Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague for nine years, ultimately as senior editor,
inspired by the feeling that I was participating in a historically unique
disarmament and non-proliferation venture. The essence of the OPCW resides in
its verification regime, which gives the OPCW Secretariat far-reaching powers
to verify whether each and every member state is complying with its undertaking
to abolish all existing stockpiles of chemical weapons and not to develop new
ones. (All previous international disarmament treaties and agreements had
foundered on the fact that member states declared their opposition to weapons
of mass destruction, and then proceeded to secretly develop them anyway.)
In this context the Chemical Weapons
Convention assigns central importance to the political independence of the OPCW
Secretariat and all of its staff members, including the Director-General. The
role of the Director-General could be compared to that of an auditor-general,
who is appointed by the state to independently and critically monitor the
propriety of its financial dealings. But whereas the political independence of
auditors-general is guaranteed by legislation, which makes it virtually
impossible to dismiss them, the wide-eyed idealists who drafted the text of the
Chemical Weapons Convention made no specific provision for such a contingency –
a fatal omission, as it turned out. It should also be noted that, since the
inception of the OPCW, its member states agreed to take all decisions by
consensus, in order to defend the universal and multilateral character of this
unique treaty.
The politics of empire
Almost three years ago, all OPCW member
states, including the United States, decided by consensus to reappoint José
Bustani of Brazil as Director-General, for a second term of office. He could
not have been reappointed if even a single member state had declined to join
consensus. In February 2002, without prior notice, and out of the blue, the US
Secretary of State secretly called the then Foreign Minister of Brazil and
demanded that he withdraw Bustani, a senior Brazilian diplomat. Even Bustani
did not know of this until after it had happened. This was in flagrant
violation of provisions of the Convention, which guarantee the freedom of the Director-General and of all staff members from political
interference by individual member states.
When Brazil refused to play ball, the US
delivered at least two unilateral ultimatums for Bustani to resign, even before
its position had been deliberated on by OPCW decision-making bodies. The US
lent weight to its ultimatums by stating that it would not pay its financial
contribution for the 2002 financial year, and by hinting that Germany and Japan
would also follow suit. The US indicated that, if Bustani did not go, it was
prepared to bring the organisation down. This financial blackmail contravened
the spirit and the letter of the Chemical Weapons Convention. As it was
immediately apparent that member states would never approve the US initiative
by consensus, the US invoked provisions that legalised decisions by less than
an absolute majority of member states, and embarked on a campaign of arm
twisting and intimidation, making full use of its considerable economic power
in the process.
Many states felt unable to withstand
such threats, and bowed to the wishes of the US. Many other states, fearing the
consequences of opposing the US, but also not willing to support its
initiative, elected to abstain. After a procedure lasting less than six weeks,
which did not fulfil even the minimum requirements of due process or natural
justice, a hastily convened kangaroo court of member states decided to
terminate Bustani’s contract. Political lynch justice prevailed, with truth and
fairness the first, but not the only casualties. For the first time in its
history, the OPCW’s Conference of the States Parties had adopted a critically
important decision, not by consensus, but through the votes of considerably less
than half of its total membership. Two permanent members of the UN Security
Council, China and Russia, were amongst the seven who were courageous enough to
vote against the US initiative. With this decision, the OPCW condemned itself
to a slow and lingering death, and destroyed its credibility as a politically
independent multilateral organisation.
On the eve of Bustani’s termination I
resigned, although I was still able to draft the report of the meeting which
decided to terminate his appointment. For me at least, a dream of
non-proliferation and disarmament had died a sudden and unnatural death. I no
longer wanted to be associated with a multilateral organisation which was
manipulated and held to ransom by one powerful member state.
It quickly became apparent that the US
intervened to eliminate Bustani because he wanted the OPCW to play an
independent role in UN inspections in the war against Iraq, which Washington
was already advocating. Because Bustani was perceived internationally as
someone who tried to mediate between the developed and developing worlds,
rather than as an advocate for the developed world, it was then considered
possible that states such as Libya and Iraq might become member states of the
OPCW.
Although Iraq’s membership would have
been very good news for the Chemical Weapons Convention, this was the last
thing which Washington wanted, as it would have weakened US arguments in
support of a military intervention in Iraq. Moreover, if Libya and Iraq had
both joined, there could have been a follow-on effect throughout the Middle
Eastern region, with key players such as Syria, Egypt, and Israel perhaps being
tempted to come to the party. None of this will ever happen now, with the OPCW
being internationally perceived as controlled by Washington. And without the
prospect of full universality the Chemical Weapons Convention is just another
scrap of paper.
The political crucible of the OPCW
stimulated me to reflect at length on issues relating to weapons of mass
destruction and Iraq. This article is the first, but not the only, fruit of
these reflections.
Iraq and the Darwinisation of international
relations
One principal source of misunderstanding
of the Iraqi question today is the general lack of awareness of the history of
US foreign policy in the Middle East region, and of the considerations that
drive that policy. If we are to see beyond the trees to the woods, we must view
fragmentary information about the present within its historical context.
After the Second World War the American
eagle – in the context of the escalating cold war – finally replaced the
British bulldog as the politically, technologically, and economically dominant
superpower. US policy towards the Middle East sought to ensure that the Middle
East, with its strategically important position on both the south-western flank
of the Soviet Union and the shores of the Mediterranean, remained firmly within
the sphere of influence of the ‘free world’ in general, and the United States
in particular. In addition, of course, a large proportion of the world’s oil
was produced within the region.
In 1953 the United States was so alarmed
by the preparedness of Mohammad Mossadeq, the newly elected Prime Minister of
Persia, to nationalise the US-controlled oil industry, that they intervened to
topple him and to install the Shah of Persia in his place. This ushered in a
lengthy phase of political repression and destabilisation, which ultimately led
to the violent overthrow of the Shah, and the election of a radical Islamic
government. Although the truly popular power base of this government has now
largely evaporated, it was the first major political manifestation of a radical
or fundamentalist Muslim view of the world, which sought to protect the
integrity of an Islamic state from the seemingly all-powerful encroachment of
western and US influence. The
government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as it is now called, together with
those of Iraq and North Korea, in 2002 shared the dubious distinction of
inclusion in President George Bush’s ‘axis of evil’.
The United States also threw its weight
behind the newly established state of Israel – its political sheet anchor
amidst the shifting political sands of the Middle Eastern region. We should
therefore not be surprised that
Israel has received very substantial amounts of direct and indirect annual US
assistance (one estimate is that, for the 1997 financial year alone, Israel
received as much as US$10 billion in aid from grants, loans, interest payments,
and tax deductions). The political destabilisation of the Middle East and the
threat that Saudi Arabia will cease to be reliable have made the US even more
dependent on Israel. If the US succeeds in assuming control over the territory
of Iraq, this will reduce its dependence on Israel, while also driving a wedge
between the front-line Arab states, thus greatly strengthening its position in
the region.
For its part, Israel has continued to
provide the US administration with high‑quality intelligence about a
range of issues of strategic importance, and has played an important role as a
provider of high technology, especially with a military/intelligence
application. Referring to a possible future war with Iraq, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv
recently reported that Tel Aviv had authorised Washington to store ‘enormous
quantities’ of weapons in Israel.
Following the Bush administration’s
recent offer of US$2.2 billion in
designated assistance for 2002, Israel requested an additional grant of up to
US$10 billion, justifying this in terms of the current extraordinary situation
in Israel and the occupied territories. Those who say on the right or left that
US continues to support Israel
because of the power of the ‘Jewish lobby’ have overlooked the fact that Israel
is a key factor in the international strategic and economic design of the
United States. Although Israel has never publicly admitted to the possession of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it is an open secret that it possesses an
advanced capability to use and to ‘deliver’ nuclear weapons, and possibly other
types of WMD as well. In common with most other states in the region, Israel
has declined to join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Biological
Weapons Convention, or the Chemical Weapons Convention.
As Israel and the US have collaborated
closely on military and security matters for decades, the US must have been
familiar with Israel’s development of WMD, and could certainly have restrained
or stopped this. Indeed, it is possible that the US even provided Israel with
advice and assistance to develop its WMD, simultaneously demonising any Arab
neighbours suspected of doing the same. The United States are also overlooking
the fact that at least some regional Arab states other than Iraq have certainly
developed at least some WMD, in particular biological and chemical weapons.
Current US policy in the Middle East is based on the key assumption that the
United States and Israel must have a regional monopoly on the possession and
use of WMD in general, and of nuclear weapons in particular, in order to
guarantee continuing US domination of the region and its strategically vital
oil reserves.
History’s dust, a century’s lessons
It is useful to recall that, at the time
of the ill-fated Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the ‘free world’ identified
the fundamentalist Muslim opposition to that invasion as the most promising
source of resistance to the Soviet invaders. Using Pakistan as a conduit, the
US provided massive amounts of financial and military aid to fundamentalist
rebels inspired by the Muslim revolution in Iran, including advanced high‑tech
weaponry such as ‘Stinger’ missiles. As we learned shortly after 11 September
2001, a British military adviser had personally trained Bin Laden and others in
the arts of modern guerrilla warfare, including dirty tricks, torture and
terror.
Not for the first time in US foreign
policy, as soon as the immediate objective of enforcing a Soviet withdrawal
from Afghanistan had been achieved, the United States lost all interest in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The militant Muslim groupings, which, with
active US backing, had played a key role in forcing the Soviet withdrawal, were
left to vie for supremacy amongst themselves and with the local warlords.
The struggle to liberate Afghanistan
from Soviet control had attracted from all over the world a wave of
ideologically-driven, alienated, and frequently highly-educated Muslims, many
of whom dispersed into the Muslim diaspora after contributing to the
humiliating Soviet exodus. Bin Laden was one of many such individuals. There is
no doubt that the far-flung al-Qaida network was of central importance until 11
September 2001, after which bin Laden and that network went underground.
However, the devastating symbolism of 11 September had in the meantime
stimulated the worldwide development of
numerous small militant and conspiratorial Muslim cells and groups, most of
which now operate with only the most tenuous links to each other and al-Qaida,
principally in order to escape surveillance and detection.
With characteristic Manichean fervour,
the United States has nevertheless persisted in attributing all subsequent acts
of international terrorism to al-Qaida alone, casting itself as Saint George
slaying the dragon, rather than as Hercules severing the many heads of the
hydra. If the United States incorrectly identifies the problem it is seeking to
resolve, the problem will persist, while increasingly ineffectual attempts at
problem solving will alienate more and more people from US policy.
When bin Laden changed the face of contemporary
warfare by launching well-planned attacks on symbolic civilian targets, he
wrote a new chapter in modern military history. From the beginning of the 20th
century onwards, perhaps the most significant change in conventional warfare
had been the growing preparedness of both military and civilian leaders to kill
and injure civilians on a large scale in the pursuit of political and military
objectives. Nanjing, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are but four examples of
this. Bin Laden took this one step further by showing that the strategic and
effective use of violence against symbolic civilian targets makes it possible
for small, well-organised and ruthless terror groups to destabilise the most
seemingly all‑powerful of governments, and even the stability of the
world order.
If the United States had then attacked
Iraq in the face of the declared wish of the international community, this
might have marked the beginning of the end of the age of multilateralism
ushered in by the creation of the United Nations (UN), and perhaps the terminal
decline of the UN itself. The United States would have thumbed its nose at the
established institutions and conventions of multilateral diplomacy, and the
world would have been flung into a new dark unipolar age characterised by the
achievement of political objectives through the naked assertion of power,
force, and economic influence.
In an attempt to avert such
marginalisation of the UN, the Security Council, in adopting resolution 1441,
saw no option other than to sanction a military intervention lacking any
universally convincing rationale. If the Security Council had declined to adopt
such a resolution, amongst other things because it was not then supported by a
convincing body of evidence, the United States would simply have launched a
unilateral attack on Iraq, and the UN, like the League of Nations before it,
might have ended up in the trash can of history.
Strategies of fear
The doctrine of the inviolability of
national sovereignty, which has been a legal and diplomatic cornerstone of the
UN since the Second World War, is now in tatters, as is the integrity and
independence of its multilateral decision-making capability. The UN resolutions
in support of successive pre-emptive interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have
struck at the heart of the hitherto inviolable doctrine of national
sovereignty. What in the bipolar age of the cold war was conceived of as a
multilateral decision-making body has now, in the unipolar age of Pax
Americana, become a somewhat unwilling vehicle for the unilateral political and
military aspirations of the world’s only superpower, and has accordingly
compromised itself, possibly irreparably. If the UN Security Council resolves
to attack Iraq, it will be seen by many to have become an instrument of US
foreign policy. If it does not support the US initiative, it will be
politically and financially marginalised by the world’s only remaining
superpower.
Although the United States now claims
that Iraq should be attacked because it possesses WMD, one must bear in mind the following: the US
government has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on
the grounds that it must safeguard its pole position in the global nuclear race
by reserving the right to further develop its nuclear capability. Furthermore,
early in 2002 John Bolton, the US Undersecretary for State, quietly announced
that the US had unilaterally withdrawn from an agreement extending back to the
cold war period which had been of central importance for convincing non-possessors
of nuclear weapons to stay out of the nuclear arms race. Bolton indicated that
the US was no longer bound by its undertaking never to use nuclear weapons
against states which do not themselves possess nuclear weapons, and
specifically reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in a first strike
against any state.
In the current overheated and aggressive
international climate this move can only encourage any state entertaining fears
about the stability of its relationship with its key allies to consider the
option of acquiring a nuclear capability, or to develop other WMD. In this
situation any ‘rogue’ states with a known nuclear capability, coupled with the
capacity to deliver such weapons, can quickly improve both their international
standing and their balance of payments by sharing their secrets as extensively
as possible. And the possibility that some Muslim states could invite, for
example, Pakistan, to share in developing a truly nuclear family cannot be
altogether ruled out – all the more so in the light of known Pakistani links
with both North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
The Americans know, for example, that
Pakistan recently helped North Korea to develop a secret centrifuge system of
uranium enrichment in return for missile technology and equipment, in violation
of the agreement on this question between the United States and North Korea.
And it has just been revealed that Iran has decided to accelerate the
completion of its first nuclear reactor, and will simultaneously, with Russian
assistance, press ahead with the development of a second reactor of this kind.
The US government has strenuously objected to the construction of both
reactors, which will produce enriched uranium as a by-product. Furthermore,
Israel has just alleged that Iraqi scientists are assisting Libya to develop a
nuclear reactor. After Iraq, not merely Saudi Arabia, but also Iran, Pakistan
and Libya will find themselves the focus of increasingly close American
attention, further inflaming hostility between Muslim states and the US in
particular.
Notwithstanding the post 11 September
anthrax scare, the Bush administration has continued to deadlock the
negotiation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). These
negotiations will never achieve a result without the support of the United
States, the major producer of substances falling within the jurisdiction of
that treaty. And the recent US takeover of the multilateral organisation
charged with abolishing all chemical weapons has rendered it incapable of
independently and professionally monitoring the verification provisions of the
Chemical Weapons Convention. In the meantime there have been well-documented
allegations that the US government has been secretly developing its own
biological and chemical weapons capability, especially incapacitating nerve
agents and genetically modified anthrax.
A dangerous moment
Political, economic and cultural
Darwinism has been reborn and legitimised, with an increasing number of states
and political groupings encouraged to break out of the straitjacket of
multilateral consultation, in favour of the direct and unilateral use of the
threat of force, or the actual use of force, in order to achieve political
objectives. We have seen various examples of this unsettling trend throughout
the international community since 11 September, initially in Israel and the
occupied territories and in Chechnya, and even more recently in a remarkable
statement by the Prime Minister of Australia, faithfully modelled on statements
by the President of the United States and subsequently endorsed by the US
Secretary of State, that Australia now reserves the right to intervene
militarily in neighbouring and other states in defence of the national
interest.
In the present bellicose security
environment, more and more governments will feel tempted to secretly acquire
WMD of their own, in order to give themselves at least some leverage in the
event of an armed attack by a more powerful state (no small state can ever
aspire to match the overwhelming conventional superiority of the major league
players). And increasing numbers of ideologically-driven militants who see
themselves as representing the poor and the downtrodden will feel spurred on by
the example of how a previously obscure grouping can dominate the world stage
through a single well‑planned act of symbolic terrorism, and will follow
in the footsteps of al-Qaida with further assaults on the soft underbelly of
the most developed nations.
The world we have known is beginning to
spin out of control. An unholy dynamic is now leading into a spiral of threatened and actual violence and counter-violence,
terror and counter terror, with the capacity to suddenly and unexpectedly touch
on the lives of each and every one of us. If the US strikes against Iraq, the
international community could be shaken to its very foundations by a series of
unpredictable and explosive chain reactions. Do we, individually and
collectively, have the knowledge, the commitment, the power, and the will to
call a halt to this process?
