War on terror: Iraq is phase II
By Henry Kissinger
September 6 2002
The attacks on America of September 11, 2001, marked a seismic
challenge to the concept of sovereignty that has been the legal
foundation of the international system since the Treaty of
Westphalia in 1648. Its organising principles were that foreign
policy was a matter for states conceived as legally equal and
obliged not to intervene in the domestic affairs of each other.
On September 11, the world entered a new period in which
private, non-state organisations have proved capable of
threatening national and international security by stealth attacks.
The present controversy about pre-emption is a symptom of the
impact of this transformation. At bottom it is a debate between the
traditional notion of sovereignty and the adaptation required by
modern technology and the nature of the terrorist threat. In my
view, pre-emption is inseparable from the war against terrorism,
but the objectives for which it is implemented require careful
thought and national and international dialogue.
Osama bin Laden's base was on the territory of a national state,
but his was not a national cause. Highly disciplined operatives
were scattered around the globe, some on the soil of America's
closest allies and even within America itself. In this manner, the
international system based on the sovereign nation-state was
challenged by a transnational threat that had to be fought on the
sovereign territory of other nations over issues that transcended
the nation-state.
By challenging the United States directly, the terrorists ensured
the struggle would be shaped by the special character of the
American nation. For America has never thought itself as simply
one nation among others. Its national ethos has been expressed as
a universal cause identifying the spread of democracy as the key
to peace. American foreign policy is more comfortable with
categories of good and evil than with the calculations of national
interest of European cabinet diplomacy.
European critics holding more traditional concepts have accused
America of overreacting because terrorism is a phenomenon new
primarily to Americans and that Europeans overcame terrorism in
the 1970s and '80s without undertaking global crusades. But the
terrorism of two decades ago was of a different character. It was,
on the whole, composed of nationals of the country where the
terror took place (or, as in the case of the IRA in Britain, by a
group with special national grievances of its own). Though some
received foreign intelligence support, their bases were in the
country where they operated. Their weapons of choice were
mostly suitable for individual assaults.
By contrast, the September 11 terrorists operate on a global basis,
are motivated less by a specific grievance than a generalised
hatred, and they have access to weapons by which they can give
effort to this strategy of killing thousands and ultimately more.
In the immediate post-September 11 period, this difference in
emphasis was submerged in a general shock that brought home to
most nations the importance of the US as the guarantor of
international stability in the traditional sense. The intelligence and
police aspect of the war against terrorism - the part most
compatible with the cooperation among sovereign states -
received almost universal support from the international
community.
Since the attack on the US was launched from the sovereign
territory of a nation-state, the war against al Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan generated widespread cooperation as well.
But as soon as the Afghanistan operation was substantially
concluded, the next phase of the anti-terrorist campaign was
bound to raise the issue of how to deal with incipient rather than
actual terrorism. Unlike the Westphalian period when the
movement of armies foreshadowed threat, modern technology in
the service of terror gives no warning, and its perpetrators vanish
with the act of commission. Hence if there is a serious prospect of
the emergence of a terrorist threat from the soil of a sovereign
country, some pre-emptive action - including military action - is
inherent in the definition of the challenge.
Countries that harbour terrorist headquarters or terrorist training
centres cannot take refuge behind traditional notions of
sovereignty because their territorial integrity has been pre-
emptively violated by the terrorists.
At this point, the issue of general pre-emption against terrorism
merges with the issue of Iraq.
Perhaps the most important long-term problem faced by the
international community is the problem of proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, especially in states with no internal
checks on their rulers' decisions. If the world is not to turn into a
doomsday machine, a way must be found to prevent the spread of
these weapons.
Cold War principles of deterrence do not apply when there is a
multiplicity of states, some of them harbouring terrorists in the
position to wreak havoc. The Cold War world reflected a certain
uniformity of purpose on each side and a certain conformity in the
assessment of risk between the two sides. But when many states
threaten each other for incongruent purposes, who is to do the
deterring and in the face of what provocation? And what must be
deterred is not simply the use of weapons of mass destruction but
the threat of them.
Is the US to undertake this role on a global basis in every
contingency? Some international system of pre-empting the
spread of weapons of mass destruction is imperative.
Therefore the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq cannot be separated from the post-Afghanistan phase of the
war against terrorism. Iraq is located in the midst of a region that
has been the hotbed of world terrorist activity from which the
attack on the US was organised. The challenge posed by Iraq is
not the precise degree of its relationship to al Qaeda - though Iraq
has used terrorism against its neighbours, against Israel and as far
away as Europe.
For the US to acquiesce in growing stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction where the new form of terrorism has been spawned is
to undermine restraint not only with respect to weapons
proliferation but with respect to the psychological impulse toward
terrorism altogether. The unimpaired continuation of these
stockpiles for more than a decade after the Gulf War and in the
face of blatant evasion of weapons restraints imposed by the
United Nations as a condition of the armistice would symbolise to
terrorists and their supporters a lack of will or ability of
threatened societies to protect themselves.
>From this perspective, action against Iraq is not an obstacle to the
war on terrorism but a precondition for it. Yet compelling as is the
case for the principle of pre-emption, it is not self-implementing.
As the most powerful nation in the world, America has a special
capacity to vindicate its views. But it also has a special obligation
to rest its policies on principles that transcend the assertions of
preponderant power.
World leadership requires the acceptance of some restraint even
on one's own actions to ensure that others exercise comparable
restraint. It cannot be in either America's national or the world's
interest to develop principles that grant every nation an unfettered
right of pre-emption against its own definition of threats to its
security.
Thus the case for pre-emption should be part of a serious effort of
consultation to develop general principles that other nations can
consider in their interest as well.
To be sure, consultation is not a magic cure-all, and some urge it
as a means of procrastination. Nor is there unlimited time
available for it. Delay for another year would amount to
acquiescence in the status quo with all its implications. And, in
the end, the US will reserve the right to act alone. But it makes all
the difference whether America acts alone as a last resort or as a
strategic preference.
As the need for decision draws near, America's allies cannot
afford to be bystanders. And as the US assumes the position of
leadership, it should not launch itself unilaterally until it has
tested the prospects of acting as the custodian of a global interest.
Henry Kissinger is a former US secretary of state.
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