The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (69 page)

On many levels, OFF worked: it saved many lives, it supported the disarmament process, and it prevented rearmament by keeping the lion’s share of Iraq’s oil wealth and imports – which could be used to produce WMD – out of the hands of Saddam Hussein. Iraqi military and weapon programmes steadily eroded under the weight of sanctions, contrary to the claims of some in 2002 and 2003.
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Yet OFF also demonstrated that the Council had much to learn about legal-regulatory approaches to security challenges, not least as humanitarian costs continued to accrue within Iraq.

Throughout the 1990s, the US and UK – and until the mid-1990s, France – engaged in military action to contain Iraq, ostensibly ‘enforcing’ existing Council resolutions. However, there was no explicit Council authorization for such actions. This unilateral enforcement, at first accepted by other Council members, induced escalating resentment. After France ceased to participate in these actions in 1998, unilateral military action became a flashpoint, ultimately sundering the unity of
the Council’s purpose on Iraq, as China, Russia, and France became increasingly vocal in their criticism of such action.
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When Operation Provide Comfort ended, unilateral enforcement continued through two NFZs, nominally to enforce the protection of the Kurds and the Shi’a in Iraq’s south. Although neither NFZ was specifically provided for by Council resolutions, no Council members protested. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali even argued in a letter to US Congressional leaders that the US military actions were justified by a ‘mandate’ from the Council to enforce the ceasefire agreements.
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US military actions became increasingly decoupled from the stated objectives of the Council. In mid-1993, US intelligence discovered an alleged plan by the Iraqis to assassinate former President Bush, during a visit to Kuwait. Claiming self-defence, on 26 June 1993 the US fired twenty-four cruise missiles at intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.
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In early October 1994, a US expeditionary army of some 54,000 troops assembled in the Persian Gulf as Iraqi troops appeared poised to attack Kuwait – but without any clear direction from the Council. After much debate, the Security Council hammered out a unanimously adopted compromise in Resolution 949, issuing specific demilitarization demands to Iraq.
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As would occur with Resolution 1441 in 2002, the US and UK interpreted Resolution 949 as giving them authorization to use force in the event of Iraqi non-compliance; the French and Russians suggested a further resolution would be needed.
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Iraq pulled back its army, rendering the debate moot.

The important lesson of 1994, largely overlooked at the time, was the French defection from the ‘Western’ consensus, partly obscured by continuing French enforcement of the NFZs, soon to end. In 1996, after the election of the Gaullist Jacques Chirac, an independent French stance became more pronounced, first in its refusal to join the US and UK in extending the southern NFZ in response to Hussein’s continued noncompliance with earlier resolutions, and culminating in its condemnation of the intensive US and UK bombing of Iraq in December 1998, Operation Desert Fox, and withdrawal from enforcing the NFZs. Undeterred, the US and UK instigated a policy of ‘aggressive enforcement’. The growing rift within the Council on how to conduct this ‘war by other means’, was increasingly clear; but its outcome was as yet unknown.

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq had long been a source of international concern.
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In June 1981, Israel had destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osiraq – meeting with condemnation in the Security Council.
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But by 1991, the Council had determined that Iraq’s possession of WMD threatened international peace and security. Disarmament thus became a centrepiece of Resolution 687, with the Council establishing ‘the most intrusive system of arms control in history’, as US Vice President Richard Cheney later described it.
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The Council delegated the tasks of disassembling Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities to a specially created sub-organ, the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) playing a similar role for nuclear weapons. Although the Executive Director of UNSCOM was appointed by the Secretary-General, formally UNSCOM reported only to the Security Council – a design flaw highlighted when UNSCOM Executive Director Richard Butler clashed with Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998.
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From the outset, UNSCOM was hampered by a pattern of Iraqi obstructionism. Concerned by the flagrancy of Iraq’s defiance, the Council issued Resolution 715, which approved a more intrusive Ongoing Monitoring and Verification (OMV) regime to be implemented by UNSCOM – though this was not accepted by Iraq until 1993.
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Iraqi defections in 1994–5, including that of a former head of Iraqi military intelligence, a senior Iraqi nuclear scientist and General Hussein Kamel Hassan, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, helped UNSCOM, revealing details of Iraqi concealment strategies and advanced biological weapons programmes.
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The pattern of feints and taunts continued through 1996, with inspectors eventually barred from several ‘sensitive’ sites, files destroyed, and increased interference with UNSCOM helicopter flights.
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To defuse the tension, Rolf Ekéus, the accomplished Swedish Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, agreed to ‘modalities’ – perhaps more accurately described as conditions – of access to sites in which ‘the President of Iraq was present’.
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Iraqi obstructionism nevertheless grew. By November 1997, the Security Council was warning of ‘serious consequences’ (code for possible use of force).
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Encouraged by rifts within the Council, Baghdad staged further provocations, soon expelling all
US personnel in UNSCOM. A serious US military build-up in the Gulf followed, with token support from only a few of its allies. The broad coalition built by Bush and Baker in 1990 had withered away.
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After a ‘self-inflicted … public relations disaster’
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at home resulting from a misconceived attempt by Clinton administration officials to sell war in Iraq to a sceptical public at a ‘town hall’ meeting at Ohio State University, Washington’s interest in a negotiated outcome increased markedly. Kofi Annan then stepped in.
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On 22 February, he secured Iraqi agreement for ‘unlimited access’ by UN inspectors to the presidential sites.
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But Annan’s success was undermined by an ill-advised characterization of Hussein: ‘I think I can do business with him.’
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Annan’s private characterization to the Council of some UNSCOM inspectors as ‘cowboys’ did not help either.
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Further crises followed. A 15 December report of Iraqi non-compliance by Richard Butler – who had succeeded Ekéus within UNSCOM – was the final straw for an increasingly frustrated US and UK. In retaliation, they launched Operation Desert Fox without seeking Council authorization, relying instead for legal justification on Iraqi non-compliance with earlier Council resolutions. US and UK forces conducted roughly 650 air strikes against approximately 100 Iraqi targets.
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The strikes did little to change Saddam Hussein’s behaviour. As Anthony Cordesman noted, the Iraqi President had again shown the world that he could survive US attack.
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Perhaps even more important, it was now clear that the US and UK would not in all circumstances wait for Council authorization before launching military action, as events in Kosovo a year later would confirm.

In the wake of Operation Desert Fox, and weighed down by allegations of heavy CIA and other US intelligence infiltration, UNSCOM imploded.
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A panel established by the Security Council to reconsider weapons inspection concluded that ‘the bulk of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated’, but nevertheless endorsed the continuation of inspections to guard against rearmament – a clear demonstration of the Council’s legal-regulatory approach to Iraq, focused on prevention rather than response.
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While the US seemed content to do without inspections,
as long as sanctions remained in place, for other P5 members, the exact reverse arrangement was preferable.
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A consensus was not reached until December 1999, when Resolution 1284 established the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) – although even then, China, France, Russia, and Malaysia abstained.
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In spite of measures to safeguard its independence, by 2001, UNMOVIC had still not been permitted into Iraq.
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For over a decade, Saddam Hussein had outmanoeuvred the Council and its agents, successfully obscuring not his rearmament, but the degree to which disarmament had actually been achieved, and sowing confusion about his future intentions. The uncertainty created by Iraqi obstruction was assessed very differently by Paris and Washington. These differences might have remained tolerable for all concerned had 9/11 not intervened. The post-9/11 testosterone rush in Washington made company (with the exception of UK) less of an issue and induced myopia in evaluating possible consequences of military action (particularly without the Arab support that had existed in 1990–1).

Abandonment of the ‘war by other means’ in favour of full military intervention seemed implausible in early 2001, not least given the antipathy of the incoming Bush administration towards ‘nation-building’, some of which would inevitably follow any invasion of Iraq.
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But the events of 11 September 2001 transformed the strategic outlook of decision-makers in many capitals. Hussein’s presumed pursuit of WMD no longer represented a nuisance: it was now perceived as a potentially serious threat, on the assumption he might pass on those weapons to terrorists. Within days of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld were urging military action against Iraq once al-Qaeda and the Taliban had been disposed of.
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The Administration soon identified ‘evidence’ suggesting links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, with Iraq now becoming the ‘central front in the war on terrorism’.
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In
November-December 2001, Rumsfeld instructed the Pentagon to develop war plans for Iraq.
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In his 29 January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush signalled a paradigm shift in US strategic thinking, describing a need to ‘prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction’, and naming Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world’.
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In September 2002, this approach was more fully articulated in a new US
National Security Strategy
favouring pre-emptive military action.
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In early October, in a strong speech at the UN General Assembly calling for a collective approach against Saddam Hussein, Bush stated:

The uncomfortable implication for the Council was clear: either it must back the US demand for forceful disarmament of Iraq – and by implication regime change – or it would be sidelined. For the UN, the options were stark: kowtow to the hegemon, or face irrelevance.

But within the Council, there was little sense that Iraq posed a serious threat and consequently little support for an early resort to force. European Commission President Romano Prodi warned that ‘unilateral US military action could destroy the keystone of US diplomacy, the global antiterrorist alliance.’
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His Commissioner for external relations, Chris Patten, criticized the notion of the ‘axis of evil’ as ‘absolutist and simplistic’, and warned of pending ‘unilateralist overdrive’.
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German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder ruled out German participation in an invasion of Iraq, whether or not there was a UN mandate,
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while French President Chirac expressed ‘great reservations’.
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The UK remained true to Washington. On 3 April 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that London knew Iraq to possess stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
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But the US and UK differed significantly over what role the
UN should play in the decision to go to war: as the record of a high-level meeting in London in July 2002 made clear, while the US was fixed on war with Iraq whether or not the Security Council approved it, the UK saw the Council as more import-ant.
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An agreed basis for Council authorization was crucial: US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz later admitted that WMD were ‘settled on’ as ‘the one reason that everyone could agree’ in seeking Security Council authorization for the use of force against Iraq.
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But by choosing WMD as the trigger for recourse to force, the US and UK confronted demands from the other Permanent Members to give weapons inspections more time to prove their success. Some in the Administration appear to have feared ‘the UN route’ not because it might fail but because it might succeed and thereby prevent a war that they were convinced had to be fought.
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Bush appears ultimately to have been persuaded by Secretary of State Colin Powell and by Blair that an effort needed to be made to bring the UN on board.
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