[A-List] Britain/US split: security policy

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

This marks the death of deterrence

Bush's new doctrine kills the principle of state sovereignty

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday October 9, 2002
The Guardian

Whatever the outcome of the intense diplomatic manoeuvres at the UN,
whatever cover the UN might give to an American attack on Iraq, they cannot
hide a fundamental truth. It has profound implications for future relations
between states. Henry Kissinger, archpriest of realpolitik, has called it
"revolutionary". Tony Blair appears to have embraced it, though we cannot be
sure.

A new doctrine of war has been laid down by the Bush administration that
casts aside all the traditional tenets of international law as well as the
UN and Nato charters. It abandons the concept of deterrence, considered the
bedrock of stability throughout the cold war and cited by successive British
governments as justification for their nuclear arsenal.

Ever since September 11 last year, it has been reflected in speeches,
notably by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, his deputy, Paul
Wolfowitz, and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It was
spelt out most clearly by Bush himself in June. The US, he said, would no
longer rely on "deterrence" and "containment"; it had to be "ready for
pre-emptive action".

He added: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond
challenge, thereby making the destabilising arms races of other eras
pointless." This new doctrine was enshrined in the Bush administration's
National Security Strategy document published last month.

As Jonathan Schell put it in a recent issue of the American magazine the
Nation: "In short, the United States will establish, preserve and make free
use of an absolute military supremacy over every other nation on earth."

The new doctrine includes the right of the US to use its unsurpassed, indeed
unsurpassable, military power to overthrow governments by force if, in
Washington's view, they attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction -
Vice-President Dick Cheney has suggested this includes no fewer than 60
states - or harbour terrorists.

At least Kissinger, a historian by profession, appreciated the significance
of the new doctrine. Regime change as an aim of military intervention is a
direct challenge to the international system established by the 1648 Treaty
of Westphalia, he recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times. That treaty
established the principle of "state sovereignty": that war is justified only
by aggression across a national border. Though he argued that Saddam Hussein
presented such a danger as to make pre-emptive action "an imperative", he
warned: "It is not in the American national interest to establish
pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation."

Bush and his advisers have made no such qualification in their quest for a
new, aggressive Pax Americana, something they had wanted from the start but
for which they were confident of attracting sufficient US domestic support
only after the September 11 attacks.

Bush, who, judging by American opinion polls, desperately needs Britain to
join any military action against Iraq, was persuaded by Blair, among others,
to follow the UN route, if only for presentational purposes. This approach
had the added advantage of pulling the rug from under the Democrats in
Congress and Labour backbenchers in the Commons.

"Any action that we in the United Kingdom take will be strictly in
accordance with our obligations in international law and under the United
Nations charter," Jack Straw insisted last week. "Under the charter," he
explained, "individual countries can act against others without a security
council resolution, for example in the case of self-defence."

His choice of language was deeply misleading. In inter national law, as in
the UN and Nato charters, nations can attack others only in "self-defence".
As Kissinger suggests, this has always meant defence against an actual
attack by another state, though more recently international lawyers have
said it could also cover an imminent attack. As the government's law
officers have advised, it certainly does not allow for war for regime
change.

Bush, who says his aim is to topple Saddam, has been persuaded by Blair
among others to use the UN as a figleaf. It is now incumbent on Blair to say
whether, as he colludes with Bush, he accepts the new American doctrine of
military intervention. Blair must also explain why he believes Saddam cannot
be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction (as he was during the
1991 Gulf war).

The prime minister, as well as his foreign and defence secretaries, must say
what they really mean. Do they really believe the concept of deterrence, and
the established principles of international law, can be abandoned - with the
huge risks that implies - and are they prepared to argue their case with the
British public?

Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor