During the 12 months of phoney war, we heard several plausible answers: sympathy for Iraqi civilians who will die in the allied bombing; the “illegality” of war under the UN Charter; loathing of an arrogant, ignorant and bullying American President. All these explanations for the anti-war movement contain a measure of truth, but they miss the heart of the matter.
Iraqi civilians will inevitably be killed in the coming weeks; but these deaths will be far outnumbered by the tens of thousands butchered by Saddam in his reign of terror. This war may not have been approved by the UN; but neither were the invasions of Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet those “illegal” interventions enjoyed strong popular support. As for President Bush, while he is certainly disliked in most of the world (and with good reason), very few people, even in Arab countries, genuinely believe him to be worse than Saddam.
To get closer to the truth, we must focus not on the probable consequences of this war, which will almost certainly be benign for the Iraqi people, but on America’s motives. “The end justifies the means” has been the slogan of warmongers since the beginning of time, while pacifists always insist that no political objectives can justify loss of life. The oddity in this case is that the standard dichotomy between means and ends has been reversed.
Today, unusually, the war party emphasises means, rather than ends. To people like me, who support this war for pragmatic, humanitarian reasons, disarmament and regime change are just means — to justify a brief, one-sided conflict which will liberate 25 million people.
On the other hand, the anti-war movement must now look for deeper arguments beyond the simple desire to save lives or preserve world peace. Saddam is a genocidal butcher, whose removal will almost certainly save far more lives than it destroys. The argument that attacking Iraq will undermine the institutions required to maintain world peace is even weaker. International law would have been immeasurably strengthened by UN support for Washington, since this would have provided the UN system with the one essential characteristic of an effective government it has always lacked: access to unchallenged coercive power. It was this insight that motivated Tony Blair, a genuine UN idealist, all along.
Why, then, are human rights activists rejecting the chance to save millions from a bloody tyrant? And why are idealistic internationalists turning away from that opportunity to construct a genuine world government?
The peace movement is driven mainly by fury about America’s “real” objectives — the belief that Mr Bush is pursuing an agenda very different from the official purpose of this war. And even though I back this war for pragmatic, humanitarian and institutional reasons, I fully agree with peaceniks about the question of Mr Bush’s motives.
Mr Bush, and certainly the neo-conservative ideologues who surround him, do have a vast agenda which goes far beyond disarmament or even regime change in Iraq. It is the contradiction between Washington’s not-so-hidden agenda and its publicly stated objectives that explains the power of the anti-war movement — and accounts for the agonies of Tony Blair.
What, then, are America’s unstated objectives in this war? One is undoubtedly oil, but not in the simplistic sense of vulgar peaceniks. America is not going to “steal” Iraq’s oil or sell it to Exxon on the cheap. On the contrary, the US occupation will ensure that the Iraqi Treasury gets a much better price by repudiating the sweetheart contracts Saddam offered Russian and French oil companies in exchange for bribes and support. Whether or not these contracts are transferred to US companies, they will be let on openmarket terms, just like oil contracts in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Norway. But, even though America will be scrupulously fair in its commercial policy, the US invasion will be motivated partly by Iraq’s oil. What matters to the US is not whether it can get more oil into the hands of Exxon or BP, instead of Total. It is whether Iraqi oil output is boosted in the next few years from three to ten million barrels a day, about the same as Saudi Arabia.
If Iraq could match Saudi output (it is the only country in the world with enough oil reserves to do so) the economic and geopolitical benefits would be immense. Iraqi production in the hands of a stable pro-Western regime could neutralise the power of Opec and protect the world economy from the oil shocks that have triggered each of the past four recessions. Iraqi oil could also disarm the Arab “oil weapon” that has threatened Western interests since 1973. This is an admirable objective which I totally support, although Americans delude themselves if they think that they can break their dependence on Middle Eastern oil without curbing their excessive energy use.
A second unstated objective is simply to demonstrate military power. Even before September 11, key members of the Bush Administration were convinced that America should demonstrate its immense military might — and its ability to use it. This, they believed, would help to preserve global order by intimidating potential enemies such as China, Russia and North Korea. By putting America on a war footing, they also hoped to recreate some of the social order and respect for authority that prevailed in the 1950s — to exorcise the demons of the 1960s, the counter-culture, the defeat in Vietnam and the “moral pollution” of Bill Clinton, all of which they saw as symptoms of the same national malaise. September 11 played into their hands, creating the enemy and the McCarthy-style hysteria they were seeking.
But a big military victory was also essential for its demonstration effect. The neo-conservative view is that America’s enemies believed it to be weak and ineffectual, lacking the courage and patience to use its military power. Even the victory in the Gulf War was negated by the Clinton Administration’s ineffectual meddling with Somalia, Central America and North Korea. A decisive military victory in Iraq is seen as a crucial component in the war against terror because of its capacity to “shock and awe” America’s foes, wherever they are.
This shock-and-awe argument may well have some merit, but a third American objective in Iraq makes me almost literally sick. Some Americans still believe that they are entitled to some kind of national catharsis after September 11. What is worse, this irrational, selfindulgent rage is shared and encouraged by many right-wing politicians and commentators.
Christopher Caldwell, a senior editor on the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, explained America’s fury with France, without a trace of irony in yesterday’s Financial Times: “Americans assumed that the world was as panicked, infuriated and viscerally terrified by September 11 as they were. They were not. The Europeans are nowhere near to understanding the event’s impact on the American psyche. The French assumed that if they themselves did not feel terrified by the arrival of terrorism in New York, anyone who did was overreacting.”
When Europeans read comments like this, which closely reflect off-the-record comments by many US officials, their suspicion of American motives becomes easier to understand. And I haven’t even mentioned the final item on Washington’s not-so-secret agenda: to ensure that Mr Bush is re-elected in November 2004.
But luckily for the world, Americans are as capable as any other nation of seeing through their politicians’ motives. If history is any guide, the 2004 election will not be won in the battlefields of Iraq but on Main Street and Wall Street. And the damage done to the US economy by the Bush Administration will be hard to put right in 18 months.
As the war begins, I can therefore share an aspiration with the anti-war lobby. Let us hope that Saddam is gone by the end of next month — and George W. Bush by the end of next year.
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