If the United States leads an attack upon Iraq, especially one that does not have UN support, there will be demonstrations around the world. Already they are planned for the USA and the UK – the leading advocates of military intervention. In Britain, the first such call to protest takes place on the 28 September. There are two vital objectives.
The first goal is to increase the domestic political pressure on Tony Blair to a level where he is forced to disengage Britain from the planned war on Iraq. We have already had some success. Pressure exerted has so far forced the Prime
Minister to recall Parliament and to modify his language. On a larger scale, international and domestic pressures forced President Bush, in part at the urging of Mr Blair, to appear before the UN General Assembly and include the United Nations explicitly in the debate around Iraq, something he was loath to do.
The demonstration on 28 September cannot by itself force the Prime Minister to abandon his loyal position by President Bush’s side, but its size will be a significant factor in his planning.
The example of Vietnam
The second goal is to limit the use of force by the US if, indeed, conflict is not prevented altogether. The critical issue here is the possibility of nuclear escalation (see Paul Rogers in this issue of openDemocracy).
In 1985, former President Richard Nixon revealed that he had considered using nuclear weapons to end the war in Vietnam. Almost certainly, Nixon went beyond merely ‘considering’ the option: he actually decided to use them. In August 1969, the United States began a sequence of threats against North Vietnam, beginning with an ultimatum personally delivered by Henry Kissinger, which stated that if by 1 November 1969, there had been no ceasefire by the Vietnamese resistance, ‘we will be compelled – with great reluctance – to take measures of the greatest consequences.’ Two nuclear bombs would be dropped on North Vietnam.
To demonstrate the sincerity of his intentions, President Nixon ordered a full-scale nuclear alert, raising US nuclear forces to their highest level of alertness, DEF CON 1, for 29 days. On 13 October 1969, one of Nixon’s aides sent a Top Secret memorandum to Henry Kissinger warning that ‘The nation could be thrown into internal physical turmoil’, requiring the ‘brutal’ suppression of ‘dissension’.
That month, the US anti-war movement organised a massive wave of demonstrations and mobilisations culminating in the Vietnam Moratorium demonstration in Washington. President Nixon later wrote in his memoirs, ‘A quarter of a million people came to Washington for the October 15 Moratorium... On the night of October 15, I thought about the irony of this protest for peace. It had, I believe, destroyed whatever small possibility there may have existed for ending the war in 1969’.
A key factor in his decision not to drop an atomic bomb on North Vietnam was that ‘after all the protests and the Moratorium, American public opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war’. Mobilised public opinion averted the world’s second nuclear war. (The fuller background can be found in Milan Rai War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Launch Another War On Iraq).
The importance of 28 September
We know from repeated pronouncements by British Secretary of Defence Geoff Hoon that nuclear weapons are a live option in the projected war on Iraq (see the ARROW Anti-War briefing on the matter). We do not know whether or not the Government plans to use them. But if the demonstration is sufficiently large – and the Government perceives that there is a real threat of large-scale domestic turbulence if they participate in President Bush’s war – this will at least constrain the kinds of tactics, and possibly weapons, they may deploy should war go ahead.
We are already reading reports to the effect that the US may spare the civilian infrastructure targets they destroyed in the 1991 war. The demonstration on 28 September may save tens of thousands of lives, even if it only succeeds in confirming that restriction on war planning.
But the potential gains from the demonstration are greater than that. In itself, the demonstration can be a powerful signal to the Government. And if the demonstration is used as an educational opportunity and as a springboard for further action, it can ramp up the movement to another level of mobilisation.
II. The crucial issue of the moment – ripping up inspection procedures agreements
One crucial issue must be thoroughly exposed on 28 September. It has been clear for months that, in the words of a top US Senate foreign policy aide, ‘The White House’s biggest fear is that UN weapons inspectors will be allowed to go in.’ (May 2002) While inspectors are at work in Iraq, it will be very difficult for the US to strike. The even greater nightmare is that the inspectors will do their work, Iraq will cooperate, and nothing will be found. The pressure to lift sanctions will be huge, and a military strike will be virtually impossible. Now that ‘nightmare scenario’ is beginning to take effect, the central US goal is to derail the inspection process – preferably before it even starts. One key tool in doing that is to craft an offer that is designed to be refused. There are a number of precedents for this.
The first oil-for-food deal
For many years, the US and Britain blamed Iraq for the human suffering caused by sanctions because Iraq had refused an oil-for-food offer in 1991, and did not accept a UN-run oil-for-food programme until 1995. It was no surprise that Iraq refused. After the Gulf War, the UN Secretary-General sent an ‘Executive Delegate’, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, to report on humanitarian conditions in Iraq.
In July 1991, Prince Sadruddin recommended that Iraq should be allowed to sell $6.9bn over one year to restore the health services to full capacity; the electrical sector to 50 percent of its prewar capacity; the water and sanitation services to 40 per cent operation; to rehabilitate agriculture and some oil facilities, and to provide subsistence food rations to the entire population. The Security Council decided that the period for a one-off oil sale should be six months, which under the Executive Delegate’s formula would have required $3.8bn worth of oil sales (half the annual amount, plus start-up costs of $350m).
This proposal was rejected by the UN Security Council – by the United States, in effect – as too generous. Security Council Resolutions 706 and 712, the latter passed in September 1991 actually offered Iraq only $1.6bn in total oil sales over the six months. After deductions for war compensation and UN costs, and after taking out the start-up costs, the sum available for humanitarian aid had been reduced to roughly $706 million over six months – less than 20 per cent of the UN’s expert assessment of Iraq’s humanitarian needs.
There were other humiliating conditions attached to the offer (detailed in War Plan Iraq) but Iraq says it would have been prepared to swallow them, if the UN had offered the Sadruddin figure. As it was, Iraq refused the oil-for-food deal, and international opinion condemned Baghdad for the suffering in Iraq.
Designed to be refused: new aggressive inspection procedures
The US is hoping to replay this scenario with the new inspection process, by ripping up existing agreements on how UN weapons inspectors should inspect Presidential and other ‘sensitive’ sites, and by making the inspection process completely objectionable to Iraq. If Iraq can be provoked into withdrawing its cooperation from UNMOVIC (UN Monitoring and Verification Commission) the new inspection agency, the way will be clear for a US assault on Iraq.
We need to call as clearly as possible that the UN be persuaded to make no more offers designed to be refused. Of course, putting in weapons inspectors will delay the war. That is the point. We want to ensure that they do go in. That they have the time to do their job, and do it well.
