Sanctions are
the Worst Weapons of Mass Destruction
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 5, 1999
LONDON- Someone somewhere in the administrative apparatus
of Nato is no doubt paid to watch and worry in case agents
of Slobodan Milosevic sneak a weapon of mass destruction
into a major western capital. In truth the likelihood, so
small is it, doesn't keep General Wesley Clark awake at
night.
Terrorism today, although a contingency of warfare, is
probably less likely than it was a hundred years ago when
loose knit groups of anarchists, in the period 1894 to 1901,
managed to assassinate the president of France, the prime
minister of Spain, the empress of Austria, the king of Italy
and the president of the U.S..
Terrorism is not a subject to be simply extrapolated
forward, assuming that it will worsen at an accelerating
rate, just because technology is always progressing. Not
least the politics that propels terrorism can change
incredibly quickly. The worst alien terrorist act in a
western city in recent years, at least in terms of dramatic
effect, was the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New
York. Many commentators read into this that it was the onset
of an Islamic fundamentalist campaign to wreck havoc in the
West. Yet, 6 years on, we gather that its father figure, the
Muslim cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, has now forsaken
violence and his movement, the Gamaat Islamiya group in
Egypt which, not very long ago, was sabotaging the tourist
industry with its indiscriminate killings, today regards
itself as defeated and is looking for non-violent means of
expressing its political agenda.
This is part of a trend. At the time of the Gulf War
there was a definite rise in international terrorism. But
since then, despite Osama bin Laden and his
Afghanistan-based zealots, it has declined in frequency.
As for the so-called "rogue states", they are a
diminishing breed. Now that Mu'ammar Qaddafi has handed over
the suspects in the Lockerbie airline bombing case to a
Scottish court for trial Libya can probably be safely struck
off the list. Iran certainly can be. Yugoslavia can't really
be added to it since it has threatened no one except its own
people. North Korea blatantly uses its sophisticated weapons
program not to terroriise but to earn revenue. That leaves
Iraq.
Do we still keep up the good fight with Iraq because we
honestly think if we don't Saddam Hussein's research program
into weapons of mass destruction will one day bear fruit?
Surely Saddam knows if he ever tried to use them his country
would be met by a devastating response? Isn't that
deterrence enough?
We are, moreover, in real danger of misunderstanding the
nature of weapons of mass destruction. It's one thing to
make them under laboratory conditions, another to make them
fly and seriously affect a sizeable target. Biological
weapons demand enormous technical prowess to use. For truly
deadly results they need to be dispersed in very low
altitude aerosol clouds, which is extremely difficult to do.
Chemical weapons to be effective need to be used in enormous
quantities and, historically, most of those incapacitated by
such weapons have not actually died.
The worst case scenario, of course, is Iraq developing
nuclear weapons. Yet even here we fall into the trap of
exaggerating the progress made. Even India and Pakistan with
all their sophistication have only produced bombs with
yields that are Hiroshima size or smaller. This does not
announce the end of civilization.
With all these weapons, we are told time and time again,
if they loaded on to missiles our defense forces and our
cities are imperilled. Yet ballistic missiles are probably
the least likely method of delivery. The kinds of missiles
likely to fall into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist
group can only carry a small pay-load and are inaccurate and
unreliable to boot. All are inferior to aircraft. General
Schwarzkopf once described the Iraqi scud missile as the
military equivalent of a mosquito.
The real question is why do we punish Saddam Hussein for
his probably ineffectual efforts to develop such weapons by
crippling the ordinary people of Iraq with sanctions?
According to John and Karl Mueller, writing in the May issue
of Foreign Affairs, economic sanctions are THE weapon of
mass destruction. "They may have contributed to more deaths
during the post-Cold War era than all the weapons of mass
destruction throughout history."
In Iraq's case the evidence is compelling that sanctions
have proved to be a vicious and indiscriminate weapon that
has harmed the most vulnerable far more than it has hurt the
power elite. It has led to an increase of 40,000 deaths
annually of children under five. Multiply this by the eight
years of the confrontation and this is a horrendous death
toll. Even the Nagasaki nuclear bomb only killed 40,000
people.
The post-Cold War West, rather than defeating terrorism,
has become its chief sponsor. Saddam Hussein appears no
weaker. Only his people pay the price. Why are not sanctions
limited to military items and the overseas' bank accounts of
he and his henchmen?
In the fight to defeat terrorism western
governments--aided by a volatile media--have become prisoner
to their own supercharged hyperbole. It has become
dangerously counterproductive. They should start to re-think
both what they fear and what they are trying to do.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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