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Politics and law from a British perspective (hence Politics LAW BloG): ''People who like this sort of thing...'' as the Great Man said
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Friday, February 28, 2003
Blair's new pitch (he kills with sincerity....)The evident increasing desperation of Bush's Weakest Link over his failure to persuade is, I suppose, marginally a good sign. One is naturally on the qui-vive for the moment when he goes just that bit too far: when he utters a downright, provable lie (rather than his usual mere distortions of the truth); or pitches the emotional level just a wee bit too high [1]. I've only seen the transcript of today's speech in Wales. But it seems to represent a lurch in that direction. It's been spun, I think, as Trust me, I'm Tony [2]: it has expressions like I can only say what is the nature of what I seeand The belief I have is thisand I know many of you find it hard to understand why I care so deeply about this.As if he's tried rational argument (ha!) and is now placing a comforting fatherly arm around the nation's shoulder. Desperate times.... So what do we get? The usual (evidenceless) conflation of Saddam and terrorism, of course. But an even greater insistence on rogue states and international terrorism. [S]tates, repressive and tyrannical, who are developing, proliferating or trading in [WMDs].A vision of not just Britain but the world...plunged into a living nightmare from which we will struggle long and hard to awake. Blair seems to be proposing the sort of rolling worldwide war, of indefinite scope and timescale, that figured in the background of George Orwell's 1984. (Or is he just hyping it for the immediate issue of turning opinion on Iraq? Surely not...) Then he moves to history. And chutzpah. There are glib comparisons that can be made with the 1930s. And I don't make them.The War Party just can't leave the History Thing alone: there really should be an Anachronists Anonymous... It's worse when they try to impart the impression of sophisticated analysis: we think it all obvious; obvious fascism was a threat; obvious we had to fight it; obvious the opponents of fighting it were wrong. Oh dear - obvious four times in one sentence screams sophomoric and tendentious. Patent lack of the Five Ws: when, for example is it obvious that we had to fight Fascism (just screams out for capitalisation in a sentence like Tony's)? Against whom? On what pretext? How were politicians counterfactually struck with the vision of the obvious (per Tony) supposed to have got their peers and their voters to go along? Clearly, this is merely an infantile (yes, on reflection, sophomoric is far too flattering) druther. But, he goes on, Chamberlain was a hero when he brought back the Munich Agreement. And he did it for the best of motives....He strove for peace not because he was a bad man. He was a good man. But he was a good man who made the wrong decision. Looking in the mirror, Tony? .....the lesson we learnt then was that if, confronted by a threat, we back away because we assume that our good and peaceful intentions are matched by those threatening us, the threat only grows and at a later time has to be confronted again, but in a far more deadly and dangerous form. The fallacy involved here can best be explained with (my rudimentary knowledge of) statistics [3]. Suppose one wishes to test the efficacy of a new treatment for a disease; one sets up a trial to see how it compares with the standard treatment. The hypothesis is made that there is no difference between the treatments. By the miracle of statistical method, a limited amount of testing can yield a reliable result significant within stated limits. There are, however, two possibilities of error:
Now, at all times being aware of the pitfalls of such analogising, Blair and the rest of the War Party are fixated on the idea of the political Type II Error, the false negative: that they should have a threat in front of their eyes, but not recognise it, or think it serious enough for action. They entirely ignore the possibility of the Type I Error (or believe it in some way harmless): that the evil dictators they whack, with enormous collateral damage, unforeseeable sequelae - not to mention a goodly number of widows and orphans amongst the relatives of our boys - weren't a real threat after all. It's true - going back to the analogy - that there are some cases where a statistical test is only interested in performance at one end of the range - the so-called one tailed test. This quotes the example of industrial quality control, where the testers are only there to reject product which fails to reach the required benchmarks (they're not interested in over-achievers!). It is, however, a monumental fallacy to analysis the Saddam situation as a one-tailed test: to ignore or discount the costs incurred of assuming him to be a deadly threat, and invading, when, in fact, he is not such a threat. The lives of the people who die because of war which turns out to have been unnecessary should weigh equally with those supposedly saved by one that turned out to have been necessary. As of now, both sets of deaths are equally hypothetical, of course; but those that happen will very much not be. Then, one gets the usual falsehood [4], that breach of a UNSC resolution could ever justify preemptive war; and the warning to the SC to obey or else; before getting onto the moral dimension. Where he invites us all to climb upon my knee - though less as Sonny Boy than a ventriloquist's dummy. Enter one Ann Clywd [5], a brave and tireless campaigner against the barbarism of the Iraqi regime and the suffering of the Iraqi people when the world's attention was turned away [6]. Clywd, long-time Labour backbencher and champion of anti-Realpolitik, has had more play on the media in the last week, I reckon, than in the previous year. How was that arranged - not, surely, by the Number 10 spin machine? Because, instead of being her usual (and highly laudable) pain in the arse to ministers on UK foreign policy (eg on the infamous Tanzanian air traffic control system), she has been feted as a veritable oracle on the state of affairs in Iraq. When the government put out a dossier (not the famous plagiarised one!) on Iraqi human rights violations, Clywd, whose been banging on about the subject for years, apparently on the subject - her own included, it seems. But, right now, she's the heroine of the hour. Now, there's no evidence, so far as I know, that the horror stories she's been telling are fabricated - we're not in the realms of the Hill & Knowlton incubator babies' scam of 1991 that I mentioned before. They don't need to be fabricated: the authenticated proofs of Saddam's evil deeds are legion. The vice in their being told now is their convenience as a prop for Blair's justifications for war, which are false and perceived as such by his voters. It's the sneaky, sleazy misdirection of Saint Tony's very unsaintly media men that's in question. That they place a human shield of genuine misery to protect those justifications from criticism: that's what's despicable in the sudden moment in the sun for Ms Clywd. At bottom, Blair's problem is that he thinks sincerity is persuasive. And - despite the dozens of dodgy deals his government has been involved in, he still believes that, by dint of his unique charisma and charm, he can sell the war. Worst of all, he believes sincerity is a virtue in itself (he even praises War Party ultra-hate figure Chamberlain for it!) He's wrong on all counts. There is [7] little doubt, after all, that Hitler hated the ever-loving crap out of Jews and Jewry with an unalloyed monomaniacal sincerity to the purity of which even Tony Blair's notion of the danger of Saddam comes nowhere close. The instinctive loathing of sincerity is perhaps one of the more attractive Anglo-Saxon traits (of modern times). Three hundred years of bigots (from 1400) repeatedly - and most sincerely - plagued the country with war and repression in the cause of their damnable religion. And then we decided to junk the whole lot - and become C of E. Where the First Commandment was, Thou shalt neither feel nor show enthusiasm of any kind. Arguably, this trait has helped the US to avoid the sort of ideological strife that cost Old Europe tens of millions of lives in the last century. (The Capra film Mr Smith Goes To Washington has a Communist script-writer praising corruption over demagoguery!) The 'finest' president of the century, Franklin Roosevelt, had some of the worst political gangsters working for him. And he was so sincere, he tortured himself for nearly two decades to fake for public consumption the 'fact' he wasn't a cripple! I'm with the Commie on this.....
| Blair's bad day: the monkey [1] kicks off the Commons Iraq debateThe debate [2] was opened by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw setting himself an ambitious list of points to deal with: ...in this debate I want to answer what I think are the central and continuing questions in people's minds. Why Iraq? Why now? Why not more time, more inspectors? Why a second resolution? Why not persist with the policy of containment, rather than contemplate military action? And finally, is not the west guilty of double standards, especially in relation to Israel/Palestine? On the first point, he skips through some UNSC resolutions - pointing out Saddam's non-compliance, and then says So, for the United Nations, the answer to the "Why Iraq?" question is very clear. Iraq is the only country in such serious and multiple breach of mandatory UN obligations. It is the only country in the world to have fired missiles at five of its neighbours, the only country in history to have used chemical weapons against its own people, and the only country in the region that has invaded two of its neighbours in recent years. For the United Nations - evidently, he's taunting the doubters in the SC to have some pride and show some resentment at a guy who keeps flipping them off. (He should be scriptwriting for teen TV dramas....) And those other categories look suspiciously narrowly tailored to me. Not to mention irrelevant to the question of imminence of serious threat - which can be the only justification for pre-emptive war. (Compare North Korea: which probably already has a nuclear device, not to mention the Five hundred 170mm Koksan guns and 200 multiple-launch rocket systemstrained on Seoul, and other impressive hardware - summarised here. The paradox is, the smaller the threat you pose, the more likely you are to get the bejazus blasted out of you. You Faroese are in big trouble....) On the question Why now?, he says, All the resolutions of the Security Council, 12 years of them, also help us answer that question. This, then, is Saddam's cunning plan: to extend indefinitely the UN process which keeps him contained, so he can keep, but never use, the good stuff he's got stashed away? And, in supposedly answering, Why not more time? we get more of the same: It took just nine inspectors to verify the disarmament of South Africa's nuclear weapons programme at the end of apartheid.....Why? Because South Africa was complying with the inspectors It would truly be hard to devise a bull point as absurdly irrelevant as the South African comparison. I get that South Africa is the prime example of retro-onanism that the British Left can enjoy after the Thatcher/Blair revolution. But.... Still, the question is, what is the effective, imminent threat posed by Saddam? Making a hundred - or a thousand - inspectors jump through hoops is, perhaps, not the act of a considerate host. But we're not considering his application to join the Rotary. Straw says The only reason for the difference between Saddam's refusal to co-operate...and his very reluctant co-operation on some process today......is the build-up of the credible threat of force.....But continues that he must either embark immediately on voluntary and full disarmament or the Security Council must face up to its responsibility to see that he is disarmed by force. He states facts that amount to an admission that containment is working. But he chooses to 'deduce' from those facts that pre-emptive war is justified. Alluding to the French/German/Russian Memorandum of February 24, he asks, .......why Saddam is more likely to co-operate actively, fully and immediately in the further 120 days that they now propose than he was in the past 110. What does he need 120 days for: to have a look for the weapons that he says he has not got.......? Again, Saddam playing silly buggers - tedious and ill-mannered as it no doubt is - is not a justification for pre-emptive war. Then, finally, he addresses the issue of containment. There can be no stable, steady state for Iraq unless it is properly disarmed, and nor can there be stability for the region and the international community.And, he says, A de facto policy of containment existed between 1998 and 2002 following the effective expulsion of inspectors by Iraq.... Up to a point, Lord Copper.... The difference now, is that there is an effective military threat in operation - which (from memory) I don't believe there was in the period he mentions. I wonder whether he's grasped the concept of containment: which, I'd have thought, paradigmatically, involves the use of a threat of force to dissuade a state from using force itself. As with the nuclear balance during the Cold War: it only worked because the threat of force on each side was credible. What is wrong, from the US/UK perspective, about a policy of containing Saddam is that they have run down their armed forces from Cold War levels to such a point that they fear they cannot sustain the level of threat in theatre necessary for a policy of containment to work. A policy which may or may not have been correct; a fear which may or may not be justified. But is a completely different argument from one that containment of Saddam has been tried and does not work. He then makes his points on double standards, which don't interest me much - what do you expect? they're politicians, for crying out loud! His peroration, unfortunately, is yet another War Party trip down (False) Memory Lane. Like small children, the good people on the UNSC - well, the Saleable Six, and their P5 would-be puppet-masters, at least - are threatened with the spectre of the League of Nations. At each stage good men and women [3] said, "Not now, wait, the evil is not big enough to challenge." Then before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge. We had slipped slowly down a slope, never noticing how far we had gone until it was too late. Now, my ignorance on the League is considerable [4]. But, on general principles, the idea of the slippery slope - fine, perhaps, in literary analysis - is fundamentally flawed in international relations. Anthony Eden [5] was an object lesson in such absurdities: hag-ridden by analogy, besotted with read-across. His whole idea with Suez was to rerun the 1930s, only, this time, he would be the good man to say that 'Nasser is an evil....big enough to challenge.' And he went pre-emptive on Nasser's ass. And ended up making one of himself..... ....and then Straw finally sat down. I'll scan through the rest of the debate and try and locate some plums for a later piece. No promises, though....
| Thursday, February 27, 2003
Blair in Prime Minister's Question Time - warm-up for Iraq debateUsually PMQs are strictly for the aficionado: with about as much sporting interest as a game between the Yankees and the World Series champions - of Little League. But yesterday's ranked as something of an hors d'oeuvres for the Iraq debate - so, I thought, worth sampling [1]. Nothing startling: as usual, an economy - nay, niggardliness - with the truth that Chancellor Gordon Brown could only envy. Unreasonable veto The old chicane which supposes that material breach of UNSCR 1441 is a legitimate casus belli, and not a mere fig-leaf for a pre-emptive attack; and suggesting that the SC has given its word to enforce 1441 [2]. Mr. Duncan Smith [Leader of the (Ha!) Opposition]: The Prime Minister recently said he would support action without a second resolution only if there was an "unreasonable veto" in the Security Council. ........is not the logic of his position now that any veto would be unreasonable? UN: castration or death The threat (directed particularly, perhaps, with the supposed French folie de grandeur about its (currently unmerited) Permanent Seat on the Council in mind) that the UNSC will cease to be of relevance if it fails to comply with the demand for a new resolution. Surely the right way to proceed is through the logic of the resolution that we agreed last November. The simple case is that, unless the United Nations carries through what it agreed last November, it is the authority of the UN itself that will be undermined. We waited 12 years.... And can wait another 12...oops, Tony won't be having that! ....no one, surely, could accuse us of taking precipitate action when we have been trying for 12 years to get Saddam to give up his weapons of mass destruction, it is six months since President Bush addressed the UN and four months since the UN resolution, and still he is not in compliance. Encomium for George A Tory backbencher asked: does the Prime Minister agree that what lies behind some of the opposition to his policy is a caricature of President George W. Bush which is a gross distortion of the truth? The reply: I have always found in my dealings with President Bush that he has been honest and straightforward. Rather like giving an exam candidate marks for spelling his own name right. And then George went the UN route There is a name for the procedure whereby a guy who threatens an illegal act gets rewarded for agreeing not to do it... What is more, he chose to go through the United Nations route last year when many expected him not to. We should pay tribute to him for that. Why doesn't Saddam get credit for not having invaded anywhere recently? No fair.... Querying the war is hurting our forces Basically, anyone not giving three cheers for the war is (willingly or not) part of Saddam's Fifth Column. ....what the vast bulk of British armed forces out there would really like to know is that if they have to go into conflict, they have a united House and country behind them. Of course, that's not quite how it turned out when the lobby fodder were allowed into the paddock to strut their stuff in the debate proper....
| At last, the famous US-Iraqi opposition meetingThere are just some aspects of the war I find it hard to raise enthusiasm for dealing with. And one of them is the interminable and apparently pointless to-ing and fro-ing with Farouk Karno's Army and their pals in the less savoury end of the War Party.... However - be it said that the White House's Asiatic Mr Fixit, Zalmay Khalilzad [1], formerly on the Afghanistan beat, has finally met the opposition. To reassure them that the AMGOT the US has planned for post-Saddam won't last forever. And that, rather than merely installing an our son-of-a-bitch from the existing regime, Washington was now in favour of "de-Ba'athification" of the country. Quite what evidence this swing back to the Opposition represents of intra-Administration in-fighting - a victory for the Perle faction? - I scarcely can raise the energy to query. Who's next for the big whinge - SCIRI (the Shi'ites) are apparently pissed off about the AMGOT: perhaps it's them... Bright spot: Kurdish sense of humour. The meeting took place in the freezing Kurdish mountain resort of Salahuddin. And Salahuddin - aka Saladin - was, circa 1190, no less than the nemesis [2] of George Bush's notable predecessor in the line of Great Crusaders, Richard the Lion-Heart. (I hear a Korngold score coming on....)
| Turkey puts off US deployment vote againAccording to AP, the Turkish Parliament will finally vote on Saturday on the resolution to approve the deployment on US forces in the country - only yesterday, I was suggesting on good authority that the vote would take place today - possibly! The guy who seems (on still tenuous evidence) to be the focus of much opposition to the proposal in the AKP parliamentary party, Speaker Bulent Arinc, is reported to have met with the country's President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer: Sezer reportedly told Arinc that international legitimacy should be ensured before Parliament votes on a proposal authorizing the US to station its troops at Turkey’s airbases and ports for a possible Iraq war. For his part, Arinc expressed agreement with Sezer, adding that he was planning to convey this message to the government. Arinc then met with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul. The prime minister, however, reportedly reiterated that there was no point in further delays of Parliament’s vote on the proposal. Very cosy, the Speaker and the President, it seems! Meanwhile, AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that if Parliament rejected the proposal on allowing US troops to be stationed on Turkish soil, Turkey would in the future have difficulties borrowing from international markets. Scar-ee! That I have no certain idea what's going on in Ankara is, perhaps, not only excusable but thoroughly desirable, from the Turkish viewpoint, at least. That (apparently) the Turks themselves don't have a clue - not so much. UPDATE Perhaps worth pointing out the notion that I gleaned from a snippet on Turkey watching the Channel 4 News an hour or so ago. Not said in so many words, as I recall, but implicit, if I understood aright, that, far from there being disarray between parliament and government, Arinc and Gul, it was all part of a good cop, bad cop routine devised to raise the price exacted from the US. Evidence, so far as I could see, came there none. But it's a theory.... | Wednesday, February 26, 2003
International law experts say Iraq attack could be war crime[Repost from 1430 GMT - update swallowed original post (thanks Blogger!)]They don't show their workings, unfortunately; but that's the story in today's Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald apparently [1] received a letter from eminent legal experts....who claimed an invasion of Iraq could constitute a war crime. One of the signatories, Professor Hilary Charlesworth of the Australian National University [2], said the definition of war crimes in international law included causing "excessive civilian damage that's disproportionate to the military objective". Australia has, the article points out, signed up to the International Criminal Court - unlike the US. [The US include me out MO in this area doesn't only apply to the ICC - this says that the US exempted itself from Article IX of the Geneva Convention. There are, of course, a substantial number of Geneva Conventions - and a quick scan of all of the Article 9s at the Avalon site produces nothing that meshes. One for further investigation....] And Dr Nicholas Wheeler [3], speaking in Canberra, has said that the draft resolution submitted by the US, Britain and Spain this week merely restated resolution 1441 from November, but what was required was a resolution stating Iraq was in material breach and authorising the "use of all necessary means". All of this is great. A couple of fifty page journal articles would be better.
UPDATE A little research on the subject of the Geneva Convention referred to above comes up with the following: The Convention in question is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9 1948. (Rather than any of the umpteen others.) Article IX says Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute. When the US ratified the Convention on November 25 1988, it made the following reservation, as set out in the order of the International Court of Justice dated June 2 1999 on a Request for the Indication of Special Measures in the Yugoslavia v US case: "That with reference to Article IX of the Convention, before any dispute to which the United States is a party may be submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under this Article, the specific consent of the United States is required in each case.". The Reservation continues (as described in the dissent of Judge Kreca in that case) to exclude action prohibited by the US Constitution, before proceeding, under the heading of Understandings, to state nine further qualifications to the Convention - sez Uncle Sam! I've done no more than glance at the Yugoslavia order. But it looks as if the reservation was sufficient to get the Court to agree that, at least on the question of special measures (cf - I think - interlocutory injunction, TRO), it had no jurisdiction. | Blair suffers big revolt in House of CommonsThis, I'm sure, will be all over the nightly news in the US, as well as the UK. The forecasts on the radio this afternoon were that, at most, 90 Labour MPs would rebel against the Government three-line whip (instruction to vote) on Iraq. In fact, no fewer than 122 defied the whip and voted against the Government. No question of Blair losing, or coming close - the so-called Official Opposition is serving in the office of a loo-roll in the 10 Downing Street karzi. But mention of a comparison with another Prime Minister with a large majority pulling off a Pyrrhic victory is too tempting to pass up: according to this, the voting on May 8 1940 at the end of the Norway debate (following the disastrous invasion masterminded by Neville Chamberlain) was 281-200 - with just 33 Conservative MPs voting against their Prime Minister, and 65 merely abstaining. Which comes to rather fewer than the tally going all the way and voting against Blair (overall, the vote was 393-199). I'll come back to the detail of the debate once the proceedings appear (tomorrow morning on the Commons site). UPDATE Tidying up bookmarks, I find this rates the biggest vote of MPs against a government of their own party (in modern times) as the 93 who voted against Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill in 1885. UPDATE (2) A behind the scenes look at how the rebellion was organised. | Historical perspective in spades - The Great War back on the BBCFor those with access to the BBC2 domestic TV channel, an absolute must is the repeat of the 1964 series on the First World War. The first episode (of 26), which I almost missed, was shown last Saturday. The next, which picks things up from the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is on next Saturday, March 1 at 1825 GMT. It's quite possibly the best thing the BBC ever broadcast: clips shown last week of veterans - spry guys born in Victoria's reign - telling their stories on camera were positively spine-tingling. The tone is quite unlike most history documentaries (and there've been loads, of course) made in the last ten or fifteen years. Comparisons with the Ken Burns American Civil War series - and the UK The World at War on World War Two - are invited. And, unfortunately, for once, BBC timing is impeccable... | Another triumph for the FBI...Americans can rest easy in their beds - the Feds have picked up one of their Most Wanted. Except that he turns out to be a harmless pensioner from Bristol called Derek Bond, arrested in South Africa, and thrown in the cells awaiting Uncle Sam's pleasure. Moreover, it took America's Finest no fewer than 20 days to ascertain that the hapless Bond was not, in fact, their target. DNA, fingerprint, voice matches? Evidently they were communicating using sailboats and semaphore. Meanwhile, no doubt, UBL was wetting his not insubstantial knickers. A haircut and shave - the guy could walk out of a 747 into JFK - and, ten to one, they'd pick up the short, bald Jew standing in line behind him..... | US deployments: Turkey still not in the bagWhilst not counting chickens (!), one can take a little comfort in the fine mess that the Turkish government seem to have got themselves in over this issue. In the great democratic tradition (that Turkey does not have), Speaker Bulent Arinc [1] is playing hardball. The government motion on the deployment plan, he says, ....will possibly be taken onto parliamentary agenda on Thursday. Arinc has been meeting Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykalapparently in a move to ensure fair play: We hope that our parliament will take the most correct decision. Meanwhile, I hope that none of the deputies will use this motion for their own political purposes. The motion has two parts - one dealing with the US deployments, the other with deployments of Turkish forces into northern Iraq. There is apparently some question whether there would be one vote taken or two. (If each part is voted separately, MPs could be doubly patriotic: voting for the Turkish deployments - to safeguard the frontier, stem refugees, etc; and voting against the US deployment. Wot larks!) But, either way, it seems that there will be no three-line whip: AKP party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that there would be no group decision on the issue obliging the deputies to vote a particular way. Given the evident disarray in the ranks of the AKP (as discussed yesterday), it may be that Erdogan and Prime Minister Abdullah Gul [2] have decided not to waste political capital on a decision that might well go against them. Alternatively, they think they'll get the win and want to minimise resentment amongst those in the party who voted against. I really have nothing reliable on which to judge between the two. But we'll know the worst soon enough. Or, at least, when Speaker Arinc's ready.
| Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Turkey - Government agrees to US deployments, but two more senior men oppose!Prime Minister Abdullah Gul has a parliamentary majority to die for; and, when it comes to authorising the deployment of US forces bound for war against Saddam, he also has the 'support' of the Turkish military, too. He and his cabinet have, barring dotting is and crossing ts, agreed a deal with the US for this purpose. And Reuters today are suggesting that there will be a vote on the deal in the Turkish parliament on Thursday. Meanwhile, he seems to have suffered two more senior defections. Yesterday, it was Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Bulent Arinc; today, it's Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener and Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister Ertugrul Yalcinbayir. According to this, Sener said yesterday that ...many cabinet members are also against the idea of Turkey actively supporting U.S. military plans under present circumstances. "During the discussions [at the cabinet meeting], a large number of cabinet members did not consider the developments satisfactory. However, toward the end of the discussions it was decided to send a resolution to parliament." And Yalcinbayir also expressed opposition to the motion, saying the possible deployment of U.S. troops had no "international legitimacy." "Should this motion not be passed [by parliament]," he said, "there would be greater unity, more peace, and greater democracy in Turkey." As Lady Bracknell never quite got round to saying, to lose one Deputy Prime Minister..... Is this just letting off steam or posturing for internal consumption? I've still seen no proper analysis of the AKP politics which is driving this apparent disarray. Not that I'll stop looking, of course.... | The Alice Through the Looking-Glass warWe have the draft resolution from the US, UK and Spain; and, on the other side, we have the Memorandum from France, Germany and Russia [1]. To both of which I shall no doubt return. But let's above all distinguish smoke-and-mirrors from a genuine casus belli. I'm no salesman. But, from what I've read, the whole purpose of sales technique is to get the customer to adopt the mind-set of the purchaser. So, he's not saying to himself, Should I buy this car? But rather, What colour should I buy? What extras? A few bucks off the price? Because once he's thinking that way, he's already decided to buy. The technique of the War Party is not a million miles away. It's designed to focus the Average Joe's mind on inessentials; and to make him feel as if he's already agreed to go to war. Now, there's something in the psyche of most of us that we're reluctant to go back on a deal we've already made. Hey, that's welshing, isn't it? It's bad, m'kay? Hell, it's unAmerican! The whole idea of the War Party is to get folks - the guys with votes who don't count now, but will count come New Hampshire - to assume they've already ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, and make them so embarrassed that they don't choose to sent the dish back to the kitchen. And how, exactly, is that done? By assuming that the fact that Saddam has not complied with 1441 and its predecessors is a valid reason to go to war. The War Party say, Everyone already agreed at the time UNSCR 1441 was passed that non-compliance, material breach, were as good as an invasion of Kuwait as a pretext for war. Surely everyone realised that? All except the retarded and the mental, that is. And everyone committed to serious consequences if he didn't. So, he hasn't. And now we're going to give him serious consequences. And - now you're whining, you lousy sons-of-bitches? But you already agreed! You some kind of welsher? The whole show - PT Barnum, eat your heart out: this is Sucker Heaven! - is designed to keep folks' minds from what they know: that violence is only justified in self-defence: against an actual attack, or the real threat of an imminent attack. They know that applies in Podunk, USA; and are pretty damned sure it applies everywhere else. Yet all Saddam has done - or threatened to do in the last 12 years - is the equivalent of failing to fill in some lousy IRS forms! He's done nothing that would justify a punch being thrown in Podunk. Yet here is Bush and the boys proposing to launch a million tons of TNT on his ass. If folks were allowed to let the facts get in the way of Bush's story that way, things might get really serious. Hell, Bush might not get to run again in 2004! The fear is that the guys round the bar in Podunk know international law better that George; know (without having the least idea of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter) that having a few missiles and chemicals - and lying about them - doesn't come close to a justification for armed agression. George knows there's an aching chasm between the one and the other. And he can't stand his people knowing it too. Hence the smoke and mirrors. The misdirection. The cheap conjurer's tricks. The Average Joe doesn't speak Arabic or have a degree in International Relations (not that that would be a bar to him formulating USG policy....); but I have more than an inkling that he knows he's being had [2]. And, for some reason, I find that fact mildly reassuring..... As for Alice Through The Looking-Glass? On the manipulation of meaning, surely the Urtext: I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said. That's always the question!
| Monday, February 24, 2003
The unreasonable veto - what about Israel resolutions?It's a point I've noticed has been knocking about for some time without (so far as I'm aware) really being made much of, either in the grown-up media (or, for that matter, in the blogosphere). Tony Blair expounded at length on the idea of the unreasonable veto in his TV interview with Jeremy Paxman a couple of weeks ago. In a nutshell, the idea was that, since the Security Council had agreed that Saddam should be required to take certain steps, under pain of serious consequences, it would be unreasonable for any of the P5 to veto a resolution authorising military action against Iraq for non-compliance. Bound up in this absurd notion was that the suggestion that a country that vetoed a resolution that had secured the necessary nine affirmative votes was illegitimately thwarting the democratic will of the Council (I'm trying here to make best sense as I can of this thoroughly tendentious proposition!) What no one - Paxman included - has raised to Blair's face, or (so far as I'm aware) to that of any other of the War Party making the case for the existence of the proposition is the record, several times longer than your arm, of US vetoes of UNSC resolutions that dared in some way to criticise Israel [1]. The tightest margin in any of the votes listed is 9 to 1. Thwarting the democratic will repeatedly in favour of Uncle Sam's Darling was clearly shameless [2]. Surely these Messrs Valiant-for-Truth aren't afraid of the old antisemitism smear? When it comes to the outcome in the Security Council, naturally one is hoping that the US and its fellow warriors fail to garner nine votes for their resolution. But, in case they do, and France steps up to the plate, one would like to have seen the unreasonable veto nonsense properly skewered. (Without, needless to say, entertaining any hope that so doing would delay the onset of war.)
| Is Turkish approval for US deployments running off the rails?I've left this story alone since February 5, in the expectation, as per the news coverage, that agreement - on aid and the post-Saddam arrangements for Kurdistan, mostly - would eventually be reached, and parliamentary approval duly granted. Over the past week or so, I've increasingly got the impression that the wheels are coming off this vital element of the war effort. In particular, it seems that Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Bulent Arinc, has become something of a focus for the effort to frustrate the process. On February 17, he said that he didn’t want a proposal regarding a war in Iraq to be sent to Parliamenton the following day, as had previously been expected [1]. And, since then, his line seems to have got harder. This story last Thursday had Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis suggesting that the Turks were prepared to see war without a fresh Security Council resolution. But this story today has Arinc stating the opposite. Yet Yakis is still reported today as expecting a vote in Parliament tomorrow (February 25). What's going on? Scant useful information online (that I could find) on Arinc: caused a stir just after taking the job by appearing in an official capacity beside a veiled Mrs Arinc. He was, according to this, not offered the Vice Premier role to which his seniority in the AKP seemed to entitle him: he is described as known for his Islamist outbursts. With that information, one could easily add two and two and make 77. What I have not seen is a decent analysis of sentiment on the war within the AKP parliamentary party; and of the chance that the anti-war element (together with the support of the left-wing opposition CHP?) can get together the numbers and political will effectively to defy both their prime minister and the military and vote to bar US forces, or to delay consideration of approval until it was too late to be any use. If Arinc's threat to delay until a second UNSC resolution is credible, that seems to upgrade the delay in securing Turkish approval from annoying but livable-with to potentially fatal, given the likely difficulty in securing such a resolution. The logistics of dealing with the 50 ships full of men and matériel apparently currently bound for the theatre, even if a second resolution is forthcoming, must be considerable....
| Apologia pro bloggo meoI've been planning a little piece along these lines for some time; and the opportunity of the minor Central American débâcle and an interesting piece from Brendan O'Neill have been the spur to putting fingers to keyboard. If there's been one message implicit in this blog since the outset - not original, but there all the same - it's been: caveat lector. Don't take anything you read on trust. The act of distrusting, with (where possible) the evidence on which to base such distrust, was perhaps sometimes rather more important than the substantive matter in hand. So, I'm led to ask, why should I - or any of the myriad bloggers - be treated any differently? Essentially, all political blogging is cast in the interrogative mood: the best it can do (and that, not something to sniff at) is to raise questions, sow and water the seeds of doubt, point at the Emperor's lack of attire. Because - with few exceptions - it's an activity carried on by amateurs (in both senses of the term). For example, when dealing with legal issues, it's necessary to get into citing cases and statutes just to ask the questions: doesn't mean the blogger's necessarily qualified to practice in the area concerned. (Though the law is perhaps a topic with a greater than average proportion of professionals blogging their own subject.) For myself, I don't make any claims to authority (the august figure of Eric Cartman, would, if ever necessary, be sufficient to curb the temptation!). The stuff here either makes sense or it doesn't: the fact it comes from me neither adds nor subtracts. The torrent of information on the net has, in effect, made feasible a role of universal kibbitzer. Every sap with a dialup connection can get some dope on pretty much anything under the sun. The problem is that, on the free internet (as opposed to the Lexis and Westlaw that the professionals use), such information tends to be patchy and out-of-date. And, in particular, made available on a purely casual basis: for instance, some journal authors put their stuff online (or some of it), most don't. (The paper on the Smith v Allwright white primaries case is a good example: purely fortuitous that it was available online (to us cheapskates) to offer insight into the background of the Dixiecrat election of 1948. (Remember Trent Lott....)) And information once got needs to be interpreted - and, without a body of professional expertise, that's often difficult, to put it mildly. In some cases, the risk of error is foreseeable: assuming legislation is in force which has in fact been repealed, or missing that the decision in a case has been overturned on appeal. In others, not so much. Traps into which I've fallen in the past (not, thankfully, whilst blogging) include failing to twig the following [1]:
It's knowledge that will tend to be assumed - and by no means obvious to an amateur working from first principles. Naturally, the problem is compounded by unfamiliarity with culture and (in some cases) language; but that's part of the attraction: US politics (today, and certainly in the last 150 years) has been inherently more interesting than UK politics; so, mostly, I leave the UK alone. Just what the blogger can and cannot do is illustrated by the notorious case of Tony Blair's plagiarised report on Iraq. As the first paragraph of my first piece on the subject stated, No whining - you humble correspondent had the evidence before his very eyes, and failed to spot it.... And so, so far as I'm aware, did the massed ranks of the blogosphere, each and every one. The guy who did spot it did so because, he said I realised that I'd read most of it before. But, even if some blogger had fingered the report as suspicious - and, without knowledge of the original, it would have been hard to go beyond suspicion - what are the chances that someone who had read most of it before would have seen the piece in his blog in order to be in a position to take up the cause? (There is a concept, used in the UK in relation to media competition, of share of voice - designed to measure the weight of a particular news organisation across the print and broadcast media. If one worked the numbers worldwide and added in the blogosphere, how much weight would that addition merit? My feeling is, pretty damned small - though it's something to be researched, I'd have thought [2].) As far as my own personal MO is concerned, I certainly endeavour to:
But that doesn't diminish the fact that this, like most blogs, is an amateur product: like most (all?) bloggers, I blog what interests me, and leave the rest. Whereas surely no doctor rejects a patient on the ground of boredom. Or perhaps that's just a tad naive....
| The Chinese veto - AP flunks Security Council 101A rather worrying piece seems pleased to 'reveal' that Colin Powell would be making the case that China should not veto a new U.S. resolution to the U.N. Security Council that would authorize the use of force to disarm Iraq and remove its president, Saddam Hussein The idea that the PRC would veto such a resolution in foreseeable circumstances - which the writer, if not Powell, evidently takes seriously - is patently ridiculous. First, the Chinese default position is to abstain on UNSC resolutions not directly affecting the PRC; to threaten the veto on Iraq would therefore, relative to its general diplomatic stance, be going thermonuclear: signalling a deliberate freeze in US-PRC relations that would make no sense in bilateral terms (that I'm aware of) and might carry all sorts of unintended consequences. (I don't play: but you could probably compare it to an absurdly aggressive bid in bridge.) Second, the anti-authorisation effort is being floor-managed by the French. If the French think at the last moment that a veto is necessary to kill the resolution, they can exercise their own. If they had the temerity to ask either Russia or the PRC to do so in their place, they would be serenaded with an extended Bronx cheer. So they wouldn't ask. After all, you only need one veto - only one nation (at most) need suffer US reprisals on that account. Related point: the French will be looking to manage their forces more generally, so as not to put more countries than necessary in the line of US fire. For instance, if they can keep the three Africans, they might well be prepared to release Mexico and Chile who, arguably, would be most likely to suffer from US pressure. (Put another way, the Africans are poor enough that perhaps the cost of bribing them to keep them onside is within the French spending limit!) So why the story of the threatened Chinese veto? Surely not one of the State Department spinners angling for a story of Powell, the returning hero - leaving the plane clutching a piece of paper with No Veto on it? Perhaps they could give Powell an umbrella and moustache to go with it. War in Our Time has a definite ring to it..... | Sunday, February 23, 2003
Material breach - Colin's snake oil?Readers may recall from Wind in the Willows the scene where the jury for Toad's trial take their places. Amongst their number were several rabbits. And one animal that looked out of place: it was duly recorded as a different kind of rabbit. It was in fact - a weasel! (Those weasels really get around....) My hypothesis is that, amongst the myriad terms of international law thrown up in materials on the War, material breach is also a different kind of rabbit. A fraud, a ringer, a cheap magician's trick. And, since we are expecting a draft Security Council Resolution in the next day or two which supposedly will rely on the concept as a trigger for war - it seems a hypothesis worth putting to the test. The first question is, what is the evidence of the meaning of material breach? Domestic law In the contract law of the 50 states (or most of them), material breach is a term of art which denotes a breaches of contract serious enough to entitle the innocent party to rescind or terminate the contract (as discussed, for example, in this Kansas case). In the vocabulary of UK parliamentary draftsmen in recent decades, material is used to denote the particular person or thing (of a class of persons or things) to which a statutory provision applies [1]. Rarely, I believe will the compound expression (material time/place/animal/whatever) constitute a recognised term in the same way that material breach does in US contract law. International law The only use of the expression material breach that I can find is in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties in Article 60, which deals with the remedies available where a MB of a treaty occurs. The definition of MB in Art 60(3) is: A material breach of a treaty, for the purposes of this article, consists in: The key words to note are for the purposes of this article. It seems that, in 1969, there was no accepted meaning for the expression MB. In Art 60, it was merely used as a piece of technical drafting language. It would be helpful to have available the travaux préparatoires (working documents) generated in preparing the Vienna Convention - nothing online, that I could see. It would also be helpful to have a full analysis of the provision from the International Court of Justice. But, so far as I can tell, there is only one case, the Gabèíkovo-Nagymaros Project case [2], in which Art 60 has been considered. I'm no expert - but it seems to me that all the ICJ did in this case was apply Art 60 to the particular facts of the case. The judgement seems of little value in establishing the meaning of Art 60 - let alone with our, very different, question. There is something useful on Art 60 on the ICJ site: a written statement from Malaysia on a case whose details needn't detain us. Starting with para 7.13, the text deals with the question of breach and material breach, and usefully cites a work (Breach of Treaty) by Israeli jurist Shabtai Rosenne, stating (para 7.15): that the definition of "material breach" in Article 60 of the Vienna Convention was made for the limited purpose and is itself entirely narrow.... We start to get somewhere: it seems that MB in international law (at least, in Art 60) is not the sort of term of art that it is in US contract law; but is more the sort of casual coincidence that crops up in UK statutes, as I've described. Let's pause there a moment: all we've found to date for a meaning of material breach is material (!) which is clearly irrelevant, and mentioned solely for the purpose of eliminating it from our enquiries (as the constabulary phrase goes). As far as positive ideas on the derivation of MB, or its meaning, in the context of 1441, we have squat. The Rosenne quote from the Malaysian paper goes on, usefully, to bring in another aspect which has, so far as I'm aware, been entirely absent from discussions on the Iraqi question: ....it seems that the only viable description of a breach of a treaty is one that can be deduced not from the law of the treaty-instrument but from the law of treaty-obligation, the law of State responsibility. On that basis it can be described as conduct consisting of an action or omission attributable to a State or to an international organization under international law, that State or organization being a party to a treaty in force and the conduct being incompatible with an obligation grounded in that treaty. Law of state responsibility - what the hell is that? Funny you should ask - it's a topic which the glacially paced International Law Commission (the law reform arm in the UN family of organisations) is grappling with as I write (and for the previous several years). The place to start is here - sort of home page for the process - it gives some perspective: The topic of State responsibility has been on the agenda of the International Law Commission since 1949. A 2001 draft of the Convention (which will eventually stand beside the 1969 Vienna Convention) is here. The terms look pretty straightforward to me (obviously no reliable guide!): for instance, Art 12 says There is a breach of an international obligation by a State when an act of that State is not in conformity with what is required of it by that obligation, regardless of its origin or character. Except that the Convention isn't yet signed yet, let alone in force, it seems completely in point as far as Iraq is concerned. But state responsibility isn't just the draft Convention: it's clearly been long understood as a discrete area in international law, with a disputed border (!) with the law of treaties - this article, for instance, considers how to accommodate between the two areas of law the principle that performance of an obligation may be withheld if the other party has itself failed to perform the same or a related obligation [3]. I certainly don't understand the subtleties at play here. But I'm surprised (to put it mildly) that I have not heard this area of law discussed in connection with Iraq, where it seems to have clear relevance. Iraq, specifically Let's look from the other end of the telescope. What clues are there about what the War Party suppose material breach means in relation to Iraq? The Security Council resolutions, to start with: I've searched all of them back from 1441 back to January 1 1994 [4] (except those apparently solely concerned with the oil for food programme): SCR 1441 is the first to use the expression [5]. The first mention of material breach in relation to Iraq that I can find is (of all things) a press conference by Bill Clinton's Press Secretary Mike McCurry on November 13 1997: Q Is there any discussion of a resolution that would declare this a material breach -- using that term of art?And that was that! No less a personage than Blair gofer Jack Straw dealt with the question in the House of Commons on November 7 2002: Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): ....I have not yet seen the text [of SCR 1441]. Does it define precisely what is meant by "material breach"? Who, in the event of a discussion about what is or is not a material breach, will have the final say? Now, it's true that in English contract law, there is a concept of breach of a fundamental term which is comparable to the US contract law idea of material breach. But, apart from what seem to me to be substantive differences between the two concepts, the key question is, What's the relevance? The only real attempt (except this one!) that I've seen to try and come to terms with the use of MB in the context of SCR 1441 is a piece (January 8 2003 - says 2002 in error!) by Prof Michael Dorf of Columbia Law School. The problem is that Dorf seems to take the expression at face value; he doesn't challenge its provenance in international law (he doesn't even mention Art 60 of the Vienna Convention); and, in particular, he reads across from its meaning under US contract law into its use in 1441. Abstracting from both domestic and international law - the fundamental mistake of the US/UK side is to try to apply to a text like SCR 1441 a concept devised to deal with an agreement. UNSCR 1441 is not an agreement! It's a decision of the UNSC - in which various demands are made of Iraq. The consent of Iraq is irrelevant to the process. The resolution does not create a web of interdependent obligations; it contains various orders to Saddam to comply. If Saddam breaches 1441, there's no question of whether the SC will exercise a right to rescind it - any more than it would be relevant to ask whether a State which sees one of its criminal laws violated would wish to rescind that law. Whatever material breach means, it's not the same as it does under US contract law. At large, material means having real importance or great consequences.And that would make some kind of sense for 1441. What puzzles me is, why, if not for nefarious purposes, use an expression for SCR 1441 which has specific meanings in both US domestic and in international law neither of which are appropriate to 1441? And why, if not as an act of deceit, seek, as Straw did, deliberately to attach those inappropriate meanings to its use in 1441. And that's as far as I get. No smoking gun - not even a plagiarised report! Just a general feeling of unease born of ignorance of the subject-matter and the proven industrial-scale duplicity of the outfits that first brought the term up in the Iraq context.
| Perle's of wisdom....After what appeared a day or two back to be a setback to Administration hawks' forward policy on post-Saddam Iraq, Mr Pur et Dur himself has come out fighting in an interview for the London Observer. Slamming the French as being only interested in protecting their oil interests, for instance. Whereas the US is all about the Open Door (that totem of US, particularly Republican, policy in the Far East pre-1949): The US interest is to buy oil cheaply on the world market.Beware low-flying porkers [1]. And as for his chums in the Iraqi opposition, He was scathing about the 'conventional wisdom' among the foreign policy and intelligence establishment, which holds that the Iraqi opposition groups are hopelessly divided and the country far too fractious for meaningful democracy. A display of unalloyed sagacity and raw expertise that reminded me of a quote in Herbert Agar's The Unquiet Years [2]: Major General Patrick Hurley, in China as FDR's special representative in 1944, told journos The only difference between Chinese Communists and Oklahoma Republicans is that Oklahoma Republicans aren't armed. UPDATE on Zalmay Khalilzad [3] - I'm annoyed to find that the guy (who I'd not heard of) is positively ubiquitous: US special envoy to Afghanistan, and now (my piece on Friday) some sort of Whip for Perle's opposition guys... | Bush's Armageddon cruise: itinerary extended to - Colombia?!It seems that Bush wants to put that two regional wars thing to the test. Just two? With Iraq about to kick off, and North Korea simmering nicely, looks like he's planning to offer US forces the equivalent of the Shredded Wheat challenge: the FARC have been taking liberties, and apparently USG is seriously considering committing troops. I'm thinking enumerating the reasons why that wouldn't be a terribly spiffy idea would be superfluous.... | Saturday, February 22, 2003
A morality tale - this time from Nicaragua.....CORRECTION BELOW In a week where those antipodes, politics and morality, were brought into fraudulent conjunction for the Great Cause of the big war, a story of a similar conjunction in the case of one little girl and her family which deserves not to be lost amongst all the war hype. In outline, a simple enough story: a girl of nine, daughter of illiterate peasants, goes with them across the border into Costa Rica to work on a coffee plantation; she's raped there and found to be pregnant. Her parents bring her back, expecting some help from their own government. Instead, the girl evidently finds herself made a moral example. The law allows abortion in the case of risk to the mother's life; and a panel of three doctors sit to determine the case. In a breathtakingly jesuitical ruling, they opine that they cannot tell whether the risk of death was greater if the girl had an abortion or continued with the pregnancy: Una junta de tres médicos del Ministerio de Salud examinaron esta semana a la niña y emitieron un dictamen en el que advierten que la menor puede morir tanto si se le interrumpe la gestación como si no, pero no se decantó por ninguna de las dos alternativas. Fortunately, three other doctors volunteer to carry out the abortion in a private clinic, and the girl is now as well as can be expected in the circumstances. Which is bad news as far as the President of Nicaragua, Enrique Bolaños, is concerned; his notions of morality evidently harken back to the era when the primary female role was to produce an heir, and in that cause was herself thoroughly expendable: El aborto de la menor fue un verdadero desafío a las advertencias hecha por el gobierno del presidente Enrique Bolaños, que optaba por salvar al niño por nacer, de que encausaría a los responsables. Evidently, he was showing himself a true man of the people in extending this dispensation to peasants with no land to inherit! And, no doubt, demonstrating that they were an integral part of the community by threatening to prosecute them for failing to care less about their daughter-in-being than about the agglomeration of cells bequeathed to her by the fine fellow who violated her. Since the guy was only elected in November 2001, one can surely rule out an electoral stunt designed to appeal to right-wing elements (he himself is apparently an ex-contra). One's left to imagine, therefore, that the man is as sincere in his beliefs as Tony Blair is in his. Finally, what of that popular vanguard, that included the hero of the revolution, Archbishop Oscar Romero: the Roman Catholic Church? If ever the phrase more Catholic than the Pope was more greatly deserved than by the current holder of Romero's office, Miguel Obando y Bravo, I'd like to know by whom. Suffer the little children indeed: he says that he hablado con médicos....y me dicen algunos de ellos especialistas en ginecología, que es posible salvar la vida de la niña y salvar la vida del bebé. Possible - but likely? I somehow feel that Bravo thinks that the wretched existence of a peasant girl is a price worth paying to safeguard the principle of the sanctity of human life. Strangely, the story goes on to note that Bravo was officiating at a mass in memory of Enrique Bermúdez, conocido como “Comandante 3-80”who appears to have been the leader of a terrorist group on the side of the Contras. (So much for the memory of the luckless Romero!) (It seems that the Catholic Church in Nicaragua models itself on its sister church in Ireland, which for a long time combined support (of varying degrees) for Fenian terror (itself not exactly ideologically wedded to Socialism) with a rigid rule of repression on its own people. Girls especially - through the instruments of the Magdalene Laundries [1] and the industrial schools run by the Sisters of Mercy [2].) Piquant indeed to find the prelate celebrating the life of a professional killer on the same day as condemning a nine year old girl to a bear her rapist's child.....
CORRECTION A correspondent has kindly pointed out that Oscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador, not Managua! Oh dear - an object-lesson (duly learnt) in not inserting colourful namechecks without checking the names first! | Friday, February 21, 2003
Blair - close to losing it at Berlusconi press conference?Judge for yourselves from the clips on the evening news [1]. But, seeing just a snippet from today's performance, I reckon Tony's reservoir of coolant is running dangerously low. When asked by ITV journo Juliet Bremner on the teatime news (around 1840 GMT) whether (from memory) he had any doubts when he'd failed to persuade so many of his own people, he seemed to be on the point of dashing off the platform to strangle the woman. Long pauses in the reply, as if reciting the méthode Coué mantra between each few words! In her little piece to camera, she said that the general opinion of the hacks in the prime ministerial party was that Blair had been talking to us like a bunch of thick schookids who just didn't get it. And she looked almost as pissed-off as Blair had done!
| US plans Iraq military government - Chalabi slips his leashDuring World War 2, one of Charles de Gaulle's great triumphs (certainly in his own mind) of his time as leader of the Free French was to avoid the humiliation of seeing liberated France placed under an AMGOT [1]. According to today's WaPo, Bush has lined up an AMGOT to take over 'liberated' Iraq - except that once security was established General Tommy Franks would hand over to a civilian U.S. administrator [who] would run the civilian government and direct reconstruction and humanitarian aid. (Though, one assumes, US forces or their replacements would continue to do or supervise much of the work for a good while thereafter.) And guess who's not happy? None other than Rumsfeld/Perle house-pet, Ahmed Chalabi. All along, he's wanted a transitional government of Iraqis in place - and, according to this report of two weeks ago, Mohamed al-Jabiri [2], who has just returned from in talks with Washington, said the White House has given its "blessing" to the head of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, to lead a transitional coalition government in Iraq once Saddam has been deposed. Oh dear! Not Administration disarray, surely? If not, what? Descending from the realm of Cloud Cuckoo Land in which Chalabi and the Perle Tendency dwell, it's blindingly obvious that the Iraqi opposition in general, and Chalabi in particular, are, and never have been, in any condition to run a whelk-stall, let alone a country. So, cui bono? Looks like an operation in pissing somebody off - Chalabi would scarcely be worth the bother. So presumably its an intra-Administration deal. How does the organisation chart work for post-conquest governance of countries: is that a State Department responsibility? Because that might explain it....
UPDATE Further particulars of Iraqi opposition disarray in a companion piece in the Guardian. It says that Chalabi has even raised the possibility of a revolt against the American occupation troops after the war is over.And Mr Chalabi is seeking to declare a provisional government when the war starts. The Chalabi plan, which has been seen by the Guardian, envisages the establishment of a leadership council, drawn from the 65 members of a steering committee appointed at an opposition conference in London in December. According to the piece, The plan has alienated some of Mr Chalabi's most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq. And, "People in this administration tried very hard to put the [INC-led] opposition into power," said Leith Kubba, a founder member of the INC who is now non-affiliated. "But after a total investment of $100m, they are saying look at the money spent and ask what do we have to work with? Is there a coherent front? The answer is no." Apparently, there is such a man as Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House "special envoy and ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis"who is up to all sorts of tricks: The Guardian has learned that Mr Khalilzad is trying to arrange a rival meeting [to one planned in Irbil] with 15 Iraqi opposition figures and exiles. Mr Chalabi has so far not been invited..... So what to conclude? That the Administration has wised up to the absurdity of the Iraqi opposition? Mr Khalilzad's pivotal role clearly indicates not. That Rumsfeld/Perle have finally grown tired of their poodle's antics, and decided to consign him to the animal sanctuary? | Thursday, February 20, 2003
Chirac's African summit - three more votes in the no/abstain column?The shmoozefest at the Elysée seems to have produced results beyond illusions of self-aggrandisement on the part of the tenant. It's all over the wires (Reuters, for instance, and AFP) in the last two or three hours that the African Three amongst the nonperms on the UN Security Council have been persuaded to join in a declaration asking for more time for the inspection process - and therefore tacitly opposing any US resolution seeking an early end to that process. How reliable such support might be for the anti-war cause - or, at least, the no war yet cause - remains to be seen. There was a piece on Newsnight on BBC TV tonight mentioning the French success, and adding that US diplomacy was already seeking to undo it - which I doubt really counts as news at all! But, returning to the vote-counting of my piece of earlier today, it seems that they represent a substantial cushion against the possibility of waverers amongst, in particular, the Latins (Mexico and Chile). In fact, I think it would be reasonable to count China as a pretty automatic abstention - it's the Chinese default position, and I can't see any reason why they should, in this instance, move either to veto or to support a second resolution. In that case, the blocking seven could be achieved without any African support (Russian, China, France, Mexico, Chile, Germany and Syria), though the Africans would be available to 'come off the bench' as necessary. In fact, the more I count the votes, the tougher it's looking for Powell to get his necessary nine. He needs five (with US, UK, Bulgaria and Spain already in the bank); and France (with 11 now pencilled in - some more firmly than others!) can afford to lose four and still kill the resolution. | | Security Council voting rules - a salutary recapAs we approach race time for the Second Resolution Handicap, the tipping action is fast and furious (as with, for example, today's New York Times.) Talk of Mexico and Chile wanting the P5 to sort it out amongst themselves, Russia wanting to abstain, etc, etc. But it's useful, perhaps (OK, useful for me, at least) to take another squint at the voting rules for the UN Security Council, as contained in Article 27 of the UN Charter, which reads as follows:
The striking things from a first re-reading are:
That means, in effect, that abstentions count as votes against. Now, when it comes to public presentation, of course, US clients like Mexico may well find it easier to justify an abstention than a vote against Uncle Sam. The guys at State will know that there is no substantial difference; but when it comes to inflicting reprisals, they may find it harder to garner any support in Congress that they need if it's a case of punishing a mere abstention, rather than a vote against. And even France, which has seemed keen to go out of its way to pick a fight with the US, may find it can do what's necessary just by adding its name to the abstention column. So, counting Syria and Germany as the baseline noes/abstentions, a further five in either category would suffice to beat a US/UK resolution. Russia, France, Mexico, Chile - one more and.... Let's not count chickens, though.... [There is a knock-on question relating to the Uniting for Peace Resolution business (I last discussed yesterday): in order to come within the scope of this procedure, it's necessary to show that the UNSC is deadlocked because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members. Does it matter that this deadlock is not expressed by the exercise of the veto?] | Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Non-aligned nations mobilise - could Uniting for Peace actually happen?Distinguish first of all news from wishing-thinking. The Non-Aligned Movement - since the end of the Cold War, if not long before, as good as its name: all over the place - has shown sufficient organisation and substance to secure a special meeting of the UN Security Council for UN members not currently on the UNSC to have their say on Iraq and the war. According to the AP report, nearly 60 nations have put their names down to speak in the open session (which started yesterday, and is continuing today). South Africa apparently took the lead on behalf on the NAM, asking for a strengthening of the inspection effort. (A full transcript of proceedings will eventually appear here.) That such a session should take place is not, perhaps, of much significance in itself. But it is at least an indication of the capacity and willingness of a large group of nations [1] to organise themselves in the UN to fight the war. The Uniting for Peace Resolution (which I first discussed on Sunday - the main part of the General Assembly Resolution establishing the procedure is set out there) is, perhaps, the best way that such a group can make its mark on the debate. Not, of course, expecting such a resolution to stop the war - there is not the slightest sign that anything coming out of the UN or anywhere else would have that effect on USG plans. Not directly, at least. But in causing delay, uncertainty, confusion - allowing the maximum play for events to supervene - it might do some good. It would also be good for the morale of those opposing the war to see a 'second front' opened up at the UN; and the process would savour less of the impenetrable diplomacy of the SC, and more of the anti-war rally. The involvement of Third World nations in the vanguard of the UN process would appeal both to those politically inclined to sympathy with the Third World, and also those naturally supportive of the underdog. The NAM nations themselves (and the rest supporting the UFPR process) would have the satisfaction of doing something for world peace - and cocking a snook at the Great Satan - whilst having safety in numbers against US reprisals. Politically, it's a feelgood manoeuvre, with the vibe of Passport to Pimlico or San Marino v Brazil in the (soccer) World Cup: it's expected to fail utterly, so any benefit to the cause of stopping Bush's war represents an infinite percentage surplus over budget - the proponents have nothing to lose; whereas to secure even a few days' delay in hostilities; to tie up precious resources at State and the Foreign Office; to drive Saint Colin to distraction on network TV - these would be perceived as defeats for USG and friends, with loss of morale, loss of face, sand in the war machine, and other good things. And, if time is as critical as they say it is [2], delay of only a few days may make the difference between war in March and waiting till November. If the resolution was actually secured (and here we move into the realm of fantasy, of course!), the game would really get interesting: it's one thing for Bush to say that he doesn't need another resolution; and for Blair to talk about unreasonable vetoes. But, if a UFPR passed, it would be on a straight vote of representatives of the entire planet; and it would leave Bush/Blair not with the mere absence of authorisation for war, but with a positive injunction against war (at least pending further inspections). In that event the position under international law would be interesting, to say the least; and the effect on public opinion in that critical swing state of Blair's might be decisive. In order to make the process work, what's needed is a floor manager, a Lyndon Johnson to know who needs what, to count the votes, to corral the representatives, to make sure all the procedural requirements are satisfied to the letter - and to make sure the buggers all turn up on time and vote the way they promised! As I said in the earlier piece, the first requirement is either 7 SC members or half the total membership (list here) of 191 countries (ie 96) supporting a request for an emergency session of the UN General Assembly. A resolution would, of course, have to be drafted to appeal to the maximum number of member states, to satisfy the terms of GAR 377, and (not to be forgotten) to give the possibility of actually doing some substantive good for the Iraq situation. And it would only be in order [3] if submitted after the UNSC has deadlocked because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members. Delegations at UNHQ would need to get authority from their governments to use the procedure, involving varying and uncertain lead-times before their country could safely be added to the Yes column. The US and UK would certainly counter-attack with threats and bribes (though multiplying by 10 or 20 the numbers to be got at - compared with the stray nonperms on the SC - obviously makes the task much costlier in man-hours, if not in slush-fund outlays!). Keeping the troops in line would be a job of work for whomever was floor-managing the resolution and his team. But the reward in terms of publicity and kudos for even partial success could be considerable. That's the brilliant plan, at least. Testing the old proverb, Cometh the hour, cometh the man....
| Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Blair press conference today - one or two nuggets amongst the drossThe prose of our beloved prime minister has the qualities of Flanders' mud: too slippery to grasp properly, but solid enough utterly to bog you down - and in quantities sufficient to bury you! You mind's meant to give up, thus surrendering your senses to the indoctrinating mood music of gesture, cadence and intonation. And that Colgate-Ring-of-Confidence smile, of course, whenever he thinks it not utterly tasteless to give us all a flash. So, what today? Needless to say, the dolly-drops (hanging curves) from the journos gave him no difficulties whatsoever [1]. The First Great Elision lives: the fictional Saddam-terrorism nexus is given several outings, on the guilt by association principle: ....So the stance that the world takes now against Saddam is not just vital in its own right, it is a huge test of our seriousness in dealing with the twin threats of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.And ....this issue of weapons of mass destruction and the link with international terrorism is serious and dangerous for our country and for the world;.... The Why single out Saddam? question receives its usual inconsequential mantra: Saddam is a threat. That is why for 12 years the United Nations has been trying to get him to disarm Iraq peacefully of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. He is not the only dictator in the world, he is not the only tyrant. Iraq is not the only power with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but he is the only leader who has used them, he is the only one with 23 outstanding United Nations resolutions in respect of them, he is the only leader still in power that has twice declared war on his neighbours and fired missiles at no fewer than 5 different countries. That this analysis is essentially retrospective - whereas the only justification for war is the actual threat he poses now and in the future - well, that went unquestioned. Blair's insistence that the world has been patient with Saddam ....So there is no rush to war. Indeed we have waited 12 years....doesn't, of course, compute. (The delay shows containment works - so why not another 12 years? Why war in weeks?) Naturally, no journos ran with the point. We are now seeing the Second Great Elision brought centre-stage: the floating moral backstop - not, Tony insists, the justification for war, but a security blanket for the weaker brethren to cling to as they see the fuel-air explosives whoosh.... But then he straight away admits that the evil nature of Saddam's makes it easier to decide to attack, and to attack early: .....I keep saying to people, look if this was a regime that had weapons of mass destruction but was otherwise a benign regime, ruling its country well, you would think a lot harder before taking military action because the nature of the regime would be benign, even though there was a problem say in relation to weapons of mass destruction. But it is the very nature of Saddam, how he operates is history, how he treats his people, that mean that in his hands these weapons of mass destruction are all the more dangerous........ And this, lurking in yet another turgid paragraph on public opinion: Now I believe it is our job to carry on trying to persuade people of that, and also to persuade people of the moral case for removing Saddam, who is a murderous and brutal dictator who has caused death and destruction to thousands, indeed millions of his fellow citizens. The journo asking the first question at the presscon asked about shifting rationales. But, though this (arising from the speech on Saturday - I've discussed before here and here) is a fresh issue on which you would have hoped journos would have got together to put pressure on Blair - there was nothing concerted. On consequential effects of the war he borrows from the John Prescott school of oral dyslexia in order to obfuscate and flummox, and successfully evade the awkward issue: If I thought we were going to unleash something in which hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, we were going to have more Bin Ladens, the Middle East was going to go up in flames, no of course I don't believe that that is the case because I think people are forgetting one very, very simple thing, and that is that the United Nations has laid down an instruction to Iraq that the whole of the world, including the Arab world incidentally, believes should be implemented. But, based on what he said on Afghanistan, he may not be as committed to micromanaging the post-war situation as he is the war itself: In Afghanistan, I know there are bits and pieces about all the problems there are in Afghanistan, when Mr Karzai comes here, as I hope he will in the next few months, I think it is just worth interviewing and talking to him about the situation in Afghanistan. Bits and pieces.... Further confirmation of Blair's mental state in this interchange: Q Do you accept that your stance on Iraq has alienated many loyal supporters of the Labour Party and are you concerned about the implications for Labour's prospects at the Scottish elections and the Welsh and local government elections in England? Of course, there is not just a decision to be made - and the matter itself is inextricably muddled. For strong, read simplistic. Finally, on the deliberate morality-security confusion, Blair was asked The letter you have circulated from Iraqis in exile in the UK condemns the failure of the UN to uphold Resolution 688 which would sanction force if Saddam failed to respect human rights. Why, if you feel so powerfully about the human rights abuses, are you not pushing for that resolution to be upheld? The reply: Well I would push for the resolution to be upheld.........There is no point in me trying to kid people that we can't remove Saddam simply on that basis. One question from left field: a suggestion that Blair's concerns on WMDs should start by reviewing why we approved the export of say iridium to Iran Blair momentarily escapes the Bush embrace to side with the mullah-loving Old Europe: But I don't think that is the threat that we are looking at. The threat that we are looking at are rogue and unstable states that are trading in this stuff, or terrorist groups with access to it. And don't think Khamenei isn't grateful for the free pass. (Even if there's nothing dramatic on Google to suggest that the UK actually has exported iridium to Iran. Not yet, perhaps....)
| Another fine technical mess: but RSS still available!If you can read this right now, you're using the RSS feed - because the main blog is not taking posts right now. Just as the last time this happened, I'll be posting here to keep the feed - well, fed, as well as putting the stuff onto the backup blog. Until the Blogger blog mysteriously starts behaving again, as eventually it does. Touching wood now.... | Blair press conference today - one or two nuggets amongst the drossThe prose of our beloved prime minister has the qualities of Flanders' mud: too slippery to grasp properly, but solid enough utterly to bog you down - and in quantities sufficient to bury you! You mind's meant to give up, thus surrendering your senses to the indoctrinating mood music of gesture, cadence and intonation. And that Colgate-Ring-of-Confidence smile, of course, whenever he thinks it not utterly tasteless to give us all a flash. So, what today? Needless to say, the dolly-drops (hanging curves) from the journos gave him no difficulties whatsoever [1]. The First Great Elision lives: the fictional Saddam-terrorism nexus is given several outings, on the guilt by association principle: ....So the stance that the world takes now against Saddam is not just vital in its own right, it is a huge test of our seriousness in dealing with the twin threats of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.And ....this issue of weapons of mass destruction and the link with international terrorism is serious and dangerous for our country and for the world;.... The Why single out Saddam? question receives its usual inconsquential mantra: Saddam is a threat. That is why for 12 years the United Nations has been trying to get him to disarm Iraq peacefully of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. He is not the only dictator in the world, he is not the only tyrant. Iraq is not the only power with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but he is the only leader who has used them, he is the only one with 23 outstanding United Nations resolutions in respect of them, he is the only leader still in power that has twice declared war on his neighbours and fired missiles at no fewer than 5 different countries. That this analysis is essentially retrospective - whereas the only justification for war is the actual threat he poses now and in the future - well, that went unquestioned. Blair's insistence that the world has been patient with Saddam ....So there is no rush to war. Indeed we have waited 12 years....doesn't, of course, compute. (The delay shows containment works - so why not another 12 years? Why war in weeks?) Naturally, no journos ran with the point. We are now seeing the Second Great Elision brought centre-stage: the floating moral backstop - not, Tony insists, the justification for war, but a security blanket for the weaker brethren to cling to as they see the fuel-air explosives whoosh.... But then he straight away admits that the evil nature of Saddam's makes it easier to decide to attack, and to attack early: .....I keep saying to people, look if this was a regime that had weapons of mass destruction but was otherwise a benign regime, ruling its country well, you would think a lot harder before taking military action because the nature of the regime would be benign, even though there was a problem say in relation to weapons of mass destruction. But it is the very nature of Saddam, how he operates is history, how he treats his people, that mean that in his hands these weapons of mass destruction are all the more dangerous........ And this, lurking in yet another turgid paragraph on public opinion: Now I believe it is our job to carry on trying to persuade people of that, and also to persuade people of the moral case for removing Saddam, who is a murderous and brutal dictator who has caused death and destruction to thousands, indeed millions of his fellow citizens. The journo asking the first question at the presscon asked about shifting rationales. But, though this (arising from the speech on Saturday - I've discussed before here and here) is a fresh issue on which you would have hoped journos would have got together to put pressure on Blair - there was nothing concerted. On consequential effects of the war he borrows from the John Prescott school of oral dyslexia in order to obfuscate and flummox, and successfully evade the awkward issue: If I thought we were going to unleash something in which hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, we were going to have more Bin Ladens, the Middle East was going to go up in flames, no of course I don't believe that that is the case because I think people are forgetting one very, very simple thing, and that is that the United Nations has laid down an instruction to Iraq that the whole of the world, including the Arab world incidentally, believes should be implemented. But, based on what he said on Afghanistan, he may not be as committed to micromanaging the post-war situation as he is the war itself: In Afghanistan, I know there are bits and pieces about all the problems there are in Afghanistan, when Mr Karzai comes here, as I hope he will in the next few months, I think it is just worth interviewing and talking to him about the situation in Afghanistan. Bits and pieces.... Further confirmation of Blair's mental state in this interchange: Q Do you accept that your stance on Iraq has alienated many loyal supporters of the Labour Party and are you concerned about the implications for Labour's prospects at the Scottish elections and the Welsh and local government elections in England? Of course, there is not just a decision to be made - and the matter itself is inextricably muddled. For strong, read simplistic. Finally, on the deliberate morality-security confusion, Blair was asked The letter you have circulated from Iraqis in exile in the UK condemns the failure of the UN to uphold Resolution 688 which would sanction force if Saddam failed to respect human rights. Why, if you feel so powerfully about the human rights abuses, are you not pushing for that resolution to be upheld? The reply: Well I would push for the resolution to be upheld.........There is no point in me trying to kid people that we can't remove Saddam simply on that basis. One question from left field: a suggestion that Blair's concerns on WMDs should start by reviewing why we approved the export of say iridium to Iran Blair momentarily escapes the Bush embrace to side with the mullah-loving Old Europe: But I don't think that is the threat that we are looking at. The threat that we are looking at are rogue and unstable states that are trading in this stuff, or terrorist groups with access to it. And don't think Khamanei isn't grateful for the free pass. (Even if there's nothing dramatic on Google to suggest that the UK actually has exported iridium to Iran. Not yet, perhaps....)
| UK now polling against war. PeriodUp till now, you've not (so far as I'm aware) been able to poll a majority of UK voters as being against the war unless the statement's been qualified - as in, for example, war without a second Security Council resolution. In the latest poll (fieldwork 14-16 February [1]) there is a majority of 52% to 29% saying Disapprove to the question Would you approve or disapprove of a military attack on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein? Interestingly, whereas men split 45:38, women split 50:20; and Blair has kept his supporters on board - just: 44:38 for Approve amongst those planning to vote Labour. Blair's personal popularity rating has dipped from +6% to -20% since May 2002: but, then, that's not something he's bothered about, apparently. On other fronts, Labour has no worries. The only guy who can bring down Blair is Blair.
| Best line ever about Mr Shakedown? Pity it won't cross the pond!And from the Guardian too, of all right-on places, listing the speakers at the anti-war rally in Hyde Park: ......And we got the star guest, the Rev Jesse Jackson, who was presumably invited to remind us of the great civil rights marches of the 1960s but who is to the Rev Dr Martin Luther King as Gareth Gates is to James Brown. | Monday, February 17, 2003
What's the point of blogging against the war?Those that can, do; those that can't, blog. I have two or three notions in mind. First, the war - the diplomatic and military mechanics - puzzles me. Ignorance - most especially my own - disappoints me. A disappointment I usually find myself able to overcome - but the imminence of war seems to set a higher standard. In most cases, it's impossible even to formulate the point at issue without writing it down. Even less, to work out the answer, insofar as I'm able. Having gone to the trouble of getting question and answer (however crudely expressed) down in black and white, it's scarcely a sacrifice to make them known (for what they're worth). Second, it's just conceivable that the war can be delayed. If that's going to happen, it's most unlikely to be by some great political coup. It's going to be a collateral action, a sideswipe, a banana-skin that achieves it. Some concatenation of unlikely happenstance that might - who knows? - start with a few words from me. Or someone like me. Third, as an end in itself, we should all do our best (I know: toxic, Blair-level sanctimony! but...): following a little baseball on the TV as I do, the thing that strikes me is - the guy batting ninth - perhaps up from AAA just for a couple of weeks - who runs for first like the clappers: he's hit a soft ground ball to third, and he's out nine times out of ten - but he still runs like the clappers. And the guy at third, this one time bobbles it. And he's the winning run; and the batter's a hero for a day! But, as he's running, he's no idea of any of this. He just runs because it's the right thing to do. Lastly, there should be a record of thought about the war: a sort of 21st century Mass Observation. For the benefit of future generations bemused at how so absurd an enterprise (in the same line as Tulipmania and the hula-hoop craze - only with killing) could have gripped so small a number of the Great and Good and been visited on so many of the rest of us..... | Could a UN Security Council authorisation of the use of force be made against international law?A few weeks ago, this, essentially, was the question posed to me. Answer, as the Provincial Lady would put it, came there none. Definitive answer, at any rate. The article cited is useful - but only so far as justifying the proposition that the delegation by the UNSC to coalitions of the willing of the power to wage war is not inherently unlawful. The starting-point in ascertaining the law of the use of force is Article 2(4) of the UN Charter: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. One then proceeds to the case of Nicaragua v US [1], which deals with a suit brought before the International Court of Justice following alleged USG activities in support of the contras. The fact we wait till page 85a to get to the meat of the case testifies to the Jarndyce v Jarndyce quality of the ligitation. On page 87a (para 190), the judgement of the court states that both parties to the case, and the International Law Commission, had opined that Art 2(4) was jus cogens, or law binding on states such as to override all other obligations (eg treaty obligations). So far as I can see, the ICJ does not expressly concur with this statement, but seems generally to be taken to have done so. It then, in para 191, goes on to cite General Assembly Resolution 2625 as an opinio juris on the legitimacy in international law of the use of force. The judgement then goes on to consider law as applicable to Latin America, and as it relates to the right to self-defence (in particular, on behalf of countries which have not requested intervention on their behalf!). Clearly, a proper understanding of this area of international law requires a degree of familiarity with the Nicaragua litigation, for one, that I don't have. But, from what I've read, the primacy of Art 2(4) is generally undisputed (except in relation to the scope of the right under customary law to self-defence, where there seems to be a grey area). This would seem to suggest that a SCR authorising unprovoked aggression by one state against another would itself be unlawful under Art 2(4). Art 2, is, after all, in the section of the Charter entitled Purpose and Principles: my guess (no more than that) would be that the construction of Chapter VII would be that any action thereunder would have to be subject to Art 2(4). The fact that Art 43 forces do not exist - and therefore any pretence by the UNSC of authorising military action under Chapter VII is already stretching the Charter to an extent - perhaps makes the Art 2(4) limitation more germane. Powers of enforcement of international law exercisable against the UNSC are, of course, woefully lacking. There would be power in the UNSC to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the extent of UNSC powers to authorise force. But that particular hearing can, I think, safely be set down for the Greek Kalends. Authorisation of unprovoked aggression is, of course, a limiting case of academic interest only (but then, so is most of mathematics). The extent to which decisions are at large in this area arises, of course, from the facts that they are essentially political, and lie between two or more countries. Political decisions can be controlled (most decent democracies have some sort of judicial review procedure); and an international aspect is usually no bar to finding one country that will issue an authoritative decision on an issue. It's the combination which is fatal. On Iraq - or any similar case - I can't see that there is any way to obtain an ICJ review - a resolution to seek an advisory ICJ opinion could be tabled before the UNSC, but, as I say, it would, no doubt, be vetoed by the would-be belligerent powers. And, even if some kind of equivalent of the 1950 Soviet boycott occurred (we're in the realms of fantasy here, clearly), the timing of any ICJ decision would be so in arrears of the military situation as to make it pretty much useless. The fact is that the more political a decision is, the less amenable it is to judicial scrutiny (the Baker v Carr notion, as previously discussed in relation to previous attempts to stop US military action). And that's not a function of particular texts or legal systems, but of hard reality.
| Blair Speech 2: the moral dimensionThis wasn't next on my list of matters arising from Tony Blair's big Saturday speech (which I dealt with first here). But since it seems to have taken a strange hold on no less a personage than Instapundit, I thought it would be worth bumping up the list. Blair perceived he had a presentational problem: while his pitch for war was that Saddam was a danger to peace (linked in the usual icky and patently unconvincing way with Al Qaida), the multitudes would be out on the streets preparing, so he thought, to march for morality against the war. And Blair, adapting the motto of the John Lewis store chain, is never knowingly overmoralised. But - the first thing to note - he went out of his way to say that the moral case was not the reason he was proposing war. Here's how he introduced his morality section [emphases mine]: What brings thousands of people out in protests across the world? .....It is a right and entirely understandable hatred of war. It is moral purpose, and I respect that. All of this Instapundit strangely omits. Then comes the section (which he does quote) where Blair pleads that by getting rid of Saddam, we would be doing the Iraqi people a big favour. He gives a string of unpleasant facts - which I assume he has checked out with a little more than the usual thoroughness - about life under the dictator. And then he says: But as you watch your TV pictures of the march, ponder this: The implication is clear: those that oppose the war are henceforth Saddam's accomplices in his evil deeds. (It's not a new charge: Colin Powell (America's Chief Diplomat) sneered rhetorically last Thursday about France and Germany: The question I will put to them is:.........are you just delaying for the sake of delaying in order to get Saddam Hussein off the hook and no disarmament?) One might answer by pointing out that much of the death and destruction wreaked by Saddam was done whilst he was an ally of the West - a cosiness in part secured back in 1983 by one Donald Rumsfeld, of course; that, for example, numbers of Shia and Kurds butchered by Saddam died after being incited to rebel by Bush, Sr in 1991 and left to their fate. But all that would be beside the point: the only justification claimed by Blair and Bush for waging war on Saddam is the threat to peace he poses. Not even Saint Tony alleges that the horrors he lists are a reason to do so: avoiding their repetition would merely a happy by-product, purely incidental, bunce. Because, if he was bringing up the horrors as a reason for war, then he would be opening another can of worms marked Why Just Saddam? far bigger than the can of the same name opened by proposing war on threat to peace grounds. If stopping suffering was a reason for war, you'd do probably more good invading Zimbabwe. Or any number of other countries. [There is a precedent for humanitarian war in the NATO attacks to save Kosovo in 1999. Attacks, moreover, undertaken without UN authorisation. Why, I wonder, didn't Blair and Bush jump at the chance of exploiting this precedent as cover to bring down the man who tried to kill Bush's Dad?] Now, in the speech, Blair is careful to keep the reason for war, and its happy consequences, entirely separate. But, beyond smearing the opponents of war with complicity with Saddam, it's clear that he wants the public to make the elision in their own minds (that's what press reports like this [1] suggest): it's not just a question of giving them a clear conscience:he wants them to feel that they're not just approving an exercise in power politics; wants to blot out the War for Oil idea; wants to give them a feelgood reason to be with him. In that, I reckon he's missed his mark. The marchers, and the public, take a more sophisticated position on the war than he does. As an op-ed put it yesterday, ...the centre of gravity of British public opinion .....is too nuanced to splash on a banner, too much of a mouthful to chant, the slogan: No War Until Dr Blix Produces More Conclusive Evidence That Would Justify A Second Resolution From The Security Council. There are two sorts of danger for Blair: first, that he be seen (despite his express statements to the contrary) to be shifting his justification for war from security to morality. Like a criminal defendant changing his defence from alibi to insanity in mid trial, the second justification not only fails to convince as coming late in the day, but entirely cuts the ground from under the first. He loses both ways. Second, the more Blair embellishes his story - and, in particular, the more he tries to lay on the guilt - the less plausible he is, and the less persuasive becomes the case for war. Remember, in the mind of the British public, Phony Tony has a rap-sheet as long as your arm for twisting the truth - and for coming unstuck trying to be too clever in so doing. And, while on the subject, I'm assuming that the email from Rania Kashi and letter from Dr Safa Hashim that Blair quoted have both been checked out. We recall the PR stunts from the run-up to the first Gulf War - for instance, the Hill & Knowlton 'incubator babies' scam, involving sobbing testimony from a 'witness' who turned out to be the Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Washington!). And are bound to enquire what cons are being run this time round [2].
| Sunday, February 16, 2003
Kamikaze Blair's answer to the marchersTony Blair's Glasgow speech, delivered yesterday Saturday shortly before the anti-war protests in the UK got underway, is a cherry that deserves several bites. Bite #1.... In Dr Strangelove you may recall (as dimly as I did, I suspect) that the plot turned on the fact that the rogue nuclear-armed bomber had switched on a device (the CRM114) so that its radio would only receive a message preceded by a specified code. The rationale for this device was that, without it, the Russkies might send a false recall message to a bomber genuinely tasked with a device to unload, thereby sowing confusion and doubt amongst the crew and possibly thereby securing an unjust escape from annihilation. One - perhaps the most important - message from yesterday's speech is further, and surely conclusive, evidence that Blair has switched on his own personal CRM114. The signals that are vital to the survival and prosperity of any elected official from dogcatcher to President of the United States - of waxing and waning support amongst the public, party activists, legislators - were now obliterated in the tinnitus of Tony's self-righteousness. (Which, spookily, the rest of us can actually hear....) I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction. It's not the first time he's said something of the sort: for example, during the Paxman interview: BLAIR: ......And, I've said this before, it may be, even if I'm the only person left saying it, I'm going to say it. It's a threat and a danger that we have to confront and there's no reason for these people to have these weapons in this way, there is no reason why they can't co-operate with the UN and these terrorist groups out there they are trying every day as we speak to get hold of this stuff and use it. These are not separate threats, they're related and linked. And in the House of Commons 'debate' on the plagiarised report: People ask me why I am, in a sense, risking everything politically on this issue, but I say to them in all honesty that I do not want to be the Prime Minister to whom people point the finger in history and say, "You knew perfectly well that those two threats were there, and you didn't do anything about it. In the end, you took the easy way out. You said, 'No, let's park it a little. Let's leave it—let's wait and see how it goes.'" We know that these threats are there and we have got to deal with them. I think that, in the end, in situations such as this the British people always ultimately respond, because they have a common sense and a faith that sees them through. What he's doing, of course, negating the democratic process (such as it is in the UK); giving stark form to Lord Hailsham's jibe about the UK's elective dictatorship. Except on General Election Day every four or five years, the only influence even a unanimous public opinion can have on a prime minister is the threat that, come the next election, he will be voted out of office. Blair is saying, yesterday more loudly than ever, that he doesn't care. There is no democratic sanction: he will do what he damn well likes, and, if he's defeated next election, so be it. It is about as un-political a thing for a Britsh prime minister to do as one can think - proof positive of his Iraqi monomania. Whether his fanaticism is shared by his senior colleagues is much to be doubted: Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and heir apparent, has been as tepid on the war as some of the marchers. AP quotes him yesterday speaking thus: In the difficult decisions he has to make for our country, we should all give Tony Blair, the leader of our party, our full support as he seeks to find an international way forward for the necessary disarmament of Saddam Hussein.Loyalty to the man, barely anything more. A month ago, I discussed whether the war might be fatal to the (apparently impregnable) Blair premiership. The key point is still that, under the British system, a PM relies for his survival on the continuing support of his parliamentary party. Thatcher was kicked out with a 100-ish seat majority in the House of Commons. Like the stock markets, party loyalties are prospective: if Labour MPs think that Blair's war will do for them at the next election, they will throw him out. And Gordon Brown will not require much persuasion to succumb to requests to take his place. Trouble is, Blair's evidently quite content with that prospect. He knows he'll most likely have got his war first..... | Uniting for Peace General Assembly resolution - worth a shot?In the cause of fighting against Bush's war on as many fronts as possible, it's worth flagging up the possibility of seeking a Uniting for Peace resolution. (Its possible use in the Iraq case isn't my idea - for example, I see that CCR have a campaign going. But it doesn't seem to be as well-known as it should be (I only thought to look when reminded, reading an international law textbook, that there was such a thing as a UFPR).) What is it? There is pitifully little on this online, and I have nothing helpful in the dead-tree line to hand. But, Cliff Notes version: at the outbreak of the Korean War, in 1950, the Russians' boycott of the Security Council (over Chiang kai-Shek's retaining China's SC seat) allowed SC resolutions to be passed - SCR 82 and 83 (June 25 and 27 1950) respectively calling for a ceasefire and authorising the use of force in South Korea's defence [1]. That loophole was soon shut, and the SC was pretty much iced up for the duration. The UFPR was a way round the problem. General Assembly Resolution 377 (November 3 1950) states (Section A (A)(1)) that the GA Resolves that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security. If not in session at the time, the General Assembly may meet in emergency special session within twenty-four hours of the request therefor. Such emergency special session shall be called if requested by the Security Council on the vote of any seven members, or by a majority of the Members of the United Nations; The resolution then goes on to stipulate procedures, modalities, etc. I believe a UFPR was used, for example, to provide a settlement to the 1956 Arab-Israeli war to overcome British and French vetoes [2]. Clearly, even to get such a resolution tabled before the GA in time to do any good would require a minor miracle. First, the UFPR is only ripe once the UNSC has failed to act - that, I suspect, would need the exercise of a veto, or the near certainty of such exercise (ie, we're not there yet). Then, we need 7 SC members or (surely impossible?) half the UN membership to support an emergency session (we're between the 56th and 57th regular session - the latter starts in September 2003!). Powell and his merry men trying to lobby 200 delegations is delightful to contemplate. But almost certainly will never happen outside Cloud Cuckoo Land. Unless we get that miracle... That's all I've got for the moment: another item on the lengthy research list!
| Saturday, February 15, 2003
Blix 2 and Powell's scowl - pieces of the puzzleIn yesterday morning's edition of the War Party's favourite rag, the Washington Times, we get the explanation - well, part of it, at least - for Powell's apoplexy yesterday: he thought that Blix was nobbled: U.S. officials say they are confident that a report today by the chief U.N. weapons inspectors will provide ample justification for a new Security Council resolution clearing the way for a war against Iraq...."We are not very much concerned about the report," one U.S. official said. Another triumph for US intelligence! This is a guy who talks to USG people every day, whose opinion is vital to war planning; and evidently they're too dumb to have worked out his stance on Saddam and WMDs, even in broad outline. But on what were they basing their sanguine beliefs on the content of Blix's spiel? Because National security adviser Condoleezza Rice flew to New York....to press chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to acknowledge in a Security Council briefing Friday that Iraq has failed to voluntarily scrap its prohibited [WMDs]. Condi, the not-so-secret agent, doorsteps the mild-mannered Swede and suggests that, unless he has a taste for hospital food, he'd better finger Saddam good and proper. And apparently takes a press pack with her, to ensure that the entire world knows that Uncle Sam is placing his boot on Blix's neck. (Is the videoconferencing kit down at the White House?) USG's understanding of human nature is clearly as comprehensive as its intelligence on Iraq. Following Rice's visit, Blix was left with only two choices: produce a report favourable to war, and thereby offer to the viewing millions the strong suggestion that he had been been coerced or bribed by USG; or save his dignity and give a balanced report. (Tweaking Powell's nose about the truck movements was, perhaps, a tad self-indulgent. But, I suspect, not a pleasure many of us would have forgone had we been in his place!) So, in summary, USG only has itself to blame for yesterday's débâcle: not that, untampered with, Blix would have produced a report supportive of immediate war. But, most likely, he'd have left out the Powell-baiting: which would be have been one less humiliation for the Administration's hapless former Voice of Moderation. | Friday, February 14, 2003
Blix - neutral on WMDs, lethal on US intelligenceWhatever you do, don't miss the clip of the day from Hans Blix's UN Security Council report on the TV news: the text starts off innocuously enough: The presentation of intelligence information by the U.S. secretary of state suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programs. But then the knife goes in: We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection. The implication was clear: Powell had fallen for Blair's plagiarised report; and now this jumped-up pen-pusher from Old Europe was telling him he'd failed to make the most basic checks on the intelligence product he was trumpeting as justification for war. And all in that downbeat Scandinavian sing-songy tone. And the Powell reaction shot - absolutely priceless! As if he'd just been regaled with a selection from the Theodore Bilbo Joke Book. I reckon Blix might need those blue helmets after all.... Especially given his coda to the story: Our reservation on this point does not detract from the appreciation of the briefing. Skol! | Bush/Blair and international law: a key contradictionFor some time, I've been trying (without success, to date) to gauge blind the shape of the argument on international law. Throughout, the War Party's case has come over in every aspect - military, political and legal - as shifty. Dishonesty appears to ooze from every pore - whether justifiedly or not. The tissue of half-truths, innuendoes, contradictions and evasions are a better than a Maginot Line against the probing of those unconvinced by the case, but unsure why. Take one aspect: a few minutes from Blix 2, it seems increasingly likely that the US and UK will propose a second resolution which avoids calling for an express Security Council authorisation of military action against Saddam, but recognises him as being in material breach of SCR 1441 and its predecessors. And they will take that finding as their justification for waging war. There are, in the theory of law, two types of rules with legal force: rules which make illegal those things which are morally wrong (homicide, theft, assault, etc); and rules which merely regulate life to make it easier and more civilised (a speed limit on roads, zoning porn establishments from residential areas, etc). The first sort of rule depends for its validity on the underlying morality; the second solely on the legal system which lays it down. So, for example, the general age of consent in Canada is 14 years; cross the border into Minnesota, it's 16; cross into New York, 17. The variation shows that there is no underlying moral rule that fixes a particular age; it's a matter of convenience, or history, or luck. (There is an underlying morality - that there's an age below which children should not be having sex: but it's so weak and vague as to result in the observed wide variation of laws between jurisdictions [1].) The same sort of idea, I believe [2], applies in international law. Some rules - like the general prohibition on the use of force, or the right to self-defence - are the equivalent of murder and theft. Their force isn't dependent on a particular treaty, or ruling from the International Court of Justice; they just exist. Whereas other rules (such as the maritime territorial limit) are of the second type; they only have force because a particular instrument or ruling has created them. They're Goo Goo rules - to make things more civilised in the world, for convenience or economic benefit. (As with domestic law, almost all international rules by number are of this second type.) Now, if, say, Turkey were to be attacked tomorrow [3], its right to self-defence would arise, not from the UN Charter but from the 'common law' rule of international law - informed by morality - which long antedated the Charter. The same, if, for example, the US discovered that a North Korean nuclear missile was shortly to be unleashed on San Franciso. No permission from the UN would be required for such self-defence, no particular formalities imposed by any UN document need be fulfilled. The UN simply doesn't enter into it [4]. But (point at last!) the ideas of material breach and unreasonable veto are completely different from this right to self-defence. They exist (if at all) only by virtue of the existence and processes of the UN. Just as, for example, the rules regarding the movement of the pieces in chess only exist for the purposes of the game of chess. There is no inherent morality in either (supposed) rule: no more than in the difference between Minnesota's 17 years and New York's 16. Or a 30mph or a 35mph speed limit in town. They are endogenous (to use a fancy word) to the artificial system built up around the UN in the last 58 years or so. The basis on which their existence (if any) and function is to be judged is that of international law in its fullest sense. What is surely impossible is, on the one hand, to hold Saddam as guilty of failing to comply with 1441, and thus (supposedly) be in material breach; and then suppose that, if the UNSC fails to give an express authorisation of war, that that breach of itself justifies such war. Or that an unreasonable veto may be ignored. Without the UN process to supply the material breach, the US is left, in searching for a justification for war, with arguments based on preemptive action in self-defence. Which even the Administration evidently seem less than happy to rely on. Blix is about to start up, and I've not yet really pinned this down. So I'll return to it later.
| Are the international law experts hiding on Iraq?Now, questions of international law have been merrily banded about throughout the current crisis. (I've bandied some myself.) But it's left to Brian Flemming of the Halifax Daily News (Nova Scotia) to point up what, on reflection, seems to be a genuine phenomenon: the general lack of expert commentary from practitioners and academics in the field of public international law. Just as, when the fighting starts, we'll expect to see a phalanx of ex-brass lined up behind desks in TV studios around the globe, one would have thought that, in the current, diplomatic, phase of hostilities, the professors would be in their place, slugging it out over such issues as, Can a material breach of a Security Council resolution justify military action? Is there such a thing in law as an unreasonable veto? Etc, etc. You'd have thought that this would be a once-in-a-generation for hard-up academics in the field to tout their wares. Whenever else is anyone going to be as interested in international law? The frustration is that the international law aspect is one of the few on which one might hope to get some kind of falsifiability - most of the discussion ranges over matters which are either shrouded in secrecy or pure expressions of opinion. Whereas the rules of international law do provide some kind of objective standard whereby some, at least, of the utterances of our lords and masters can be tested. Of course, Flemming may factually be wrong on the absence of experts. But at least it's a view that can be falsified.... | Thursday, February 13, 2003
Would an Iraqi counter-attack against Turkey legitimise an otherwise illegal war?This is not, I should say to avoid disappointment, a rhetorical question. The story so far: the US and UK (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) are seeking to obtain for the upcoming war on Iraq the status of legality under international law. This, they suppose, will be done on the basis of one of the following [1]:
Apart from a., the legality of each of these basis would be more or less hotly disputed. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that no express UNSC authorisation is given for the war [2], and that it is generally agreed that the other arguments for legality are not persuasive. The attack on Iraq nevertheless goes ahead, on several fronts, including across the Turkish border. Iraqi troops on the border retaliate with artillery or rocket attacks against targets in Turkey. Turkey will undoubtedly then claim assistance from its NATO allies under Art 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the first paragraph of which reads thus: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Art 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. We finally get to the point: Turkey has taken part in (or at least facilitated) what we're saying for the sake of argument is an illegal attack. Saddam, like the méchant animal he is, has defended himself. How can that defence then cloak the attack with the legality it lacked to start with? The point is a more general one - a country which launches an unprovoked attack on its neighbour surely cannot invoke rights under Art 51 when the innocent neighbour resists that attack? And if Art 51 does not apply to the defence of Turkey, following the launch of an illegal attack by the US and its allies across the Turkish frontier, then Art 5 of the NAT can't apply either [3]. You might say, this is exactly the sort of Old European pettifogging on which the Bushies would take great pleasure in relieving themselves. GWB, already apparently a chip off the John 'Pay Any Price' Kennedy block, might assume the mantle of that other stalwart of the Party of Treason, Frank 'I Am The Law' Hague. And, perhaps, once the hot metal starts flying, no one is going to give a flying one about the legal situation. But, since I happened to bring up the Art 5 business two weeks ago without contemplating this particular twist, I'm more than a little curious to see how it might be resolved in terms of international law.
| What we can - and cannot - expect France and Germany to do for peaceMooching round the blogosphere, I see that Chris Bertram at Junius is taking a point on this: The folks over at No War Blog seem to be investing a great deal of hope in France and Germany at the moment. This is seriously misplaced. First, there's a good case for a serious containment regime as an alternative to war, but the French and Germans aren't proposing anything that remotely fits that description as far as I can tell - this is just diplomatic manoeuvering for short-term gain. The French, in particular, are driven not by broadly moral considerations but by Chirac's calculation of national self interest. If you want an example of a country whose post-war foreign policy has been guided by high principle, France isn't it! I could be really wrong about this, but there seem to be two possibilities here: first, the Franco-German plan fills the space where a proper containment regime ought to be, and ends up discrediting the very possibility of there being one; or second, suitable promises and inducements eventually swing Chirac (and Putin) behind the war party. On either of those scenarios, we end up going to war. The big loser in all of this, unless things resolve very very quickly, is likely to be Tony Blair. Time presses on other matters, but here is the Cliff Notes version of my impression of the subject: The parties up the proverbial creek on war are the Germans (his opposition to the war is the only thing Schröder's got going for him - and he's been far too dogmatic to reverse now), the Americans (who burnt their boats some time ago, lest courage fail them) and the British (who are locked into the logique de guerre by the extremely un-English dogmatism of Saint Tony). Everyone else, it seems to me, is up for sale. (The French have always said they'll go to war if absolutely necessary - the recent initiative, the non-papier and allied Russo-German support, boxes them in to an extent, but my guess is that Chirac - who is a lame-duck, don't forget - won't let that stop him.) And I, for one, have never assumed anything else. Different nations will have different prices - the tiddlers like the Africans may be content with hard cash (preferably in the form of bearer bonds, no doubt). But, with skill and patience, it should be possible for US diplomacy to fashion a deal for each of the current UN Security Council members (except Syria and Germany) which will get them on board the war bus. Skill and patience. It's the lack of precisely these commodities in US diplomacy that the peace party is to a substantial extent depending on. (Powell took the wooden nickel of Tony Blair's plagiarised report, of course - not something to impress his diplomatic peers, I'd have thought.) The other thing is that, for the peace party, every day without war is a battle won. Even if (like me) you expect there to be a war, that's something worth a (very modest) celebration. And time is on our side not only in that sense, but in a number of other ones: the notorious closing of the climatic window with the advent of the Iraqi summer (about which I'm sceptical, but there you go); and the effect of sheer attrition on the War Party's diplomacy: I reckon the delay is easier on the forces kicking their heels in theatre than it is on the US/UK civil effort (State, DOD, White House - and the UK equivalents). If there is a logique de guerre, there is certainly also the opposite: the longer that the inspectors are in Iraq, the more people get used to the current state of affairs - of Saddam under the microscope, if not under the cosh - the harder, psychologically, it becomes for the recalcitrants to give up that measure of control and press the button for war. My personal bottom line: I expect the French (together with the Russians and Chinese) to come across, when the price is right. If they do, their opposition will have been good while it lasted. But it's still possible that they will not; and that's a state of affairs to be worked for as best we can. | A shocking way to say 'No' to Bush's war.....Now, this is way out of my range - caveat maxime lector - but, since I had the brilliant idea, no point in not sharing it.... The problem with the anti-protests to date is that they have yet to get within a country mile of the numbers that polls say are opposed to the war (at least absent the, as yet mythical, second UN Security Council resolution). Thus producing what is today's very Silent Majority. The main reason, I'd guess, is that the Silent Majority are not culturally attuned to participating in street demonstrations; and those that are willing to stretch a point for peace are put off by the insistence of organisers to bring in extraneous causes that are generally odious to them. (Can you say Mumia?) The solution - I'm thinking primarily about the UK here - would be a method of making Silent Majority feelings known which
My idea is to use what is a phenomenon well-known in the UK: the demand pickup. When, say, the (soccer) World Cup is on, at half-time and full-time during popular matches, the demand for electricity will spike as viewers get up and put the kettle on for a cup of tea (a TV pickup - as explained here, with graphs). So - the call would go out (with, say, a week's notice) from an appropriate individual that those wishing to protest the Bush/Blair plans for war should switch on their kettles at a specified date and time. In the UK, a good time would, perhaps, be 10pm on a weekday - to coincide with the start of the main evening news on the BBC [1]: one would get a synchronised start time, and the first image after the titles could be the monitor at National Grid headquarters showing electricity demand spiking in real time. (Or not - this is scarcely a one-way bet!) The expected demand for that time of day would be known - it wouldn't be too hard, therefore, to illustrate the excess demand, and convert that into a measure of public opinion on the war issue. There should be millions of pounds of free airtime for the cause in the week running up to the switch-on (media love this sort of count-down, time-limited stunt) - this would clearly need organising (and not by any of the established anti-war bodies: that would negate the taint-free aspect): a weakness in the plan, certainly. Perhaps a commercial PR outfit would do the work pro bono? But that would be the limit of the organisation required: none of the logistics of a street demo, linking of hands around the country, or anything similar. I don't imagine the necessary lead-time would be that great either. (Clearly, there are only a few weeks at most before we must expect the commencement of hostilities.) As far as the power supply is concerned, if the National Grid can cope with World Cup spikes, then, with notice, I don't see why switching on for peace should be a problem. As it were. And that's it. Flagpole time, I think.....
| Did Lawrence Summers call yesterday?Casually (ha!) glancing down the patrons' listing some time yesterday (looking for my first whitehouse.gov, natch!), I spotted a visit from harvard.edu. Curiosity led me to ascertain that the source was a Google search on the names of the President of Harvard University as aforementioned and Eliza New (its head of undergraduate English). My interest in Summers started with his unfortunate address last October arising from the disinvestment from Israel business. Then there was the bizarre case of the on-off invitation to poet and anti-Zionist Tom Paulin (work back from here) - which introduced me to Prof New (of whom I had previously been unaware) and the allegation, made in the Harvard Crimson at the time that she and Summers were lovers. Shortly afterwards, I found that the Crimson article making the allegation, that I'd found on Google, had mysterious disappeared from Google. And that's where the question rested until yesterday. When I checked then, I found that my piece was now the only one on the entire web (sez Google) to include the names of both (the handful of Harvard pages with the names that the search returned last time I checked in November have evidently gone dead). Hence the curiosity about my mystery Harvard visitor. [Another Summers link has come into my ken: the new(ish) economics reporter on the BBC TV show Newsnight is one Stephanie Flanders. Flanders, a handsome woman (travestied by her official photo) with a deliciously fruity accent, worked for Summers in his time as Treasury Secretary to the Great Fornicator. On whether she too was a notch on his bedpost, I regret I have no information. For the curious, she is indeed the daughter of Michael Flanders (of Flanders and Swann fame).] | Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Breaking news: Mexico declares itself for peace - kinda....Desultorily monitoring the better Mexican news sites over the past few days for a sign of which way President Vicente Fox Quesada [1] will jump on war business in the Security Council, the result has been - nada: much Iraq stuff, but radio silence from the Pres. Now, in the middle of a prize-giving ceremony today, what one might imagine to be a fairly tedious affair, he breaks out, and, with a flourish, makes his pitch: Si al multilateralismo, sí al diálogo, al consenso y a provocar una reunión de las partes que tienen posiciones diferentes, a fin de que tengamos consensos y unanimidad en esta búsqueda permanente de nuestro país por la paz mundial. Perhaps he'd awoken from a daydream that he was being interviewed as a Miss World contestant. Or else was showing himself a student of Irish politics - whose watchword notoriously is Whatever you say, say nothing. Interestingly, this story appears to have been skipped entirely by the world's anglophone press. A triumph for the discernment of Anglo-America's copytasters? What goodness can be squeezed from the dregs? Fox has been bought off by Uncle Sam, but is not being used as a sheepdog publicly to cajole the other nonperms into the Yankee fold? He's had Uncle Sam's offer, but he's saying he's not a wetback just crossed the River to be bought that cheap? It's something of a bone thrown to his largely anti-war populace, though, in majoring on consensus, perhaps preparing them for an eventual pro-US vote, together with a majority of the rest of the SC.....How does a guy with the fate of the world in his hands (not to mention a revolting peasantry, economic troubles out the wazoo, etc, etc) have the time to waste on such trivia as a prizegiving [2]? Still nada. As Alfred Austin, professional purveyor of trivia in the form of his vignettes in verse, once put it: Across the wires the electric message came:
| The (strangely commonsensical) French inspections proposal - and the Blair/Bush replyA skim of the proposal - the bizarrely named and undated non-papier [1] - which has been evidently knocking around in varying forms for some days [2], shows it to contain one or two eminently down-to-earth suggestions. For instance, Le corps de sécurité créé pour assurer la protection des locaux des inspecteurs pourrait être significativement étoffé de manière à permettre, dans les cas où la CCVINU et l'AIEA l'estiment nécessaire, de garantir la surveillance de certains sites suspects ou inspectés. Ces personnels pourraient également intervenir dans le cadre de la disposition de la résolution 1441 qui prévoit que les inspecteurs sont autorisés à geler l'activité d'un site, au moins pour les sites les plus étendus. [3] Sealing off sites is a power expressly given to the inspectors by para 7 of UNSCR 1441 . It does, indeed, seem strange the this much laboured-over text should have granted the power without also granting the means to exercise it! And again, Il s'agirait aussi de faciliter la collecte et le traitement des informations issus des services de renseignements nationaux. Les responsables de la CCVINU et de l'AIEA chargés de la collecte de cette information pourraient être mandatés par MM.Blix et El Baradei pour créer un centre ou bureau conjoint, organiquement rattaché à la fois à la CCVINU et à l'AIEA. Ce bureau pourrait être sis à New York (ou à Vienne). Il serait compétent pour solliciter, recevoir et traiter l'information issue (1) des services de renseignements nationaux ainsi que (2) l'information collectée par les moyens propres de surveillance aérienne de la CCVINU. Il devrait s'agir d'une structure relativement légère, constituée de cinq à dix experts de haut niveau, en particulier des analystes d'images. En parallèle, les services des Etats membres seraient appelés à collaborer plus étroitement entre eux et à adresser leurs informations de façon systématique au centre de coordination de la CCVINU et de l'AIEA. [4] The implication, of course, is that there is currently no such joint intelligence centre! If so, there's little wonder that results have been so disappointing...... Lastly, MM. Blix et El Baradei n'ont pas vocation à être en permanence sur le terrain. Il serait particulièrement utile qu'ils aient à Bagdad un représentant qui serait leur relais en même temps que l'interlocuteur des autorités iraquiennes au jour le jour. Ce représentant assurerait également la coordination sur place des actions de la CCVINU et de l'AIEA. Il ferait, au quotidien, la synthèse des questions et des problèmes et assurerait la liaison avec les autorités iraquiennes. Il serait chargé de la synthèse des évaluations-bilans des progrès sur chaque question à intervalle régulier. [5] Again, the ordinary Joe must be scratching his head as to why such an arrangement doesn't already exist - with no one in theatre taking overall charge of the inspections, it's surprising they've found anything! Based on these points alone, one might infer that, for all the apparent strong language in SCR 1441 and from the politicians and diplomats, the inspection regime was deliberately hobbled from the start! And, more generally, the non-papier seems a rather modest document to cause so much transatlantic fuming. The US/UK riposte seems to be taking shape as a new resolution which does not authorise an attack on Saddam, but merely states that he is in material breach - or gives him an ultimatum of a few days to comply, failing which he will be deemed to be so. Presumably, the thought is that, whilst one or more of France, Russia and China are likely to veto a straight authorisation resolution, they might merely abstain from one which leaves the question in limbo. Experts in international law are apparently divided on whether a material breach would provide an implied authorisation of an attack (lawyers in the CND case dealt with the point). A key final point is the importance of a resolution to UK public opinion: latest polling evidence shows fewer than 10% prepared to attack without a further resolution. Naturally, the thought will have occurred to Tony Blair that a fudged (material breach) resolution is better than no resolution at all. (I can't see the international legal niceties having much resonance in the debate!) [Apparently, though, 45% say no to an attack whether there's a resolution or not.]
| Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Blair casuistry on unreasonable vetoesIt was a point he made in the extracts from the Paxman interview that included in my piece last week. But I'm not sure that the full oleaginously Jesuitical character of the argument has got the attention it deserves. The section of the interview ran thus: PAXMAN: OK, so [the inspectors] report back next week. Will you give an undertaking to this audience, and indeed to the British people that before any military action you will seek another UN Resolution, specifically authorising the use of force. Blair accepts that 8 votes [2] against a SC resolution endorsing an attack on Saddam would result in the UK deciding not to join in such an attack. That seems to be an expression of HMG policy, rather than an interpretation of the situation under international law (IL). But he does say that, in the event of a breach of 1441, there should be another resolution. Whether he means should politically or should legally I'm not sure. Either way, he's saying that he would not accept the result of a UNSC vote if an endorsing resolution got 8 votes [2], but was vetoed. Of course, that may itself be just an expression of the political view of HMG. But, since acting on a SCR that had been validly vetoed would (in the case of an Iraq attack) most likely be contrary to IL [1], presumably he is suggesting that such a veto would be in some way invalid or void under IL. He's not, I think, arguing that the exercise of a veto is ipso facto invalid because it overrides the wishes of the majority of the 15 SC members: that, after all, is the point of the veto. But he seems to reason that SCR 1441 is a higher law to which respect is due over and above that due to subsequent decisions of the SC: If the will of the UN is the thing that is most important and I agree that it is, if there is a breach of Resolution 1441 which is the one that we passed. If there is a breach and we do nothing then we have flouted the will of the UN. The question was raised, for example, in the CND case, whether or not a breach (or material breach, to the extent that that is a concept of which IL takes cognisance) of UNSCR 1441 is of itself sufficient to cloak enforcement (or retaliatory action) with the mantle of UNSC approval. The alternatives, under this argument, are either
What Blair seems to be suggesting is a tertium quid: he acknowledges that 1441 does not contain powers for its own enforcement (otherwise why does he say that there is a need for a majority in the Security Councilfor a new enforcement resolution?) But, it seems, he's maintaining that, in passing 1441, the Permanent Members in some way bound themselves not to use the veto power in blocking the subsequent enforcement resolution, if such resolution should prove necessary. (Which seems an extraordinarily convoluted - not to say, unlikely - construction to put on what happened. What, I wonder, are the precedents for such an interpretation? Is it one with any recognition amongst the divers sources of IL?) But Blair gives his interpretation one last twist: he says he is prepared to recognise the use of a veto, but only where it is not unreasonable. A fine common law concept no doubt, in the tradition of Coke and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr (and other jurists whose names one might wish to drop). But, again, according to the body of IL, has it any application here? How, and by whom, is a judgement of reasonableness to be made? Again there's the question whether Blair is talking politics or law: but the fact that - in Blair's own view - a further UNSC resolution is needed with express authorisation of an attack on Iraq, without which such an attack would be contrary to IL, means that it cannot be merely a political question. Now, there's a lot of argument to be had on whether IL is law at all, or on the extent to which it is. No doubt, at bottom, it comes, like Mao Tse-Tung suggested power did, from the barrel of a gun. There is no global FBI to enforce IL: only the extremely blunt instruments of economic sanctions and war. Failing the use of which, there's no practical reason for a dictator like - ooh, Saddam Hussein - to take any notice. But I somehow doubt whether Blair would care to be classified with Saddam amongst those world leaders who pick and choose which international rules they abide by. Which means, surely, that he must subject his government's actions to the rules of IL as they are generally understood. At this point, my expertise, such as it is, runs out. My guess is that the concept of the unreasonable veto is one that Blair has pulled out of his ass - as I believe the saying goes - in order to square the circle whereby he is
But I can't quote chapter and verse. The fact that no one with (or with access to) the relevant expertise hasn't gone to town with Blair on this point I find more than a little galling. But there you go. Another item on my further research needed list, I think.....
| Blog is now fixed!It's not, of course, vouchsafed to mere mortals how these things are done. But the Blog Fairy has sprinkled her magic dust and the blog is now good as new. (Or something like that.....) | The last time they stopped a crazy Republican war.....I'm always amazed when it turns out that my little blog is the only item Google turns up on a significant search. Case very much in point: last September, in moderate dudgeon over some piece of unwarranted Euro-bashing (God knows there's enough potential for the other variety!), I mentioned the fateful meeting of Congressional leaders (including Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson) with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CJCS Admiral Arthur W Radford on Saturday, April 3 1954. (It's the date plus Johnson's name that compute only with my piece.) What it was about (in the broadest of detail - a layman's treatment, of course) was this: the French were fighting a war in their colonies in Indo-China, largely financed by the US since the fall of Nationalist China in 1949, against the Viet Minh; the latest of a string of French commanders, General Henri Navarre, developed the Navarre Plan, the gem of which was that the Communists should be offered a target tempting enough to make them try a full-on assault. The fortress of Dien Bien Phu was accordingly set up in the middle of nowhere, to the strains (as it were) of Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough [1]. The Viet Minh, under the redoubtable General Giap, did, and were [2]. Amazingly, it appears that this plan had been endorsed by the US Joint Chiefs. And it was only natural that, when the French got into trouble, they should call on their patron's assistance. By April 3 1954, it seems that both Dulles and Eisenhower were ready to sent carrier-based fighter-bombers to give close air support to the beleaguered DBP garrison. Radford was the only member of the JCS to concur with this intervention [3]. The meeting, as Roberts has it, turned on LBJ's eliciting from Dulles (who was after a Joint Resolution supporting the air support plan) that he'd made no approaches to allied governments for backing for the plan. (LBJ apparently quoted Korea as a cautionary example where the US had ended up carrying the vast preponderance of the burden in men and treasure.) By the end, all the leaders had come to the conclusion that the Administration had better find some allies fast. And, naturally, it was to the UK that Dulles turned first, in the person of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Whose answer, in the vernacular, was I should coco. The inherent lunacy of the scheme may have had less to do with his refusal to go along than the fact that it placed in jeopardy his very own diplomatic finest hour, the Geneva Conference, which was to be (in Eden's overactive imagination) Locarno Redux. Prime Minister Churchill (who evidently held Eden in great and long-standing contempt, though he'd long made known that the man was his chosen successor as Tory leader) failed this time to embarrass his sidekick. No meant no. DBP fell, Geneva was fudged, and the US thereby given (in the fullness of time) another opportunity to intervene in Indo-China. The staggering point (if, indeed, it's correct) is that the same pair who had extricated the US from the Korean quagmire; and who were (rightly) scathing about the lunatic Anglo-French plans to regain control of the Suez Canal two years later or so; were in April 1954 fully prepared to commit US servicemen to an Asian war that was 99% lost already. Only the unlikely pairing of Johnson and Eden seems to have stood in their way. And yet they were effective in killing the nonsensical scheme stone dead. (In comparison, during the slow build-up to large-scale deployments of combat troops (through 1964 and the early part of 1965), considerable Congressional misgivings, from senior men like Sen Richard Russell (D-GA) and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT), remained as ineffective grumblings (as recorded on LBJ's famous tapes, of course).) One (albeit tentative and analogy-free) conclusion to be drawn from the events of April 3 1954 is that it's possible for events to conspire against war, as well as to bring war on; another is that help in aid of such a conspiracy may come from the most unlikely of places (I don't think that LBJ was held to be much of a foreign policy expert at the time). A third is that a steady, reliable man of great expertise in his field may on occasion go completely doolally. The same guy who gave the sane and sober military-industrial complex speech at the end of his final term in office, pleased to have survived nuclear confrontation with the USSR, and warning his country not to push its luck. The Republican succeeded by the Democrat who pledged his people (without their permission) to pay any price to oppose any foe.......
[First post on Monday, February 10, 2003 09:38 p.m on http://web.pitas.com/halcombe/10_02_2003B.html] | Monday, February 10, 2003
Old Europe peace army fails to impress[The main site is up: it's just not taking any new material. Hence.......]
calculated self-interest.
Sitôt cette confirmation tombée à Berlin, le ministère français des Affaires étrangères démentait pourtant l'existence de tout «plan». L'Allemagne veut simplement «faire des propositions qui peuvent venir s'ajouter aux propositions françaises», relativisait aussi la ministre française de la Défense, Michèle Alliot-Marie.
L'essentiel des idées agitées à Berlin était déjà dans l'intervention de Dominique de Villepin au Conseil de sécurité le 5 février, souligne-t-on à Paris, où l'on est furieux que les Allemands aient lâché ce mot de «plan franco-allemand», qui ne peut que braquer les Américains.
for example stepping up security at US bases and allowing the use of its airfields and airspace for moving material to the Gulf.
[First posted on Monday, February 10, 2003 03:13 p.m on http://web.pitas.com/halcombe/10_02_2003A.html] | The plagiarised report, intelligence wars, etc[The main site is up: it's just not taking any new material. Hence.......]
sprinkling too much 'magic dust' over the facts to spice it up for public consumption.
Campbell himself is said to have edited and cleared the finished version.
[First posted on Monday, February 10, 2003 12:25 p.m on http://web.pitas.com/halcombe/10_02_2003.html] | Random insight into War Party warped thinking[This piece is for the moment here on account of the main blog being down.]
The military always tries to figure out the worst case scenario casualty figures, and then opponents of military action jump all over those figures. But that's really stupid -- no one should ever plan anything based simply on the worst case scenario. The only sensible way to plan is based on a calculus: consider each potential outcome, weight it by the likelihood of its actually occurring, and add them. Then do the same on the other side of the balance. If the weighted calculus of casualties is worse than the weighted calculus of not fighting, then don't fight. If vice-versa, then do. Obviously, no one knows what the numbers or weights are -- we can only make guesses, and we can argue about the assumptions underlying those guesses. But it's just plain foolish to pretend that only the worst case scenario should be taken into account.
Example: transport. The risk of dying in a car accident is much greater than dying in a plane or train. Yet the perceived risk is lower. The explanation I've heard given is that, in a car, you, or someone you know, is responsible for your safety. Whereas with a plane or train, it's strangers.
On war casualties, my guess would be that there is some kind of scale, based on past experience, that guides the average Joe on these matters. Perhaps at three levels: (1) World War 2, (2) Korea/Vietnam, and (3) Gulf War. Failing a fiasco such as that in Somalia, the casualties in a war in category (3) are below the political radar. The psychological difference between (3) and (2) is Lyndon Johnson's March 1968 shall not seek and will not accept broadcast [4].
[First posted Sunday, February 9, 2003 11:50 a.m on http://web.pitas.com/halcombe/09_02_2003.html] | Blair's plagiarised report - didn't Powell get it fact-checked?Pondering the whole sorry mess, the point I keep coming back to is this: I'm Secretary of State, making probably the most important speech of my life - the best bits seen by half a billion people . The purpose of the speech is to show that the claims my government is making about Iraqi past actions and future intentions are based on the exercise of sound and expert judgement in evaluating clear and compelling evidence. In other words, to impart credibility to the case for war that it was widely supposed to lack. My President has asked me to pledge my reputation to stand behind the conclusions that I state. And I know certain of my senior colleagues will not be reluctant to exploit any difficulties arising in order to undermine my position in the Administration. This said, I'm presented with a draft of the speech (a week in advance, say), which I read through and find that I'm supposed to refer to a report to be produced by HMG on various Iraq-related matters in the following glowing terms: I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities. I recall - how could I not? - that the last time that HMG released a report on Iraq (accompanied by much ballyhoo), it was, on mature reflection by those competent to judge, generally rated as not worth the paper it was printed on [1]. What do I do? Surely, I'm going to be putting some considerable effort into testing the assertions in the British paper. If he has the slightest sense, Powell will have, in addition his State Department officials, a private office of hungry young men (I suppose it would mostly be) whose primary loyalty is to him. Surely the first thing I, Powell, would do would be to fling my copy of the draft British report over to these guys and tell them to take it apart word by word and do their best to destroy its credibility before it destroyed mine. (While I'm putting hapless CIA Director George Tenet - he of the unhappy two-shot - under the cosh to cross-check the report with intelligence held by the US.) Clearly, nothing like that ever happened. Because, if Powell and his team had done one-tenth as good a job in preparing for this speech as they should have, they would have found HMG's report to be fatally flawed, and he would have omitted all reference to it in his big speech. (Depending on timing, his findings might even have got Blair to stop the report before it was issued.) Which leads to the question, what sort of a Fred Karno's Army are they running over there that fails to take elementary precautions to safeguard the reputation of a key member of the team which, most likely, will be managing a war some time very soon? Does the incompetence lie only in a failure to check? Or also in a lack of expertise in the checking process sufficient to raise the questions necessary to finger the report as hackwork? And what of the integrity of the rest of the Powell presentation? Were the tapped phone calls rigged up with a couple of Lebanese waiters from a DC restaurant? Or was the photo-reconnaissance (which was deliberately degraded, I believe, so as to make independent checking of the US interpretation of photos difficult, if not impossible) 1991 images doctored with Photoshop? How, when he cleared his throat at 1040 EST on Wednesday, could Powell have been sure they were not? Only by having made the sort of systematic investigation that would have fingered the UK report as a phoney. All told, some might think that, in the light of the latest information, the glowing assessments of Powell's performance such as this from Fred Kaplan run a tad on the naive side......
[First posted Saturday, February 8, 2003 08:27 p.m on http://web.pitas.com/halcombe/08_02_2003.html] | Saturday, February 08, 2003
For RSS ReadersThe vagaries of Blogger seem to allow me to post to the RSS feed but not to my regular blog page. So I'll post the pieces that I've put on my 'shadow' blog since the Blogger problem arose - just for you. As it were. Until the problem gets sorted. | Friday, February 07, 2003
Blair TV interview - some choice morselsBlair did a 50 minute TV interview (shown last night [1]) with the BBC's (supposedly) hardest political interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, with questions from a studio audience. The transcript is now up on the BBC site; and a number of clips are also available. Needless to say, Teflon Tony suffered no damage in the process. There was nothing startlingly new, perhaps; but the key points that he thinks he has to make fray more round the edges with every telling. In particular, he seems to be getting less concerned with infelicities of phrasing or giving hostages to fortune - an influence of being unchallenged as PM for six years. One or two extracts from the programme, to give a flavour: Faith in intelligence BLAIR: .....We still don't know, for example, what has happened to the thousands of litres of botulin and anthrax that were unaccounted for when the inspectors left in 1999. So, you know, the idea that - Faith in intelligence 2 Q: I don't think there's sufficient evidence at the moment, like when Mr Bush yesterday come out with this supposedly new evidence I don't think there was anything there. New Resolution
Blair contra mundum BLAIR: ......And, I've said this before, it may be, even if I'm the only person left saying it, I'm going to say it. It's a threat and a danger that we have to confront and there's no reason for these people to have these weapons in this way, there is no reason why they can't co-operate with the UN and these terrorist groups out there they are trying every day as we speak to get hold of this stuff and use it. These are not separate threats, they're related and linked. Double standard on Pakistan Q: But it was only last week that the US warned Pakistan about its terrorist links. Are they going to be next, and bearing in mind that our historic links with Pakistan, what position does that put us in? [A rare intrusion of justified historical perspective!]
| Blair's Iraq report: not only irrelevant, but also plagiarised!No whining - you humble correspondent had the evidence before his very eyes, and failed to spot it.... My piece on Tuesday characterised Tony Blair's new report on the iniquities of Saddam as beside the point to an embarrassing extent. That Saddam was a bad man who was doing his best to fool the inspectors was neither news or any sort of deciding factor in favour of war. Now it turns out that the report`s staleness and lack of impact might have had something to do with the fact that large, bleeding chunks were lifted from a paper relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War by Californian student Ibrahim al-Marashi. The story was broken last night by Channel 4 News, which provides further details on its site. A giveaway - if you're looking for it! - is that Marashi's English is not that of a mother-tongue speaker. And the idiots in Whitehall who cobbled together the report failed to make the prose idiomatic before using it [1]. Or perhaps they didn't know better: on p15 of the report, the expression press-ganged is used unhyphenated; and that wasn't one of Marashi's! According to the Guardian, Marashi wasn't the only source to be ripped off: The content of six more pages relies heavily on articles by Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review in 1997 and last November. And this was the document Colin Powell, speaking to the world from the UN, called the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday. So, what can I say? In the earlier piece, I flagged up the fact that this fine paper seemed to be getting no airtime at all - and the main British media will almost invariably go big on any issue that the Blair spin machine goes to town on (raising suspicions that journos thought the thing wasn`t kosher, but lacked the evidence to go after it); and the minor matter of the dates. But, on the main point, I am, as they used to say in constabulary circles, bang to rights. I can't help the feeling that, over at the Quai d'Orsay, the croissants are slipping down rather more smoothly this morning.....
| Thursday, February 06, 2003
Blair finally over the hill? Too late to stop war, though......Just after returning from hiatus, I started on a notion that the war might be terminal for the apparently impregnable Blair premiership. Mentioning on Tuesday the absurd little report he produced on Iraq on Monday, I said I'd look at his performance during the session that day in the House of Commons in which Blair made his latest pitch for war. Looking at the Hansard report (starting here), though, there's not much to analyse, beyond what had already appeared in the papers. If the British people are lining up against the war, their elected representatives are falling in behind it. Blair got a particularly easy ride; the only notable thing is the paragraph [1] delivered in the fretful, not to say peevish, tone in which he deals with war doubters, that seemed to indicate a final descent into Captain Queeg mode. Now, today, the generally supportive (though not on the war) Guardian has an op-ed piece entitled This week Labour began to imagine life without Blair. The immediate reason for thinking so has been a purely domestic one (the continuing fiasco of House of Lords reform). But clearly the war is factored into calculations over when Blair will go. Unfortunately, he is under no immediate pressure from his own party (the anti-war section of which has been held at a manageable 30-40 of the usual suspects). Any war effect on the leadership would only be felt if the invasion causes large British casualties or bogs down. After all, that other good-looking chap with a fatal obsession with a Middle East leader with moustache, Anthony Eden, only resigned a few months after the end of hostilities (embarrassing and futile) in Egypt...
| Tenet's two-shot gives the game away?In movies, it's the cruellest shot of all - the sustained two-shot, with both characters having to act all the time. It's so hard to make convincing that it's a style that's used sparingly these days. The way the cameras were set up in the Security Council yesterday illustrated the point: in frame, for the shots of Powell reading his statement, were some guy with an earpiece screen right, and George Tenet, CIA Director, screen left. Of course, there were plenty of cutaways, to Powell's slide-show in particular. But, whenever Powell was seen, Tenet was right on his shoulder [1], his body language giving a running commentary on Powell's presentation. Now, I've only seen snippets. But in none of them did Tenet look anything but uncomfortable. Most notably, in the passage where Powell is talking about Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, his trip to Baghdad for medical treatment, and the two dozen extremists [2], Tenet seemed to have his head down and eyes shut throughout. As if he knew any eye movement would betray his feelings conclusively, and it was better to leave the matter in the realm of conjecture! I reckon detailed analysis of the tape would pay dividends....
| Guinea and the War: a revelation, but not a surprise........A (very little) patience has been rewarded. According to this piece up since yesterday on the Guinéenews site, the US has been down in Guinea doing exactly what you'd expect: making their presence felt, being helpful, providing a little healthy competition to the erstwhile French monopoly in the Big Brother role. [Naturally, this story has to be treated with the usual cynicism: hacks and pols are always at their most dangerous when they're telling you what you want to hear. But I'm not clear whether, in view of USG's performance over the war, one needs to up the usual dose too much!] The story comes, it says, from des sources militaires françaiseswho are saying that la France considère que l'état de "la coopération militaire entre la France et la Guinée n'est pas excellente", compte tenu de l'appréciation politique que se fait la France sur la Guinée. Currently, the French only have a dozen advisers in country, under bilateral cooperation and le programme Recamp (le renforcement des capacités africaines dans le domaine du maintien de la paix). Good luck with that! What exactly do the Americans have in Guinea? No details, merely a statement that Des hauts responsables militaires française ont laissé entendre selon nos sources, que les américains étant très "présents en Guinée" ces derniers ne "laisseraient certainement pas les conflits de la sous région se propager en Guinée". A ce titre une aide en équipement et formation américaine a haussé le niveau de préparation des militaires guinéens face à toute tentative de déstabilisation venant de l'extérieur [Preliminary and highly superficial checking from the USG side comes up with squat - this article suggests that there's a good deal of US activity in cooperation with London and Parisin inserting a military presence in West Africa - a US naval base at Sao Tome has been discussed, it says. Oil reserves in the Gulf of Guinea area are put at around 10% of Saudi reserves of 264bn barrels [1]: the stability of the region is obviously in question (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast - and El Gordo, Nigeria (the North-South/Moslem-Christian conflict has really hardly got going yet).] The current French problem is that the wheels have come off the settlement in Ivory Coast that they brokered - they have a (relatively large) force stationed there (to be increased to 3,000 men, according to this from AP today, which also refers to a US team being sent to the country [2]. France has, ever since decolonisation [3], maintained that it could keep the peace within its former sub-Saharan territories. Its signal failure in Ivory Coast can only help the US in getting a foothold in the region. Too early to tell what effect US aid might have on Guinea's vote on a UNSC resolution approving an Iraq war, of course (if we could ever know). But president Lansana Conté has a brief time to play off his suitors one against the other - and the ball seems to be in the French court right now.
| Wednesday, February 05, 2003
The Great South Carolina Confederate Flag Caper: Dems dig themselves in deeperSign of a serious political operation that it can kill off an embarrassment like this before it does any lasting damage. The Six Pack (or are they Seven Dwarves yet? I lose count) seem to be doing all they can to keep it going. (Previous instalments of the saga here and here.) WaPo has a piece today suggesting that the flag nonsense may well affect the SC primary next February. It doesn't mention my notion that Republicans might cross the aisle to vote for Sharpton - but does have Lieberman making the point (that he wasn't making a few days ago) that he can't support the NAACP boycott of the state if he's to be able to campaign in it. (How many days did it take his crack advisers to think of that one?) (Even the golden boy from Vermont's tying himself in knots: first saying it was a matter for South Carolinians, then saying it should come down.) | Affirmative action: the right thing is also the popular thing - but the GOP just can't kick the habit!I've been staying away from AA for a few reasons just recently: post-Lott exhaustion, resting pre-Grutter [1], the fact that John Rosenberg at Discriminations has the whole thing down - but this from the New Republic brings some truly dispiriting news. As I've said more than once, AA - like Jim Crow before it - is one of those things that the political branches can do nothing about. A majority of legislators may think it's wrong, but the media grief that legislative action to get rid would cause makes it untouchable. It's not the only subject like that. The criminal law on narcotics is also off-limits - would New York legislators really pass the Rockefeller drug law if presented to them today? But are they standing in line to repeal the law? No, the really depressing thing about GOP inertia on AA is the fact that, if they did move to abolish it, they'd have a large majority of the American people behind them. A new poll by Newsweek finds that 68 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of minorities, oppose preferences for blacks and oppose preferences for other groups even more. Other polls find the same thing. A 2001 survey by the Post, in conjunction with Harvard and the Kaiser Family Foundation--not exactly hotbeds of racial backlash--asked, "In order to give minorities more opportunity, do you believe race or ethnicity should be a factor" in job-hiring and college admissions. An astonishing 92 percent of respondents, including 86 percent of blacks and 88 percent of Hispanics, said no. The paradox of Bush's cringing opposition to racial preferences is that, among all his contested stances, it is the one in which he is most closely in sync with public opinion and his critics most out of step. Crossing back over to the war for a moment, that stat just illustrates how some poll numbers have political effect, and some numbers might as well be from Mars or Venus for the amount of influence they have on what US politicians will actually do. That 92% has, and will never have, any leverage over those politicians. A pity; but it would be delusional to think otherwise. Why? Just as the South had a block in the US on Federal action on Jim Crow up till the 1960s which gave it power quite disproportionate to its numbers, so groups representing the beneficiaries of AA (and obviously distinguish activists from the rank-and-file who produced the 86% and 88% in the poll) have a lock (more diffuse and mainly not based on electoral power) on assumptions that underly the AA debate. Anything the GOP does on race is suspect; the game's not worth the candle. The slick, sharp-suited merchants of grievance politics and the shakedown are the true political heirs of 'Cotton Ed' Smith and Theodore Bilbo. Their lock on a key aspect of policy is a humiliation, no doubt, for the Land of the Free; but that doesn't change reality. Polls like the one mentioned in the New Republic establish a climate in which AA can be killed off; but the political system doesn't allow it. Only the Supremes can do it. Who'll be the April Fools, I wonder?
| Turkey and the US 'invasion' - the more information, the less clear the situation...An article in today's Ha'aretz has one or two morsels worth chewing. It recalls the refugee problem from 1991 - apparently Turkey took a million - and suggests (basis?) 300,000 this time. The Turks have already started building a tent city to accommodate them (night-time temperatures?); and they fear that incoming Kurds will stir up Turkish Kurds to revolt. (It's fair to say, I think, that the experience of these camps in Africa has been that they act as a cover for all sorts of criminals, the political and the ordinary, decent.) It also suggests that there's little shame amongst Turkish government circles to admit that the Turkish troops concentrations on the Iraqi border are there to deal with the Kurds rather than anything from Saddam. There's a useful note on the parliamentary timetable: apparently, there's another Moslem holiday, Id-al-Adha (various transliterations), which will see the Turkish parliament recess for nine days from this Friday (ie, returning on February 17). In spite of the fact that the war timetable is now pushed back into March, the article suggests that the US wants full cooperation without restrictive conditions and without "unnecessary tricks," and fast, meaning by the end of the week. With a bit more diplomacy like there, there may yet be a chance of averting war...... [The article raises the possibility of bringing the Turkish President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, into play to get round the impediments, such as they are, raised by the Turkish democratic process. The guy, from his (US) bio, seems to be a mild-mannered, apolitical lawyer (quite unlike his predecessor Suleyman Demirel). Nice idea; but, according to the translation of Article 92 of the Constitution (as quoted in my earlier piece), the president's role is limited: If the country is subjected, while the Turkish Grand National Assembly is adjourned or in recess, to sudden armed aggression and it thus becomes imperative to decide immediately on the use of the armed forces, the President of the Republic can decide on the use of the Turkish Armed Forces. Doesn't cover a presidential grant of permission to the US to bring in the forces they want. (There may, of course, be other provisions that do. I'd like to see them, though......)] | Bush grants safe haven to Al-Qaeda offshoot! Kinda....The popular thing for journos hankering for some war correspondent action is to head for the hills with a unit of the peshmerga army of the Kurdish PUK on the trail of Ansar al-Islam. First it was the LA Times, now the Guardian. Ansar were even kind enough to lob over a couple of missiles, just to make the Guardian journo's trip seem worthwhile. Boilerplate stuff, really. Except for a couple of points. First, the Guardian piece says that a team of military observers and CIA officers are on the ground in northern Iraq to see whether Ansar really is the missing link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Good luck with that! But, also - are these the same guys that were allegedly playing footsie with the PKK/KADEK that the State Department's Richard Boucher was so shifty about a few days ago? [The piece says that In his speech to the UN, Mr Powell will make the charge that Iraq has maintained ties with al-Qaida through Ansar al-Islam.But now Reuters is saying that AQ/Iraq linkage will be only a small part of Powell's speech [link via Stand Down].] Second, it says that, though Ansar is operating in the No Fly Zone, the PUK forces have got no US close air support - the article strangely avoids claiming that such support has been requested, though the PUK 'general', it says, wants the Americans to bomb. But, given that Ansar are supposed to be AQ, and linked to Iraq (sez Bush!), why not use any means necessary to get at them? Might be some sort of attempt at leverage by the US over the PUK, of course. But I can't see it being a terribly potent one - they're going to carry on with the war against Ansar either way; and I'm not clear what good militarily air strikes against the 700-900 force would do. It's the politics of it that are puzzling, though. [For the record - rather than any illumination they cast (to my untutored eye, at least), a couple of interviews with PUK people: on Salon with Barham Salih, 'prime minister' of Kurdish Iraq (from September 02); and on Gulf News, with PUK leader Jalal Talabani (dated February 3).] | Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Russia-Iran cosying up on nuclear - State Department asleep at the wheel?Thanks to George and his little obsession, the entire region is now in play. Just as one bid for one company in a particular sector of the economy can trigger a whole flurry of merger activity in that sector, everyone's looking at the Middle East, bringing out the files of projects that have been gathering dust for years, seeing just what fruit might fall from those trees that are about to be shaken. And Russia and Iran go way back, of course. Back past the Soviet occupation of Northern Iran during World War 2 [1] - where (small world!) the Kurdish leader Mustapha Barzani [2] was apparently sheltered, the Great Game of the 19th century..... Little matters like Islamic dictatorship needn't get in the way of a bit of business. And not exactly new business either: Russia has apparently been involved in building a nuclear facility at Bushehr (love the coincidence!) since signing a contract in 1995. Before Christmas, there was a spat involving the US about an agreement for the Russians to reprocess spent fuel from Bushehr. Leaving it a bit late, since the facility is due to come onstream later this year or next. And the Russians have the first batch of fuel ready to ship, so they say. [Those (such as me, rather obviously) starting from scratch on Iran's involvement with things nuclear could do worse for background than get stuck into the March 2000 report from the CSIS.] Coming up to date, there's a Reuters' report dated February 3 of an interview with Viktor Kozlov, head of Atomstroyexport (evidently the Russian government's proliferation arm), who is sounding pretty bullish that, following completion of Bushehr, the Iranians will want to do more nuclear business with the Bear. Of course, this could just be concidence; or a lone gunman; or whatever. But, just as - to pluck a name from the air - KADEK/PKK have been getting friskier since war against Iraq became odds-on, it's only common sense that all of those with a stake in the region are contemplating risks and opportunities in anticipation of when George has tipped over the apple-cart. And what of the home team? At State, poor old Richard Boucher - who, you will recall, was flummoxed by a question on alleged discussions between US officials and KADEK - was either not briefed, or pretending not to have been when asked on January 31 about press reports on the subject: QUESTION: Russia has just announced that it is going to again aggressively pursue contracts with Iran. Arms export officials are speaking today in Moscow. Have you continued to have discussions with Russia on your concerns about this, and did they tell you that they were going to go after more contracts? Impressive, huh?
| The spin machine unspun - Aussie rebuts the lies and distortionsA painstaking, well-referenced yet readable 8,000 word rebuttal of a dozen or so of the War Party's supposedly best points from Scott Burchill of Deakin University [1]. Can't say I've yet given it the study it deserves, but I suspect that I'll be cribbing points from it for some time to come......
| Blair's new Iraq report - misses the point again, of course.....The text for St Anthony's sermon yesterday (Monday) was that most vital Beatitude which had strangely been omitted from the Sermon on the Mount [1]: Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. On September 24 2002, there was, I seem to recall, a genuine expectation, even amongst a public enured to the Blair spin machine, that some information of genuine value might be imparted in the infamous Dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. This time, not so much. For instance, the Guardian article dealing with Blair's appearance on the floor of the House of Commons yesterday (to which I hope to return shortly) doesn't mention it. The report does not even pretend to adduce evidence justifying war with Iraq. Instead, it gives some details of the 'fun and games' that Iraqi officials are having with the inspectors (which, relative to the destruction Tony and George are proposing to wreak, rather smack ofWhiskey Galore [2]); and a lot of what is evidently supposed to be impressive intelligence on the Iraqi security apparatus, but, to this layman's eye, amounts to little more than a rather tatty organisation chart and a jumble of Arabic names. How is this supposed to help? Most Britons think Saddam is cheating the inspectors; and assume that, as a bloody dictator of long standing, he's got a pretty complex web of nasty men tasked solely with preserving his sorry ass by any means necessary. It's beside the point to an embarrassing extent. As if the Whitehall spin machine had all returned from lunch having consumed several sherbets too many; or been replaced by ten year olds. It just insults the intelligence of a public that is getting more hostile, not less, to the idea of war. [Polling of British voters at the end of last week showed 84% were opposed to war without another the express authority of a further Security Council resolution; and 43% against the war under any circumstances. And 66% think Blair cares more about sticking by Bush than the views of his own people.] Why issue such a futile document? The worrying thought - as often with Blair - is that, far from being the hard, devious bastard who cool-headedly and cold-heartedly eliminates all who stand in the way of his greater glory, he actually believes his own publicity. That he really thinks that one more atrocity story about Saddam will produce a Damascene conversion amongst the British electorate. There is - as I think of it - a disturbing similarity between the sanctimonious, speechifying Tone and Jefferson Smith, anti-hero of the eponymous Capra movie (that I must have namechecked here six dozen times!). In particular, the second scene at the Lincoln Memorial, when Smith has finally wised up to the utter and multifarious corruption of politics; and Lady Macbeth (in the person of the cute but evil Jean Arthur) interrupts his blubbery whining and persuades him to act on the fantasies he now knows are a crock. I don't know what effect Blair is having on Saddam; but by God he frightens me..... ADDENDUM I note that, though the report was issued on February 3, this page linking to it has January at the bottom of the page. Innocent, no doubt.
| Monday, February 03, 2003
March madness in the Security Council? Guinea's in the chair.....[Following on earlier disussions majoring on the positions of Mexico and France.] From the sublime to the ridiculous? The alphabet is ineluctable; in January, it was France; now, in February, it's Germany. And, in the all-important list of names (in English, natch!), the next is Guinea [1]. Or Guinée, in the language of its political class (what there is of it). Not to be confused with Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau or Papua New Guinea, of course - the UN list of members is helpful here. On the whole, it's a learning curve where crampons, rope and an experienced guy at the other end are pretty much essential. But one has to start somewhere. The reason to bother, of course, is Bush's decision to let the inspection procession run on (for up to six weeks, counting from the beginning of February, if I read this UPI piece right.) Blix is due to report back on February 14 (!) but the Bush timetable evidently seems to pencil in a final act in the soap taking place in March. I think it's a fairly safe bet that Guinean diplomats haven't been put on the spot like this in a good long while. One might speculate a number of Hollywood scenarios: they're duped by the Americans; or by the French (their old colonial masters, of course); or - if the movie's a Frank Capra - they're wily operators with native (as it were!) cunning and a keen idea of where a bargain can be struck who beat the slick Westerners at their own game. Whichever way you want to play it, the script seems to write itself. Except that I doubt that linear narrative will fit the bill here. Nothing like the filibuster in Mr Smith Goes To Washington, for instance, with a natural arc leading purposefully to a satisfying conclusion. For instance, the real news in the country is the flood of refugees from the Ivory Coast, to the east. (Sierra Leone lies to the west, so this is scarcely a novelty!) A more than adequate excuse to hold out the begging-bowl and see whether the pro-war or the anti-war states produce the most moolah. But that would be to work from first principles, which I sense is unwise to do in a state of almost complete ignorance as to the subject-matter. (And there I speak, as ever, solely for myself.....) It seems some actual work is required here. Damn!
UPDATE More links, in no particular order (the most promising-looking from a dismal crop): Guinéenews (there isn't much) Demcraf - Observatoire de la démocratie en Afrique [now there's a task!] Map (240k) Guinée en chiffres et en lettres (a 'private enterprise'summary 330k!) Human Rights Watch Amnesty International World Bank | Santa Ana, Villa and the gringos - and where's the (historical) beef online?!Mooching about some Mexican sites, I come across a couple of articles (in Spanish) that just happen to deal with a couple of Mexicans who caused their northern neighbours a few difficulties (as immortalised on the Silver Screen). No judgements on quality - couldn't give one even if I'd read them (which I haven't yet). But substantive online material on Mexican history - on any sort of history - is so rare and spasmodic in appearing that these seemed to deserve a namecheck [1]. The wider problem, of the availability of substantive materials, is one I'll try to come back to. Essentially, it seems to be a utter lack of will on the part of the main national libraries (Library of Congress and British Library being outstandingly poor in this regard) to put resources into making the best of their almost infinitely deep collections of texts available online. The only library to make a decent start on the process is the French Bibliothèque Nationale. Even for monolingual Anglophones, its Gallica site is stuffed with historical material of all periods for free downloading much of which would be either prohibitively expensive to buy or simply unobtainable at any price. The deep shame which the LOC and BL should feel is illustrated by the fact that the only place (so far as I know) to get Rolls Series volumes online is on Gallica (it has several dozen available). The only place for volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Or (an annoyingly almost complete) Kervyn de Lettenhove edition of Froissart. The site, in and of itself, is ample excuse to take up medieval history as a hobby. Not to mention getting broadband....
| Sunday, February 02, 2003
When procedure met substance... Public opinion and diplomacyThe headline numbers from the latest WaPo-ABC Poll on the war (link via Stand Down) are discouraging. In particular, the fact that the proportion supporting war against UN opposition has gone up from 37% in mid-December to 51% now. Hats off to the new Daniel Webster...... I can't find the details of the poll on either the ABC News or the WaPo sites. But PollingReport.com carries some detailed stats (not the UN stats, unfortunately). And it's clear that proxy opposition is still there. Whatever's the case on UN approval, the pattern generally has not changed in months: in principle, the American people approve the US overthrowing Saddam by force. But a good half of them have a continuing list of objections. They like the car, but they're not ready to buy. For example, a majority want more evidence - today, it's 57/42%; the spread is biggest in Jan 03 (60/36), narrowest in Sept 02. On inspectors, now, 51% would give them a few weeks or less; 46% a few months or more. On whether their main worry is that Bush would act too quickly or not quickly enough, the current split is 49/44; in the weeks before the SOTU, the gap was 12-14 points. But, even afterwards, it's still on the right side. Does one take hope from these numbers? Absolutely not. As I pointed out in my earlier piece on polling and the Vietnam and Korean Wars, you'd expect
If they haven't worked already to hold back the pols from war, I doubt whether there's time for them to prevent war, starting from now. What these polls do do is to set up the climate for revenge against an Administration which took an unwilling nation to war without having first persuaded them that it was right. The I told you batallions would find fertile ground for their complaints. But I'm pretty sure that that is a risk so tangential and hypothetical as not to have registered in Administration's decision in favour of war. Whenever that was taken. When it comes to diplomacy, there's a similar tension between the procedural and substantive - as I've previously discussed here and here, for instance. To dispute the substance of the US case would be bad politics: ineffective, unnecessarily antagonistic to the hyperpower. In any case, most of those opposing the war juggernaut are genuine Fabians - not hostile to US aims, but unconvinced of the need for an all-out attack now, wanting more time to test the US case. For such opponents, dilatory procedural means suit their ends perfectly. In theory, at least....... | Sunday version of Guardian enlists in Blair's bloody infantryThe Guardian, fondly believed amongst the Likudnik American right (and many more) to be the London branch of Hamas, employer of that prime example of the self-hating Jew, Suzanne Goldenberg, slavish adherent to any fancy-pants liberal cause on either side of the Atlantic, sees its Sunday sister, the Observer, trot gleefully down the primrose path towards George and Tony's Armageddon Fling. A fortnight ago, it was an editorial oh so reluctantly making the case for war. Now, a piece of straight news giving the inside story of the Bush/Blair diplomatic offensive to ensure that niceties of international statesmenship don't get in the way of a timely crossing of the start-line. This breathless piece of prose, its jawline rugged in the manner of the Cruel Sea's Jack Hawkins, its onward momentum that of an advancing armoured column (El Alamein newsreels passim), any hint of questioning or doubt squeezed out with the efficiency of an electric mangle - a not-so-subtle cross between Alistair Maclean and Alistair Campbell. As ineluctable as the progress of the war machine it's describing. All doubt is error, all error treason. Only ask - how do they know? Where did the sad hacks who concocted this sub-Buchan fantasy get their information from? Rhetorical questions, of course. There's no need to ask: the belligerent spinners of the belligerent powers - who else? One gem stands out: France and Germany were not consulted. Asked why, one senior Downing Street figure joked that it would have meant 'too many by-lines'. But the serious intent was clear. France and Germany are 'talking a different language', the official said. 'We wanted to make it clear that they did not speak for Europe,' he said. What a thoroughly Hitchcockian conceit for one of the purveyors of this smug and shameless production to give himself a walk-on role! That the independent newspaper and propaganda mouthpiece are united in common purpose is confirmed by the final paragraph: Blair knows that Bush is creating the New World Order. And Blair knows that, in order to be of it, you have to be in it. The erstwhile voice of the left, opponent of Brtish participation in Suez and Vietnam, those military and political débâcles of earlier decades, is now shoulder to shoulder with the Man Who Knows. What a team! | Mexico and war diplomacy - a couple of runes to readIn trying to follow (and I use the term loosely) the process whereby Powell and his merry men are attempting to secure victory in the United Nations Security Council [1], I thought I'd take a look at Mexico - mentioned in my earlier piece on the French angle - on the grounds that
My (sketchy and highly unscientific) sampling of the online Mexican media suggests that the war has a good deal less salience than it has in Europe. For instance, Saturday's back page [2] of the left-wing La Jornada (that, I recall, was all over the Zapatistas when they had their extended street-party a couple of years ago) does splash a foreign story: but it's about the Spanish courts refusing to go extraterritorial (as the infamous Judge Garzón did with Pinochet) over genocide allegations against Guatemalan ex-President Efraín Ríos Montt. Iraq is relegated to the inside pages. The clamour in the streets of Mexico City is not from anti-war demos. Meanwhile, the Mexican government is apparently running two lines on UN Security Council authorisation of a war against Iraq: first, as mentioned in the earlier piece, that the decision must wait on the verdict of the inspectors; in an interview on German TV, President Vicente Fox ....afirmó que su país......no pretende tomar ninguna decisión sobre una acción militar contra Irak hasta que los inspectores de armas de la ONU no hayan presentado su informe definitivo sobre la capacidad militar de Bagdad. "Mientras no tengamos pruebas debemos, debemos evitar la guerra", señaló Fox. As if to emphasise that the Mexicans would not be rushed, new foreign minister Ernesto Derbez said that Powell lo llamó telefónicamente con un sentido de "urgencia", en la madrugada de este viernes, para hablar sobre la posición que tendrá el gobierno foxista en la reunión del Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas, el próximo 5 de febrero. [3] The second, surprising at this early stage in the game, is to accept the Bush line that the burden of proof now lies with Saddam to show that he hasn't got WMDs; Fox told a press conference in Munich that Mexico: puede ser en favor de la paz, o puede ser en otro sentido si no hay pruebas contundentes, ahora, de que Irak no está en la posición de contar con armas de destrucción masiva o de apoyar a grupos terroristas. It's perhaps not without interest that, in the press conference, he was standing next to Edmund Stoiber, the Conservative chief minister of Bavaria, who lost the last Federal general election largely on the Iraq issue. On the box, he appears to have been a tad less hawkish, though still tugging his forelock to his northern neighbour. When asked about the risks of offending its main economic partner by taking an independent stand, Fox said it was a calculated risk: Es un riesgo, pero es un riesgo controlado, es un riesgo advertido On the whole, a fairly balanced diplomatic approach. A ultimate Mexican yes to a UNSC motion authorising an attack is, I'd guess, still odds-on [4]. But Fox is largely avoiding being boxed in, in case events should offer the chance of further delay, whilst showing fairly submissive diplomatic body-language towards Uncle Sam. So far, he gets a B-, I reckon.
| Saturday, February 01, 2003
Turkey can conscript Germany to Iraq war - and other Anatolian anticsAs the US's aircraft carrier in the Middle East, it's scarcely surprising that Turkey is a hive of war-related activity. The National Security Council - the mechanism by which the Turkish armed forces back-seat-drive the country - agreed on Friday, AP are reporting, that US forces would be allowed to use the country as a base for their attack on Iraq. [It also reports that Turkish generals have said they want to deploy soldiers in northern Iraq to maintain stability if there is a war.which is not what I'd call news - something I've talked about more than once, as, for example here.] Surprisingly, perhaps, the Turkish Constitution, dating from the 'bad old days' of 1982, and presumably written under military direction, includes the following provision (Article 92): The Power to authorise the declaration of a state of war in cases deemed legitimate by international law and, except where required by international treaties to which Turkey is a party or by the rules of international courtesy to send Turkish Armed Forces to foreign countries and to allow foreign armed forces to be stationed in Turkey, is vested in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. A provision with possibilities: for instance,
Another front is opening up in relation to NATO: the current, stalled US plan for NATO apparently includes a Turkish component; and, if the plan is rejected at the upcoming NATO meeting on February 4, Turkey intends to present its own. And, of course, Turkey will be able to invoke Article 5 of the NAT if it suffers an Iraqi counter-attack; which will place the Germans, in particular, in the piquant position of being obliged to pitch in to the war they hate - and directly, rather than merely providing the sort of cover proposed in the US plan. Meanwhile, the Turkish military have the Kurdish/Mosul question in hand, with 10,000 troops reportedly being moved to the Iraqi border. More pieces of the (increasingly puzzling) puzzle.... | free website counter 
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