The Bush administration’s patience with Saddam ran out in the second half of 2002. Vice President Dick Cheney had publicly expressed his disgust with Saddam’s “game of cheat and retreat” as early as August 26. Kenneth M. Pollack’s book The Threatening Storm had concluded: “The only prudent and realistic course of action left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam’s regime and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.” This, he argued plausibly, would be preferable to an indefinite continuation of the policy of containment, which was what the combination of sanctions, weapons inspections, no-fly zones and the American military presence in neighboring states amounted to.65 Still, the decision was taken, partly in deference to the wishes of the British prime minister Tony Blair, once again to refer the matter to the Security Council.66 The result was UNSC resolution 1441, which rehearse—at considerable length—Saddam’s many sins of omission and commission, defiance and noncompliance but offered Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council,” demanding within thirty days “a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons” and envisioning a resumption of weapons inspections. The resolution concluded with a somewhat unconvincing reminder of the UNSC’s previous warnings that Iraq “will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.”67 For the Americans, the final straw—perhaps the final bale of straw—was the twelve-thousand-page declaration delivered by the Iraqis in response to this demand, which they dismissed as “not even a credible document.”68
Bush and his advisers now had two good grounds for acting. These were:
that Iraq had consistently failed to comply with UNSC resolutions and might—no one could of course be sure, precisely because of Iraqi noncooperation—have retained or recovered the capability to use or to export chemical or biological weapons and
that Saddam was a bloody tyrant who had committed crimes against humanity, if not outright genocide.
Quite apart from these legitimate justifications for a war of disarmament and/or liberation, three further practical arguments for action seem to have been advanced:
3. that the overthrow of Saddam might help to break the gridlock of the Middle Eastern peace process by sending an unequivocal signal of hostility to any regime that defied the United States—pour encourager les autres, as much as to get rid of Saddam himself,
4. that creating a democratic Iraq might also begin a wholesale “transformation of the Middle East” (in the words of Condoleezza Rice), with Iraq once again setting an example for the other Arab states and
5. that controlling Iraq might create alternative bases for U.S. troops in the Middle East, allowing them to leave Saudi Arabia (and thereby meeting at least one of the radical Islamists’ demands).69
Not all elements within the Bush administration accepted these supplementary arguments for intervention—there were differences of opinion even inside the Defense Department—but the president himself apparently saw all three as legitimate. It was now time for the Clausewitzian application of war to the pursuit of these political goals.
There then ensued an unsuccessful but very damaging attempt by the French government, supported by the German and Russian governments, to stop the war. On January 20 the French foreign minister, the poet and historian Dominique de Villepin, declared at a press conference following a meeting of the Security Council that the French would not “associate ourselves with military intervention that is not supported by the international community.”70 Two days later President Chirac echoed this sentiment in a speech celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Franco-German Élysée Treaty, in which he appeared to endorse the recently reelected German chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s vote-grabbing opposition to any American “military adventure” in Iraq. On February 10, at a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels, France and Germany were joined by Belgium in blocking an American-inspired Turkish request for assistance in the event of a war with Iraq. That same day the Russian president Vladimir Putin visited his French counterpart in Paris to proclaim Russia’s opposition to the war.
Much opprobrium was subsequently heaped on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his dismissive comment that the opposition came only from “old Europe.” In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it came from roughly a quarter of old Europe plus America’s erstwhile Eurasian rival. On the other side, expressing support for the American position, were Britain, Spain, Denmark, Portugal and Italy—all long-standing EU members—and Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, three of the EU’s ten incoming members. Their pro-American letter to the Wall Street Journal on January 30, which accused the Security Council of allowing Saddam “systematically to violate” its resolutions and strongly implied that Saddam had blown his “last chance to disarm,” was echoed by ten smaller East European countries, including the three Baltic states and Bulgaria. It was therefore a clear majority of European states (eighteen in all) that took the American side, hardly surprising given the condemnation of Iraqi behavior by the chief UN weapons inspector himself just a few days before. The French had been comprehensively outgunned, as evinced by Chirac’s petulant attack on the East European states in the wake of the publication of the two letters.71 Moreover, even the European countries that did not support the war generally offered some limited assistance, such as the use of their airspace, antichemical weapons specialists or humanitarian aid. Arguably, the sole American mistake was at this point, when President Bush was persuaded by his British counterpart to seek yet another UNSC resolution explicitly authorizing war. This made the pro-American majority in Europe irrelevant since, besides Britain, only two of its members (Spain and Bulgaria) were on the Security Council. In the glare of publicity they now attracted, none of the other nonpermanent members—Syria, Pakistan, Cameroon, Angola, Guinea, Chile and Mexico—had any desire to be seen as backing an “American” war. Ironically, in view of the subsequent fuss about a transatlantic “rift,” Europe proved to be the most pro-American of all the continents represented on the Security Council. Still, the key point is that it was President Chirac’s veto, delivered preemptively on French television, and not a formal vote on the Security Council, that doomed Blair’s “second” resolution, which was duly withdrawn.
Shortly after the first missiles struck Baghdad, Chirac accused the United States of “breaching the legitimacy of the United Nations and putting a premium on the use of force.” Quite what France had thus far done for the legitimacy of the UN is hard to say. Chirac had declared that France would veto a second resolution “whatever the circumstances might be.” Yet Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States, added a highly significant rider: “If Saddam Hussein were to use chemical or biological weapons, this would change the situation completely and immediately for the French government.” Chirac himself added another rider: he would in fact consider “all the options, including war,” if Saddam was still in material breach of resolution 1441 after a further thirty days.72 This gave the lie to the French position. In essence, they were willing to countenance a war against Iraq only if Saddam used chemical or biological weapons first. If he merely possessed them in some hidden cache, there was no need for war. Another empty ultimatum would do. As far as the French were concerned, the inspectors could play missile tag around Mesopotamia indefinitely, and the United States could keep its troops in the gulf as spectators for the duration. The sole French concern was to avoid a war—much as Britain’s had been throughout the Bosnian crisis. For all the posturing of Chirac and Villepin, their policy was nothing more or less than a policy of appeasement. And it left the United States to bear nearly all the costs of the containment that policy implied.
MR. BLAIR’S SPECIAL PLEADING
Might Saddam be able to use chemical or biological weapons, assuming he did have some hidden
? This became a question of vital importance for Tony Blair, whose own Labour Party was riven with doubts about the wisdom of supporting what was now perceived to be an “American” war. Two members of his own cabinet resigned on the issue. Had he been defeated in the House of Commons on the night of March 18, he too would very probably have felt obliged to resign. In Blair’s mind, there was only one remedy. Good evidence that Saddam not only possessed WMD but was already in a position to use them would persuade hesitant backbenchers that Britain was acting in self-defense.
That the prime minister made the most of intelligence reports that pointed in that direction seems beyond doubt, though he was perhaps acting more like a barrister who chooses only the best circumstantial evidence to make his case than as the perjurer a BBC reporter accused him of being. In the preface to a British intelligence dossier published on September 24, Mr. Blair clearly stated: “I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current.” Saddam Hussein’s “military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.”73 That same day he told the House of Commons: “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons…. Saddam has continued to produce them…. He had existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated in 45 minutes.”74 Quite apart from the ambiguity of that last sentence—was it the plans or the weapons that could be activated?— there appears to have been a significant discrepancy between the impression the prime minister conveyed and the original intelligence on which his remark was based. Asked by Lord Hutton in August last year to comment on which kinds of weapons British intelligence believed might be ready for use within three quarters of an hour, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett gave the revealing answer that “it related to munitions, which we had interpreted to mean battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry, quite different from missiles.”75
When he addressed the Commons on March 18, the prime minister gave what was surely the most brilliant speech of his career. He linked together, far more deftly than his American counterpart was ever able to do, the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s tyranny and the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. He argued for a war not merely to disarm Iraq but to liberate the Iraqi people, to reactivate the Middle East peace process and—perhaps most cleverly—to salvage the credibility of the UN Security Council. The case for the war was never more persuasively made. Yet at the heart of his speech was a fantastic piece of elision, in which the chemical and biological weapons the UN inspectors had not been able to trace in Iraq were connected to the possibility of a terrorist attack comparable with 9/11. The two passages in question, which were separated by some minutes and several interruptions from the floor, deserve to be quoted at length:
On 7 March, the inspectors published a remarkable document … detailing all the unanswered questions about Iraq’s WMD. It lists 29 different areas where they have been unable to obtain information. For example, on VX it says: “Documentation available to UNMOVIC suggests that Iraq at least had far reaching plans to weaponize VX.” On biological weapons, the inspectors’ report states: “Based on unaccounted-for growth media, Iraq’s potential production of anthrax could have been in the range of about 15,000 to 25,000 liters…. Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist….”
Let me explain the dangers. Three kilograms of VX from a rocket launcher would contaminate a quarter of a square kilometer of a city. Millions of lethal doses are contained in one liter of Anthrax. 10,000 litres are unaccounted for. 11 September has changed the psychology of America.76
Mr. Blair’s ingenuity and eloquence carried the day. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that he set out to create in the minds of his listeners the impression that Saddam was himself capable of a chemical or biological version of 9/11—perhaps in London itself. And if, despite Lord Hutton’s absolution, Mr. Blair’s credibility should never recover in the eyes of British voters, he has only himself to blame. The case for war against Saddam Hussein was quite good enough without invoking the wholly unrelated threat of al Qa’eda.
The Americans took it for granted that they could count on “the Brits.” “Two years from now,” Bush had declared just a week after 9/11, “only the Brits may be with us.”77 The fact that this was so—that no other country so consistently supported U.S. policy after September 2001—was both important and surprising. It was important not only because it assured the United States of the support of one other permanent member on the Security Council, but also—a point Americans themselves may not have grasped—it significantly added to the imperial flavor of the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. It was surprising because the United Kingdom had not been nearly as enthusiastic about American military action during the Bosnian crisis. And when Blair had backed the U.S. decision to go to war over Kosovo, he had been supporting a much more congenial president in a much more congenial cause. Clinton’s war for human rights was a very different thing from Bush’s wars against terror (and for regime change).
The question nevertheless remains: What was in it for Britain? It is easy to see why President Bush went so far to meet Blair’s requests for a United Nations mandate for war. Having Britain on board lent credibility to the American claim to be leading a coalition against Saddam and ensured that U.S. troops would be reinforced by a substantial British contingent, which, though rather less numerous and much less well equipped than their American counterparts, proved to be rather better at the constabulary duties that swiftly fell to the victorious invaders. But why exactly did the British prime minister risk his political life for a plan of action against Iraq that was designed in Washington with American needs primarily in mind? From a narrowly British vantage point, the costs of backing the United States were immediately obvious: Britain incurred a share of the costs of the war and the subsequent occupation, while at the same time becoming the Islamist zealots’ third-favorite target after Israel and the United States. But if the spoils went, as they traditionally do, to the victor, what share would the victor’s spear-carrier get? It seemed highly unlikely, to give just one example, that British oil companies would secure a significant role in the postwar reconstruction of the Iraqi oil fields. And the next time President Bush should feel the need to raise an import tariff for domestic political reasons, British exporters certainly would not be exempted, since all of Britain’s trade negotiations must be conducted through the European Union. In war and peace there may be “old” and “new” Europe. In trade there is only Brussels. The benefits to Britain of the special relationship seemed strangely intangible in 2003.78
Of course, nearly all British prime ministers since the war have been seduced by the idea of a special relationship with the United States, a relationship personified in its strange mixture of affection and mutual disappointment by Winston Churchill. At the time of the coup in Iraq that ended British rule there, the eighty-three-year old statesman, now retired, was tempted to make a speech on the subject of the Anglo-American role in the Middle East. His notes survive and seem quite prescient forty-six years later:
America & Britain must work together,
reach Unity of purpose.
The complications which the problem presents
can be cured if & only if,
they are dealt with by united forces
& common principles
not merely increase of strength.
When we divide we lose.79
Churchill’s point, which he decided in the end not to make, was that in precipitating the first American expedition to Lebanon, the 1958 coup in Baghdad might be an intimation of some future American Suez crisis. “It wd. be too easy to mock USA,” Churchill toyed with saying. “This is not time for our trying to balance a long account. The accounts are balancing themselves.”80 But do the accounts of the special relationship balance?
Not all prime ministers have automatically assumed tha
t they do. Harold Wilson wisely resisted all pressure from the Americans to send even a token force to Vietnam. “Be British,” pleaded one American official when the foreign secretary George Brown went to Washington in January 1968. “How can you betray us?”81 Dean Rusk would have settled for “just one battalion of the Black Watch.” “When the Russians invade Sussex,” he grumbled when this too was denied, “don’t expect us to come and help you.”82 Yet even Wilson was not wholly immune to American blandishments. “The ceremonies of welcome went far beyond anything I have had before,” he told Barbara Castle, one of his cabinet ministers, after a visit to Washington in 1975.83 That may give us a clue to why so many premiers have clung to the special relationship, even when its fruits have been so hard to pick. In the end it is simply more pleasant to visit the White House (or even Crawford, Texas) than the Élysée Palace, much less the German Federal Chancellery. Given the choice between Brussels and the Beltway, most British prime ministers opt for the latter. The only authentic exception to this rule was Edward Heath, who relished telling Richard Nixon that from now on he would have to deal with all nine members of the European Economic Community as one.84 Even Tony Blair, who once appeared instinctively to prefer Tuscany to Texas, proved unable to resist the allure of the special relationship.
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