iraq: war or not?

How will the change of regime in Iraq impact on the rest of the Middle East? An experienced Jordanian adviser and scholar takes a cool, country-by-country tour of the region.

Divisions over Iraq on the UN Security Council reflect a wider crisis of the world institution. It is time to reaffirm the UN’s core purpose – by suspending Iraq’s membership.

The immediate US purpose is to destroy the Saddam regime. This, no less than the weapons used to fight it, guarantees that the Iraq war will have a heavy human cost in the short term. Behind the war, the search for military and oil security is impelling a broader US agenda for regional control. This ensures further violence in the long term. A different strategy is urgently needed.

From the world's most popular novelist, Paulo Coelho, an open letter of praise for President Bush.

A devastating new weapon will be part of the US’s massive assault on Iraq. Paul Rogers, openDemocracy’s international security correspondent, explains what it is, how it developed, and why its use is likely to destroy civilian lives in their thousands.

The slogan ‘No to war: No to Saddam!’ leaves the world polarised and incapable of concerted action. What would it take to reconfigure this crippling divide so that a clear choice helps the world move forward? Could the European Union’s foreign policy coordinator, Javier Solana, lead the way?

When Nato bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, professional responsibility and a need for inner freedom prevented Dejan Djokic from protesting the assault on his homeland. Four years on, the creative dialogue between head and heart has a different result. 

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is treading a fine line in his relations with the United States and the European Union. Will he side with France or the US at the Security Council? Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, quizzes Moscow’s political elite.

The London march against war of 15 February was impressive but confused, and desperately naïve. It filled the roads with good intentions and we all know where they lead.

The processes of international action towards Iraq have sundered the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and now Nato. French and German decisions especially have highlighted a crisis in the transatlantic relationship whose source is Europe’s mixture of arrogance and weakness. It is time for US policy-makers to grasp an awkward truth: Europe should neither fail nor be too successful.

With brains, principles and guts the fictional US President Jed Bartlet from the TV series “The West Wing” has all the qualities to deal with a major international crisis. While in the real world the UN is split, Nato falters and worldwide peace marches put political pressure on Bush and Blair (whose staff, apparently, are “West Wing” addicts) how would Bartlett deal with Saddam? Paul Hirst speculates.

France’s reluctance to support the US’s military approach towards Iraq has drawn bitter criticism from the US and some of its EU partners. But in defending diplomacy rather than advocating a military solution, France is the truer defender both of the European project and, in the long run, of the transatlantic relationship.

Our columnist Dave Belden travelled from the Catskill Mountains to New York City on 15 February, companions and children alongside, for the huge peace rally. They never made the rally; the march was that big. The atmosphere was friendly, the homemade signs witty (and one-sided), the feet frozen, the hearts warm. And the numbers? Just don’t ask CNN.

Several hundred thousand people gathered in a freezing New York City on 15 February 2003 to demonstrate against war on Iraq. Julian Bond of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People gave this speech.

The huge campaign against war in Iraq offers no comfort to this young Iraqi woman. She has no illusions about US power. But in the face of a people longing for liberation from Saddam’s terrible rule, how can the peace movement turn its back?

Can the peace movement oppose war on Iraq without appearing to support Saddam? It can – and it must, says openDemocracy’s editor. If the United States’ supremacist agenda promises war without limit, the world’s citizens need to combat it with a political strategy that joins cool judgement to impassioned humanity.

A US activist in the campaign against war on Iraq explains the reasoning behind a direct address to Europe’s people from the American heartland.

Who will be the vultures, and who the carrion, in a post-Saddam Iraq? The Iraqi opposition plans for transition. The country’s neighbours – especially Turkey, Iran and Syria – covet influence and power after ‘regime change’. America is torn between impulses of order and freedom. The decisive role belongs to Iraq’s people. Will they unite, or fragment?

Can you be against war on Iraq without giving succour to Saddam? This is a new version of an old dilemma, says one of the leading voices of the 1980s Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly and European Nuclear Disarmament. Activists who opposed the nuclear arms race while supporting democratisation of the Soviet bloc helped carve a space where freedom could grow. Could the same happen in Iraq?

The Bush regime has failed to grasp that it is the European people, not their leaders, who reject this war.