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Different
notions of pre-emption
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
July 29, 2004
LONDON - I know how to tell you to
keep healthy: don't smoke, exercise every day but, if you
ignore my advice, I have no idea how to do surgery on
your arteries. I think I knew how to avoid war in Iraq
and how to keep Saddam Hussein boxed in and weak
militarily without hurting the innocents too much. But
now that George W. Bush and Tony Blair have turned Iraq
upside down with their single-minded pursuit of the
chimera of weapons of mass destruction I have very few
ideas on how to put Humpty Dumpty together
again.
Does this make me a useless
political voyeur? I refuse to apologize. It is Bush and
Blair who have lost their credibility in the Middle East,
and for the world's next big crisis, not my side. When,
like Matilda, they next shout "fire, fire", many of us
will say, "be quiet, you little liar". And I am happy to
stay in my old position - a supporter of pre-emption,
long before Bush and Blair re-tooled the word.
I believe in getting into problems
before they become unmanageable. Back in 1988 I was
lambasted on the BBC by the Iraqi ambassador for writing
in the International Herald Tribune that Saddam Hussein
was torturing the children of his political opponents and
the West should stop providing him with arms. Many have
argued convincingly that the West helped Saddam develop
his ruthless, pugnacious character by supporting Iraq in
its war with Iran and turning a blind eye when he gassed
the Kurds.
So why now should I be pushed by
Bush-Blair and their supporters to choose between
military intervention and inaction? I haven't found any
clips with critical remarks that Bush made on Iraq in the
late 1980s. And today I feel it's more me than them who
is fighting to preserve my country's and my alliance's
(Yes, I support the idea of NATO) credibility for another
day.
"If government decisions to
intervene are motivated by the quest for justice, why do
they allow situations to deteriorate to such unspeakable
injustice?" Pierre Sané, the former head of
Amnesty International, once asked. The NATO governments
which bombed Belgrade are the same governments which were
willing to deal with Slobodan Milosevic's government
during the break-up of the original Yugoslavia and who
were unwilling to address repeated warnings about the
growing human rights crisis in Kosovo. As long ago as
1993 Amnesty was arguing in public: "If action is not
taken soon to break the cycle of unchecked abuses and
escalating tensions in Kosovo, the world may find itself
staring impotently at a new conflagration."
A year before the genocide in
Rwanda, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial,
Summary or Arbitrary Executions warned of what was to
come. The U.S. supported by Britain squashed moves in the
UN Security Council to pre-empt the situation by beefing
up the small UN contingent there. Today, as parts of
Sudan become engulfed once again by vicious mass
terrorism of the worst kind, the big powers are
contemptibly lethargic. Ingvar Carlsson, the former
Swedish prime minister, who was commissioned by the UN to
unravel what went wrong at the time of Rwanda told me his
one line conclusion: "Rwanda had no oil." (Sudan does but
it is not in the big league.)
The problem is rarely lack of early
warning. It is lack of early action compounded with
tragic early mistakes. Israel/ Palestine would not be the
seething cauldron it is today if the British government
of Lloyd George had not "twice promised" the land to both
Jew and Arab. Yugoslavia would never have exploded if the
European Union had dangled before the country's movers
and shakers the opportunity for entry, as they belatedly
do today with the country's broken parts. Iran would not
now be developing nuclear weapons if the U.S. had not
overdone it with the hostage crisis and had sought
earnestly and systematically to heal the breach once a
partial parliamentary democracy was introduced fifteen
ago. North Korea would not today be improving its nuclear
weapons' capability if the Republicans in Congress hadn't
undermined the Clinton/Carter deal on economic aid in
return for a plutonium freeze.
Bush-Blair are now chiding Kofi
Annan and the UN for moving into Iraq in a less than
full-hearted way. I think we can see through this game.
We so-called "Venuses" will be left holding the howling,
hungry baby whilst its Martian father makes off through
the back door. The trouble is that we, the more
"feminine" part of the world of realpolitik, find it hard
to say "no" when a crisis is really upon us, even if it's
not of our making. Perhaps we should do our bit to try
some improvised surgery. We should force ourselves to
come up with some ideas.
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Här kan
du läsa om - och köpa - Jonathan Powers bok
på svenska
"Som
Droppen Urholkar
Stenen"
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