The Iraq War and afterwards

Abstract

How should the ‘problem of order’ associated with weapons of mass destruction be understood and addressed today? Have the problem and its solution been misconceived and misrepresented, as manifested by the problematic aftermath of Iraq War? Has 9/11 rendered redundant past international ordering strategies, or are these still discarded at our own peril? These are the questions explored in this Adelphi Paper.

It opens by focusing attention on the linked problems of enmity, power and legitimacy, which lie at the root of the contemporary problem of order. The Paper shows how the ‘WMD order’ that was constructed during and after the Cold War was challenged from various directions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It shows how the growing disorder was a cause and effect of a potent ‘double enmity’ that arose in the US against both ‘rogue states’ and the international constitutionalism that had been espoused by previous US governments and bound states to a common purpose.

An ordering strategy that is imperious and places its main emphasis on counter-proliferation and the threat of preventive war cannot be successful. The recovery of order must entail the pursuit of international legitimacy as well as efficacy. It will require all states to accept restraint and to honour their mutual obligations.

Notes

1. In a burgeoning literature, see Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Random House, 2004); Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004); Anthony Cordesman, The Iraq War (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2003); Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy or Division (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

2. Mark Danner, ‘Iraq: The New War’, New York Review of Books, 25 September 2003, pp. 88–91.

3. On al-Qaeda and its ambitions, see ‘Anonymous’, Through our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America (Washington DC: Brassey's, 2002).

4. On North Korea, see Leon Segal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); and David Albright and Kevin O'Neill, Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle (Washington DC: Institute for Science and International Security, 2000).

5. On Iran, see Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000); and George Perkovich, Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Challenge, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 28 April 2003.

6. See Arnaud de Borchgrave, ‘Pakistan, Saudi Arabia in Secret Nuke Deal’, The Washington Times, 21 October 2003, http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031021-112804-8451r.htm

7. Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

8. See Avner Cohen and Thomas Graham, ‘An NPT for Non- Members’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 60, May–June 2004.

9. For opposing views on the likelihood of terrorist usage of biological weapons, see Walter Lacqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Milton Leitenberg, ‘Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism in the First Years of the Twenty-first Century’, Politics and the Life Sciences, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 3–27.

10. Kissinger, AWorld Restored, p. 172–3. His italics.

11. On the notion of a legitimising principle, see Kissinger, AWorld Restored, p. 145.

12. John Ikenberry, ‘The End of the Neo-Conservative Moment’, Survival, vol. 46, no. 1, 2004, p. 13.

13. See Terence Taylor, ‘Building on the Experience: Lessons from UNSCOM and UNMOVIC’, Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 75, January/February 2004.

14. Preamble of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 (S/Res/1540), New York, 28 April 2004.

15. ‘UN Security Council Resolution on Non-Proliferation’, Fact Sheet, US Department of State, Washington DC, 28 April 2004, http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/fs/2004/31963.htm

16. Rebecca Johnson, ‘Report on the 2004 NPT PrepCom’, Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 77, May/June 2004, p. 24. For an extensive analysis of the NPT PrepCom, see John Simpson and Jenny Neilsen, ‘Fiddling while Rome burns? The 2004 Prepcom’, The Nonproliferation Review, vol. 11, no. 2, Summer 2004, pp. 116–141.