Interventions (43 page)

C
HRONICLE OF A
W
AR
F
ORETOLD

Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq it was always assumed that Saddam's lack of full cooperation was because he refused to give in to the demands of the United States and the United Nations and was determined to retain Iraq's WMD program. It would turn out that the Iraqi regime, despite all its games, did actually fully disarm its WMD capability in the years between 1991 and 2003. Tariq Aziz, Saddam's long-serving foreign minister, once asked a senior member of the UN's inspection team, UNSCOM, “You know why we never can allow you to certify that we've rid ourselves of our weapons of destruction, don't you?” The UN official replied incredulously that this was the entire purpose of the inspections, and that once free of the stigma, Iraq could come in from the cold. Aziz replied, “The Persians and the Jews.” For Saddam, in other words, sustaining the fear that he possessed WMD was all about deterring Iran and Israel, two countries that he considered mortal enemies. The Iraqi regime under Saddam neither wanted to appear unarmed nor suffer the humiliation of appearing to capitulate in full to the demands of the international community—and this was a game they may have been able to continue to play for many more years if it had not been for September 11.

On September 11, the threat perception of the United States and the United Kingdom changed dramatically, and their response would change the world. A new inspection commission, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), had been established in December 1999 to replace UNSCOM, with a new head in Hans Blix, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. For the first two years, however, the inspections issue lay largely dormant in the Security Council. Soon after the United States presidential election in 2000, at the urging of the Bush administration, the focus of the Security Council returned with a fierce momentum to the issue of forcing Saddam's compliance. Within weeks of the attacks of 9/11, foreign leaders were expressing their concern to me that the United States would set its sights on Iraq and Saddam, with the Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee telling me in mid-November that an attack would “destroy an anti-terrorist coalition which was still very fragile.” And in January, George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union Address, which described Iraq as part of an “axis of evil.” To many, the war was already in motion.

It was clear that a new resolve had taken hold in Washington—a determination to see Saddam disarmed definitively. In late February, I met with two senior British diplomats and warned them that if the United States were to extend its war against terrorism to Iraq, many member states, including some European countries and Canada, would require the Security Council to authorize any action. A few days later, one of them came back to see me to caution me that the United States was determined to have the resolutions completely obeyed, or to “have the regime out.” When I responded that Saddam had a habit of miscalculating, he replied that “either they will get rid of the capability or they will get rid of him.”

But what was also clear even to the most ardent opponents of military action was that the current strategy wasn't working: the sanctions could never be made “smart” enough to spare the Iraqi people from continued suffering; nor were they robust enough to ensure with certainty that Baghdad wasn't finding ways to rearm in contravention of its obligations to the Security Council.

On the other side of the debate, the French, the Chinese, the Russians, and the Germans became over time evermore determined to prevent the unilateral use of force by the United States as something they considered fundamentally inimical to the international system and the role of the Security Council in peace and security. Over the following year, the negotiations for a new resolution gained speed with both sides insisting on their own interpretation of what was acceptable. I began to host a regular series of private lunches for the ambassadors of the permanent five members to seek a strong dialogue, if not actually an agreement that would have to be sought at the head-of-state level.

In early September 2002, I received a call from Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, who expressed his concern about the path we were on. I let him know that, based on my conversations with a range of leaders, there was a growing unease about the impact preemptive action taken by one state would have on international law. “What precedent does it set?” I emphasized that support given by the United Nations for military action would bestow both legitimacy and legality on anything done with respect to Iraq. Later that month, George W. Bush came to the General Assembly and made a powerful statement about Saddam's violations of multiple resolutions of the Security Council. My answer in my own address to the Assembly was that there was no alternative for the legitimate use of force than through a united Security Council and that there was still time to seek a peaceful way out. After the meeting, I spoke with Tony Blair for whom the process of negotiating a new resolution wasn't so much about achieving the disarmament goals. To him, above all, it was a test of the UN in the eyes of the United States: “a critical moment for the UN to persuade the U.S. that the UN has the wherewithal to be effective and relevant in the future.”

As negotiations over a resolution to authorize the return of UN inspectors to Iraq intensified, suspicions grew on all sides that this had a lot less to do with Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction than the question of who would be the supreme arbiter of the legitimacy of the use of force in the international system. Specifically, the debate revolved around the one or two resolutions that would be needed to justify the use of force in the event that the Iraqis—as most expected—would fail to fulfill their obligations. Who would determine when they did fail to cooperate? And who would determine the consequences—one state or the Security Council as a body? As the United States pushed to assert its dominance over this process, France and other members of the Security Council pushed increasingly against it.

A key question arose around the degree of “automaticity,” namely, whether a material breach of the terms of the new resolution would result in the automatic endorsement by the Council of the use of force. President Chirac of France made clear to me, in a call on September 28, that France was prepared to use its veto to prevent such an outcome. Colin Powell then began an intense round of negotiations with his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin, and called me on October 4 to say that he was seeking “a bridge between them and us on automaticity.” He added that he had told de Villepin that it was no good for the two sides “to throw hand grenades at each other,” and that it was vital to find a solution that preserved “their equity and our equity.”

By mid-October, my own position was becoming more and more difficult to balance: I was increasingly caught between the strongly divergent interests of the most powerful members of the Council. On October 11, Colin Powell called me to remonstrate: “You're taking the French line with two resolutions, my friend.” A week later he warned that “we have not given up our right to act with like-minded friends if necessary.” I was not taking the French line, of course; instead I was holding to the position that we needed an outcome backed by a united Security Council as the best solution. The same day, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov telephoned to state Russia's position: “If the resolution is aimed at strengthening the operation of the inspectors, we are ready to work constructively with them. But if it is aimed at creating a legal framework for military operations, it is unacceptable to us.” The divisions in the Council that had appeared after the brief unity following 9/11 had now turned into deep disputes between the parties' negotiating positions.

At the end of October, Powell, in one of his many requests for me to convey how strongly Washington was wedded to its position, said that “what everybody needs to understand is that this is the best way to avoid war . . . If the French keep playing games,” Powell continued, “they will get exactly what he is trying to avoid.”

He concluded by saying: “We're losing patience here and we have an election coming.” Over the next week, the focus was on achieving strong support for the resolution, and over the course of many calls, even Syria was persuaded to vote in favor, so that on November 8, resolution 1441 was passed unanimously. There was a genuine sense of achievement in the Council that day, a belief that through tough negotiations, the member states had found a formula that would preserve the prerogative of the Council while making clear to the Iraqis that time was running out on their games and obfuscations. I was, however, mindful of the seriousness of Washington's purpose. On the eve of the vote, I spoke to Powell and in an exasperated voice he warned: “What you're going to have to figure out is to get to the Iraqis somehow—and I am not sure anyone can get to Saddam—and tell him that we're not looking to see how much he will be fooling around, but if he has made a strategic choice for cooperation. If he thinks he can rope-a-dope the inspectors again, he's in for a shock.”

I made my own view clear on the question of “automaticity”—whether resolution 1441 contained provisions for an automatic response with military force in response to the establishment of a material breach of the resolution by the Iraqis. As I established in my statement after the vote: “What is important is that there are no triggers in this resolution, and the Council will be back to review what the inspectors bring them . . . How this crisis is resolved will affect greatly the course of peace and security in the coming years in the region, and the world.” The next day, I met with President Bush and praised him for taking the multilateral route. In private, he was as tough-minded as ever, but his response indicated that he also understood that resolution 1441 did not include provisions for the “automaticity” of military action. He stressed that any consequent military action would be “swift,” but emphasized that “if Saddam stiffs Blix in any way we'll go back to the UN. Even if it's over a paper clip. Seriously.” He then reflected on the situation in more emotional terms: “You, I, and others have the obligation to free people where we find that they are being tortured and killed . . . It brings tears to my eyes when I think about what the Iraqi people are going through.”

Soon Saddam was back to his intransigent modus operandi, even as UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors were beginning their inspections. The Iraqi submission of a “full and complete declaration,” which they delivered with much fanfare in a twelve-thousand-page document turned out to be neither. The United States, just before Christmas, then began to hint at how widely it would define a further “material breach” on the part of Iraq. This received the predictable response from Paris and, on January 20, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin stated that under no circumstances would France allow the Council to authorize war with Iraq. It had already been planned that the United States would soon formally and fully make its case to the Council that Iraq was in material breach of the Council's resolutions, and lines were clearly being drawn by the French in preparation for this. The disparate British attempt to secure a second resolution—something Washington never believed it needed—was coming apart. In the region, major countries were already beginning to worry about the aftermath of a war in Iraq. When I spoke to the Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud at the end of January, he warned that there was “potential for tremendous chaos in Iraq.” It would be a “windfall for the terrorists,” he added, since they could “go in and plant roots.”

Washington's decision to send Powell to make the case to the Council and the world on February 5 was bold. What it did without question was underline the centrality of the United Nations as the indispensable forum for the management of global peace and security issues. As I heard Colin set out the evidence as the Americans saw it, I was impressed with his delivery but I was most concerned about the substance. He did not produce any evidence of the “smoking gun” variety, despite effectively claiming to possess such evidence. Worse, I was not alone in thinking that Powell himself did not appear as though he entirely believed his own case. He seemed to be saying it purely for raisons d'état. While the other Security Council foreign ministers delivered their own prepared statements in response to Powell at the official meeting, it was during the lunch I hosted for the members of the Council afterward that the most penetrating debate took place.

The German foreign minister Joschka Fischer started by stating that there was “total unanimity that Iraq must disarm and must do so proactively.” I added that the inspectors now had a clear set of tasks and, while the Security Council had its resolutions before it, it “may have to come to a time when the Security Council will have to decide on a material breach and will have to decide on the serious consequences.” I added that “the time may come when we have to take some tough decisions based on what the inspectors say.”

The tension between Colin Powell and Dominique de Villepin was evident for all to see. In an impatient, exasperated tone, Colin asked de Villepin what exactly he had meant in his statement earlier in the Council about providing more help for the inspectors. De Villepin then launched into an extensive monologue about the alternatives to conflict and the fact that Iraq was but one of many proliferating countries, and noted that “we should find a different way than military action—we do not believe that military action can be so virtuous as to create democracy in the Middle East.” He continued by stating that the UN had to be central to any next step, as “no country could win the war and win the peace as well. I do not believe we can go to war based on suspicions and evasions. I am asked how long a delay should be acceptable in terms of the inspections. I ask how long will it be to regain the peace? I ask, how will this affect terrorism, how will this affect other proliferators? We are facing other issues: North Korea, Iran, Middle East.” De Villepin closed by saying that France would not accept “automaticity.”