistan this past winter by appealing to something very like a Pentagon version of the Bush doctrine. Do we really want other countries (especially nuclear powers) behaving with their enemies (especially other nuclear powers) without reference to international law or consensus?
Another question is whether a campaign against Iraq at this time is wise given the continued existence of al-Qaida and our failure to capture its leadership. The US is already unpopular in the Middle East, and projecting the appearance of an aggressor cannot help its image. Yemen has begun balking at close cooperation with the US military in tracking al-Qaida agents in Maarib, because of dissatisfaction with US policy in the region. Saudi Arabia is not being as cooperative as it could be, apparently in part for similar reasons. The US embassy in Bahrain, our naval base in the Persian Gulf, was almost stormed by angry crowds not long ago. Major demonstrations, tens of thousands strong, have already sent tremors through the governments of Egypt and Jordan. Being militarily powerful is not the same as having political legitimacy, and the latter is more important than is often realized.
The first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan were done right. International consensus was built, and collective security was invoked. The planned war against Iraq is not being done right so far. If the Security Council and the European Union get aboard with it, then I will be all for it. To say that a major war should not be launched in the contemporary world without the authorization of international law is not the same as being gullible or abject, and it is unfortunate that our discourse here should be sullied with any such suggestion.
Sincerely,
Juan Cole
U of Michigan
- Juan, 1:52 PM
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Posted on 04/29/2002 by Juan Cole
The State Department vs. the Pentagon, and The Bush Doctrine
I perceive one key difference between the Pentagon and State to be the former’s preference for unilateral action as opposed to the latter’s commitment to coalition building. Wolfowitz has been reported to believe that only the UK and Turkey are necessary as permanent allies in the region, and each military action undertaken could involve a different set
of coalition partners, if, in fact, any additional ones are needed. Unilateralism in turn implies a neo-imperial model of U.S. power rather than an alliance model.
It so happened that with regard to Afghanistan, NATO invoked collective security, as did the UN. But the Pentagon was impatient with Colin Powell’s coalition-building last October, and in the end virtually went it alone militarily in Afghanistan. (The British have been allowed a couple of operations, the French I think only one minor one.)
The problem that has emerged with regard to Iraq is that State Department style coalition building has already failed from the outset, since it is clear that France and Germany reject an attack on Iraq without a better casus belli than now exists. So NATO is not going along. (Spain, Italy and the UK are supportive, but France and Germany are the centers of
gravity in NATO and the only ones besides the UK with significant militaries.) And, US allies in the Middle East are refusing to join in against Iraq so far.
So the only way for the Pentagon to go forward against Iraq would be to go it alone again. They would have to buy off Turkey in order to use Incirlik and other facilities there, and Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain would have to be gotten aboard for use of their facilities. But the invasion force would be almost completely American, with perhaps some British
participation if Tony Blair’s government doesn’t fall over it all.
I don’t think the State Department is all that opposed to an Iraq campaign, but I do think that it is alarmed at the idea of the US being diplomatically isolated and condemned for neo-imperialism by all its most powerful allies (not to mention most of the global South, including China and the Muslim world) if it acts unilaterally.
As for the aftermath of an Iraq campaign, the Pentagon would attempt to install a friendly government. Wolfowitz and others talk of it being a democratically elected government.
There are two problems with the Pentagon vision. The first is that a “democratically elected government” and a “friendly government” are not necessarily going to be the same thing, at least in the long run. (What democratically elected Arab government could have supported U.S. policy toward the crises of this spring? Do you think a democratic Kuwait, which
we saved from oblivion, would have?) Traditionally the Pentagon has preferred “friendly” to “democratic.” But “friendly”-but-autocratic governments tend to be unstable and to do things that make the US unpopular over time, actually decreasing its security and moral authority (e.g. Guatamala 1951, Iran 1953, Indonesia 1965, Chile 1973, etc., etc.)
The second is that successful imperialism (that is what it is) requires large and influential local comprador classes willing to be junior partners in governing the colonial state and society. The Pentagon appears not to have noticed that the processes of social and political mobilization in the second two thirds of the twentieth century throughout the world have led to the demise of the compradors and their conversion into nationalists.
The alternative model is that of alliances among political equals (e.g. NATO), which is the State Department model. nilateralism and neo-imperialism of the Pentagon sort are probably ill suited to the world in which we now live, regardless of how many fancy gadgets we can deploy.
Sincerely,
Juan Cole
U of Michigan
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Posted on 04/22/2002 by Juan Cole
Referendum Farce in Pakistan
According to Dawn the Pakistani Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the presidential referendum that General Pervez Musharraf has called for April 30, 2002, is constitutional. Whatever the court decides (and its members will be under enormous pressure from the military to back it, as a recent high-level judicial resignation demonstrates), the referendum is neither constitutional nor at all wise.
If General Musharraf had any political confidence in himself (he has been ruling since fall of 1999) or in his people, he would simply run for president in the October elections he has called, when seats in parliament will also be contested. A referendum is a time-honored means for a dictator to remain in power. That is how Ayatollah Khomeini foisted his “Islamic Republic” on Iran, and how the Turkish generals remained in power after their coup in the early 1980s.
In a referendum, you after all face no opponent. Musharraf has nevertheless been campaigning (and apparently charging the Pakistani people for the campaign, since the funds seem to be coming out of the government). Because a referendum is not an election, and is not really contested, It cannot therefore bestow any real legitimacy. The elected parliamentarians and prime minister who will contest elections in October will be in a more powerful position than Musharraf now realizes, having the sort of popular mandate he will lack.
Musharraf will at some point begin being blamed for Pakistan’s extensive problems. He will at that point wish he could say that he was elected by the will of the people in a contested election. There is increasingly a danger that he will be seen as nothing more than America’s man, as someone who betrayed the cause of Islam for what his predecessor General Zia ul-Haq once dismissively called “peanuts,” i.e. foreign aid. This referendum may begin a spiral of further political instability in a part of the world that none of us can afford to see unstable.
And that is what military men and dictators simply cannot understand. The only stable government is one that allows for a peaceful and orderly transfer of power. Pakistan’s inability to achieve this goal may point to needed reforms. But the problem cannot be resolved by a referendum, which is just an acknowledgment of the regime’s Bonapartist character.
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Posted on 04/22/2002 by Juan Cole
Anti-Discrimination Laws Proposed in Morocco
Ribat – Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 22 April 2002. This sort of news almost never gets reported in the West. Yesterday a gathering of Moroccan politicians, cultural figures, and journalists called for strong legislation against racial and religious discrimination in Morocco. They specifically mentioned the difficulties some of the country’s 6,000 Jews have faced during the public backlash, in this largely Muslim country of nearly 30 million, against General Sharon’s harsh reprisals in the West Bank for suicide bombings against Israel. The problems of anti-Jewish prejudice in the Arab world, which sometimes extends to the attempt to resurrect old European myths like the blood libel, are well known. That makes it all the more crucial that we take note when Arab politicians and intellectuals make a courageous stand, as they have here. In a Moroccan context, moreover, this stance also has implications for the country’s Berber minority. It will be interesting to see if this anti-discrimination legislation is introduced and passed.
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Posted on 04/22/2002 by Juan Cole
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:25:25 -0500 (EST)
To: gulf2000 list
Equal Opportunity Bigotry
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:23:12 -0500
From: Juan Cole
Yes, I am outraged by Dr. al-Jalahma’s column, and by similarly outrageous
pieces of gross bigotry that appear quite frequently in the Saudi press
and the Arabic language press more generally. I have complained on
Gulf2000 about such pieces. Saudi Arabia’s writers and publishers are
especially influential in places like Pakistan and Indonesia and their
columns are often widely translated, because of the kingdom’s prestige as
the site of the twin holy cities. They therefore have a special
responsibility to express judicious views, a responsibility they often
fail to fulfill.
Gratitude is a less common human emotion than is generally supposed, and I
suppose it is unrealistic to expect the Saudis and other Gulf nations to
realize this. But Saddam Husayn clearly had it in for them in 1990, and
they were saved from being put under his hegemony if not direct rule by
the intervention of the U.S. military and its allies, a military in which
American Jews serve with distinction. And yet, if one of those American
Jewish servicemen, now a civilian, sought a visa to Saudi Arabia as a
private citizen, [he might face difficulties because of] his or her religion.
However, the very sad state of human rights and the routine expression of
hate speech in Saudi Arabia with regard to religion, does not in any way
excuse Lowry’s comments, sarcastic or contextual or whatever. I just ask
you to imagine what would happen if an American journalist of his
visibility sarcastically advocated nuking the Vatican or the Wailing Wall
in Jerusalem. I suspect he would have to resign from his journal in the
resulting firestorm.
By the way, we’re all relieved that Nightline has been given a reprieve.
Without that show, the television news situation in the U.S. would be
altogether desperate.
Sincerely,
Juan Cole
University of Michigan
- Juan, 12:14 PM
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Posted on 04/22/2002 by Juan Cole
Re: Editor Suggests “Nuking Mecca”
From: Juan Cole
Re: Lowry
and Coulter
One reason that Lowry’s (and earlier Coulter’s) remarks are alarming is
that the political Right in the United States has a track record of
actually getting into power and then implementing policies earlier thought
bizarre by mainstream American society. Ronald Reagan was widely written
off in 1976, and the Laffer curve and supply side economics and cutting
taxes while increasing military expenditures without creating deficits
were viewed as ‘voodoo’ even by Republicans like George Bush senior. So
that Lowry is so far on the Right that few take him seriously is no
guarantee his views will never be prized by a sitting president. Given
that W. is so far right that he lost the senate because a member of his
own party could not stand with him, one is not sanguine about the Lowry’s
of the world remaining without influence.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s security doctrine, which
seeks perpetual war and aims at the break-up or overthrow of nations
perceived as potential security threats by the U.S. would likewise have
once seemed too bizarre for words. And yet the recently leaked Pentagon
plan for using tactical nuclear weapons against the very states Wolfowitz
had earlier tagged shows that his views are gaining currency in the
post-9/11 atmosphere.
Another reason for alarm is that corporate media consolidation is
gradually restricting the range of permissible expression in truly mass
media. The rise of Fox cable news and its recent defeat of CNN, and
Rupert Murdoch’s strategy of appealing to the hard core Right in the U.S.,
is pushing all cable news in the U.S. further to the right. The National
Review, the Weekly Standard, and other conservative organs provide the
talking heads for cable news. Christopher Hitchens is the only leftie I
can think of who gets much air time at all, and one wonders if this is in
part because he is a hawk in the War on Terror. The Lowrys and Steve
Emersons are increasingly the ones telling ordinary Americans about the
Middle East and setting agendas in the media. Interestingly, the academy
has been almost completely blackballed from the talking head circuit on
cable news. See:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Historians-Not-Consulted.htm
Yet another reason for alarm is that Lowry’s column is likely to be picked
up and widely circulated in the Muslim world. Osama Bin Ladin himself
could not have thought up a better way of stampeding people into
al-Qaida’s arms than Lowry’s logorrhea about the U.S. nuking Mecca.
As for converting Muslims to Christianity, such a dark plot was hatched
here in the U.S. in the mid-19th century by the Presbyterian Church, that
bastion of Western irredentism. Large numbers of missionaries were
dispatched to Beirut, Tehran and elsewhere. Large amounts of money were
expended. The yields in saved souls were so tiny as not to be worth
mentioning. The Presbyterians then fell back on proselytizing the Eastern
Orthodox Christians (who still bear a grudge about Western “cults” preying
on them) and orphans. Some of the orphans reverted to Islam on reaching
adulthood.
Given that there are an estimated 100,000 white American converts to
Islam, and probably on the order of 300,000 in the Nation of Islam, and
given that no more than a few thousand Muslims have gone Christian in the
Middle East (mainly in Iran in the 1990s where the evangelicals claim some
successes), I’d say Lowry’s side is falling down on the job.
Sincerely
Juan Cole
History
University of Michigan
- Juan, 12:21 PM
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Posted on 04/22/2002 by Juan Cole
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 16:36:20 -0500 (EST)
To: gulf2000 list
Re: Oil and US politics
From: Juan Cole
. . . An irony occurs to me. The
Saudis and OPEC did the U.S. a substantial favor after September 11 in not
making further production cuts to offset the fall in petroleum prices
caused by the depressed demand after the attacks and the continued US
recession. This inaction, apparently led by the Saudis, is among the
reasons for which the US administration was so happy with the latter
despite the widespread criticisms of Saudi Arabia in the press and among
the public here.
OPEC’s willingness to take the hit was one factor in a relatively rapid US
economic turnaround and even possibly the end of the recession (which may
in fact only have been a turn down). $18 a barrel petroleum was a huge
boon to a US on the ropes. In turn, this economic recovery took away the
last issue on which the Democrats could campaign against Bush in the
upcoming November congressional elections.
If the recent rise in prices to around $28 a barrel is in fact mainly a
result of speculation in the hedge markets and based upon a strong
likelihood that Bush will go to war against Iraq, it may mean that the
administration is shooting itself in the foot politically. The rise in
prices has badly hurt the stock market and could contribute to a
lengthening economic malaise (the recovery was expected to be tepid in any
case). A bad economy could give back the Democrats their issue and
prevent Republicans from recapturing the Senate in November.
Is sabre-rattling abroad interfering with the fierce Bush political
campaign to win back the Senate? If so, it further illustrates the
difficulty for a sitting president of trying to govern from the far right,
domestically and internationally, when the mainstream in both spheres is
substantially more moderate.
Sincerely,
Juan Cole
University of Michigan
- Juan, 12:04 PM
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 07:20:59 -0500 (EST)
To: gulf2000 list
Iraq and the Arab League Summit
From: Juan Cole
I sent a message to the list toward the end of the Cheney diplomatic tour
of 10 Middle Eastern countries pointing out that all of their governments
expressed strong opposition to an American attack on Iraq with
conventional forces.
This unanimous opposition to an Iraq campaign tended to be under-reported
in the U.S. media, though as usual the print media did somewhat better in
letting Middle Easterners speak with their own voice. On Fox News, Fred
Barnes dismissed these protests as merely for public consumption and said
that the ‘speeches’ had been written before Cheney even arrived. He, like
many commentators, simply made the urgent public representations of no
less than ten heads of state disappear, and substituted for them his own
conviction that behind closed doors they were far more open to an attack
on Iraq. But, of course, he offered no proof for this assertion, and is
not known to be able to parse Arabic verbs. We know that some Saudi
officials were more open to a covert operation against Iraq than to
putting 200,000 US troops up the Tigris and Euphrates valley. But we do
not know that King Abdullah II of Jordan or Husni Mubarak or Saudi’s CP
Abdullah or the emir of Kuwait agreed with this sentiment. Barnes’s
punditry reminds one of Edward Said’s maxim “they cannot represent
themselves; they must be represented.” (Barnes today finally admitted
that the Cheney tour had been a disaster and that the Arab League really
is against an Iraq war).
I also argued that it mattered to leaders like Mubarak whether the U.S.
was restoring sovereignty to an Arab League member such as Kuwait (as in
1991) or whether it was attempting to overthrow the sovereignty an Arab
League member.
That the opposition in the Arab world to a frontal US assault on Iraq
should be taken seriously was underlined at the Arab League Summit in
Beirut this week.
Vice-Chair of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, `Izzat ibrahim,
pledged his country to recognize the sovereignty of Kuwait, to never again
to invade that country, to work together on missing persons issues, and to
continue conversations with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about resuming
UN weapons inspections.
In return, Iraq got three boons from the Arab League. It unanimously
affirmed its commitment to collective security for the Arab world, saying
that an attack on one (including Iraq) would be an attack on all.
Second, the League backed the rights of Iraq and Syria to the waters of
Euphrates and Tigris (against the claims of Turkey to greater use of
headwaters for irrigation). Third, it called for economic sanctions on
Iraq to be lifted.
We all heard about the kiss `Izzat Ibrahim got from CP Abdullah, but the
behind-the-scenes warm handshakes from Kuwaiti officials were less
reported. All of this seems to me quite remarkable. It is clear that the
Arab leaders are pulling around the wagons and launching a vigorous
diplomatic campaign to forestall a US frontal attack on Iraq.
The US was quick to dismiss the Iraqi pledges, pointing to the Saddam
Hussein government’s long record of refusing to honor commitments entered
into.
The military experts on this list can speak to the issue better than I
can. But if the Saudis and Qataris deny the US use of air bases for an
attack on Iraq; and if the Kuwaitis decline to be the staging ground for a
200,000 strong invasion force; then it seems to me that the US would have
to fall back on Turkey. Bulent Ecevit, the prime minister, is a man of
the Left and has announced himself opposed to such a campaign for fear it
will stir the Kurds up all over again. Some think Turkey might be imposed
on to offer its Incirlik air base for a US strike on Saddam, but only if
the US puts a few billion into the Turkish government’s hands up front.
During the Gulf War the GHW Bush administration promised Turkey at least a
billion dollars of aid to make up for its losses from pipeline tolls and
trade. Turkey joined in. But in 1995 Congress absolutely refused to give
Turkey the money despite Bill Clinton’s best efforts. (I never heard why
the US legislators stiffed our ally this way, but it hasn’t made Turkey
eager to sign on for another economic catastrophe).
Even if Turkey can be bribed and cajoled into allowing such a campaign, US
officials should be aware that a US/Turkey attack on an Arab country will
look very bad, especially in the absence of *any* prominent Arab ally.
The Arab League is already worried about Turkish hydropolitics with regard
to Iraq and Syria. Americans are not good at history, and mostly cannot
remember the age of colonialism or imagine that it has anything to do with
*them*. But Arab nationalism emerged in part as a fight against
imperialism, and for a Western country and a non-Arab local comprador to
fall voraciously on an Arab nation will evoke for most Arabs years like
1956. Pentagon planners should remember that in 1956, France, Britain and
Israel handily won the military war. But they lost the war of world
public opinion, and so ended up forfeiting their victory. The U.S., while
very powerful, is not all-powerful, and a military adventure with so many
diplomatic strikes against it to begin with could easily end in
catastrophe regardless of how well the smart bombs work.
I do not think you can wage an Afghanistan-type war in Iraq without
inflicting substantial civilian casualties. Baghdad and Basra are not
like Mazar-i Sharif–and even in sparsely populated Afghanistan innocent
villagers were bombed. Beyond being blown up, civilians would face
potential fatalities from the lost of energy (the Pentagon targets the
energy grid as part of its strategy of knocking out a government’s command
and control). Since Iraqi water treatment facilities are already
nullified by the ban on imports of chlorine, if people do not have energy
they would have no way of heating their water so as to make it potable,
and would be exposed to dysentery, cholera etc., with devastating
consequences especially for children (already suffering from the
embargo–though admittedly it is in large part the fault of the Baath
Party). Anyway, if the US thought the world press was unforgiving of
civilian casualties in Afghanistan, it has not seen anything like the
firestorm that such an assault on highly urbanized Iraq will provoke
throughout the global South and in Europe.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has increased the number of its troops in Kuwait to
3000 and is thinking of expanding that number to a full brigade (about
5000 men, right?).
Sincerely,
Juan Cole
U of Michigan
- Juan, 2:18 AM
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