January 15, 2003
Warmongering Without Representation
Unilateralism is Not the American Way
Sept. 11, 2001 focused the attention of the world on the threat of global terrorism, and the international community responded collectively to the threat it posed.
But the tools for collective international action are being undermined by a small, radical and vociferous minority in the United States. It is difficult to see what sort of mandate this cult of radical unilateralists has, though many of them hold influential but unelected positions within the Bush administration.
The animated congressional debate over the Middle East shows that there is strong American support for multilateral, nonprecipitous approaches to Iraq and collective action against terrorism. Yet in matters relating to international peace and security, the unilateralists subject us daily to dogmatic assertions, sneering references to international institutions, the rejection of painstakingly negotiated treaties and repeatedly strident assertions that these zealots know what’s best for all of us.
The blueprint for this radical version of unilateralism predates Sept. 11 and can be traced to documents written before the 2000 presidential election. Several high-level administration officials participated in the Project for a New American Century and its September 2002 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” The plan calls for enormous increases in military spending; new American bases in Central Asia and the Middle East; the overthrow of unfriendly regimes; the abrogation of treaties; the willingness to use nuclear weapons; and the control of global energy resources.
The small unilateralist clan continually seeks to discredit voices of both Republicans and Democrats in the executive branch and in Congress who believe quiet, patient diplomacy leading to effective collective action is the best way to solve threats to international security.
Such an unbalanced approach will inevitably lead to serious failures. Consider the Bush administration’s efforts to muster support for an early, pre- emptive war against Iraq to achieve “regime change,” with or without the United Nations. Domestic public opinion, coupled with forceful opposition from the international community, forced the Bush administration to come to the United Nations and follow the legal, multilateral path.
Ever since negotiations on the language of a U.N. resolution on Iraq began, the Bush administration has been on a continual retreat from its initial extreme position. If the radical minority had listened to the voices of the American public and others in the first place, the administration would not find itself in this box.
Contrast the initial approach of the administration with the patient, measured way the international community, led by the first President Bush, mobilized and used existing institutions to resolve the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. You can’t effectively mobilize institutions and nations if you insult them and threaten to go it alone.
The United Nations, the international institutions and the system of alliances and treaty relationships formed in the aftermath of World War II were achieved in large part because of American leadership and engagement. While these institutions and alliances need to be modernized and revitalized, they still represent the best way of creating an international order that promotes peace and security.
New threats must be addressed collectively. If we fail to do so, we will have betrayed our values and principles and the terrorists will have won.
As John Quincy Adams observed, it is not the role of the United States to roam the world “in search of monsters to destroy.” It should be a source of pride that we Americans are not the stuff of which imperialists are made. No amount of pernicious globaloney from a cult of radical unilateralists is going to convince the American people otherwise.
Robert T. Grey Jr., a former ambassador from the Clinton and current Bush administrations, is director of the Washington-based Bipartisan Security Group, a program of the Global Security Institute. He was previously the U.S. representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from 1998 to 2001 and the leader of the State Department U.N. Reform Team during the Clinton administration.
Posted by zack_allen at 10:28 AM
January 10, 2003
The Iraq Dilemma
‘Robust Inspections’ Could Prevent War, Save Innocent Lives
War does not exist without the shedding of innocent blood. Under the best-case scenario, Iraq’s children – present victims of the Ba’ath Party mafiocracy with its Don, Saddam Hussein – will suffer most. Destruction of Baghdad’s electronic grid will collapse hospitals and water supply systems, and innocent civilians will certainly be the chief victims.
Widely accepted figures from the International Peace Research Institute say war disproportionately affects civilians over combatants 8 to 1. War is never predictable; its fallout, blowbacks, collateral damage and horrors often outstrip our imaginative capacities. Nothing stimulates terrorists as much as the environment of war.
However, there is another course in which justice and security can be advanced since the U.S. threat of force has opened a way. Let us seize it while the moment lasts.
According to a proposal floated in United Nations and policy circles, by moving from the current regime of 100 inspectors to a more intrusive regime of at least 500 to 1,000 permanent monitors with a mandate to prevent the threat of weapons of mass destruction, a dramatic improvement in security can be achieved promptly.
This “robust monitoring” proposal has enormous political and practical benefits. Since it is obviously due to the threat of overwhelming force that Iraq acceded to inspectors or monitors, the United States – hawks and doves alike – could support and legitimately claim credit for such a life-saving security enhancing initiative.
Webbing Iraq with hundreds of intrusive monitors would hold it accountable to international law, constrain its capacity to threaten others with weapons of mass destruction, enhance the security of the United States and the Middle East, and set a disarmament precedent useful in addressing other dangerous situations such as North Korea.
Promoting this course would honor and express one of our nation’s highest values – adherence to the rule of law. The Ba’ath Party’s illegalities will be effectively constrained. Thousands of lives, especially innocent civilian lives, will be spared.
Military presence in the region can continue without destabilizing the international legal framework. Iraq can be rendered threat-less and a precedent set for the international community to intrusively monitor potential and existing rogue regimes.
A permanent and intrusive monitoring regime is entirely consistent with existing U.N. resolutions. No further resolutions would be needed to go forward.
There will be strong support from members of the Security Council as there is little enthusiasm for a virtual unilateral strike based on a strong-armed coalition. Rather than widening fractures in the international coalition of the war against terrorism and aggravating uncertainty and disorder throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, robust monitoring will set a new standard of cooperation under law
The United States also should call for a new resolution allowing human rights monitors to guard against human rights violations in Iraq. Adding 200 human rights monitors to the presence of 500 to 1,000 weapons monitors would make it difficult for the Ba’ath Party to continue to carry out summary and arbitrary executions, torture, enforced or involuntary disappearances, suppression of freedom of expression, and arbitrary arrests and detention. Flouting these monitors also could provide a basis under international law for multilateral intervention.
This would constitute an enormous political victory for the United States, showing clear improvements in security, human rights, international cooperation and law, and disarmament without the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives thousands of American ground troops a military strike would likely entail.
With a strengthened web of eyes and ears building a relationship with the scientific community in Iraq, even if the mafiocracy continues with its nefarious aspirations, it will be almost impossible for the Ba’ath Party regime to act on its impulses. These methods of constraint will render the regime changed, and in a new environment, the natural dissent that human beings spawn when sufficiently safe will emerge, leading naturally to regime change itself.
Granoff is president of Global Security Institute (http://www.gsinstitute.org) and the co-chair on the American Bar Association Committee on Arms Control and National Security. He can be reached via e-mail at jgg786@aol.com.
Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Posted by zack_allen at 10:13 AM
January 09, 2003
Young Presidents’ Organization Hosts GSI Panel on Global (In)security
Photo: R. McNamara, K. Campbell, S. Spaulding, J. Granoff, R. Grey
On January 9, 2003, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara joined Jonathan Granoff and a high-level panel of GSI senior advisors for an animated discussion of nuclear security issues before a group of eighty top bay area executives at the St. Francis Yacht Club. The successful event was organized by the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Panelists included former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who recently joined the steering committee of GSI’s Middle Powers Initiative, as well as Ambassador Robert Grey and Suzanne Spaulding, who are members of the Washington-based Bipartisan Security Group, a program of the Global Security Institute.
After explaining to a mesmerized audience how close the world came to nuclear
annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Secretary McNamara in a convincing and energetic fashion called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. “They are militarily useless, immoral, and illegal,” McNamara stressed. “But as long as they exist, the risk of them being used one day is very real.”
Photo: “Young President” questioning panel
“Write to your representative on your corporate letterhead and ask them why the US continues to rely on nuclear weapons in its security policy,” said GSI President Granoff when asked about how the business community can contribute to the reduction of nuclear dangers. Prime Minister Campbell further suggested that business leaders actively support activist organizations such as GSI in their effort to convince the Administration and the US population that verifiable and irreversible nuclear disarmament, combined with robust international monitoring, represents the only way to make the world a safer place. “GSI has consistently been stressing,” Campbell pointed out, “that threatening the rest of the world with the use of US nukes or a more advanced US nuclear arsenal is likely to make things worse, not better.”
Photo: K. Polese
Kim Polese, Chair of Marimba, Inc., and the event organizer, wrote afterward that “the most successful outcome of the day was the realization among many in the audience about what we, the business community, can and must do to help promote international cooperation and further the cause of world peace. I feel certain that the full impact of Thursday’s discussion is yet to come, and will be significant.”
Posted by zack_allen at 05:07 PM