Principles and premises
This best course of national action is based upon the following principles and premises:
1. Australia’s global and regional interests are both best served by a strong and effective United Nations implicitly underpinned by benign superpower military force, but aims to overstride and where necessary fine-tune, as a desirable state of world affairs, an international community of messy interlocking and counter-balancing sovereign state interests.
It would pursue this aim through established government, trade, military, diplomatic, legal and Non Government Organisation mechanisms. The UN must actively foster a multilateral and apposite dispersion of global power across many nations and blocs, rather than allow any excessive unilateral concentration of global power in one nation or bloc. The former global state is predictable and stable; the latter is neither, regardless of where the power is allowed to concentrate.
The current crisis demonstrates this. America, a hitherto benign superpower, is now destabilising, not stabilising, the world.
2. As a low-middle power, if Australia is ever forced to choose between increasing the long-term strategic influence, power and global credibility of the UN at the expense of that of any superpower, or the reverse case, then it must always choose the first option.
3. America intends to invade and occupy Iraq in early 2003. A UN Security Council decision to either a) sanction such an action, or b) not sanction such an action, will now have an equally damaging effect on the long-term strategic influence, power and credibility of the UN.
4. The resolution of this crisis that can best avoid serious net damage to Australia’s short, mid and long-term security interests is the removal of Saddam Hussein prior to the commencement of any American-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Australian action
As soon as possible:
1. The Australian government should advise the US Ambassador, and then publicly announce, that Australia will continue the deployment of her committed military assets in preparation for American-led military activities, but that Australia will not participate in any invasion of Iraq without a new and rigidly-limiting UNSC resolution authorising this as a collective UN action.
Australia should simultaneously, with this public announcement, thank the US President for his recent praise of Australia’s loyalty and commitment to ANZUS in agreeing to deploy our forces, and announce that Australia is seeking a joint meeting with the German and French governments, to propose an alternative approach to Iraq.
Australia’s current internationally acknowledged status as one of only three countries publicly to commit her forces to American pre-invasion preparations will ensure a) good international exposure of this clarification of Australian policy; and b) increase Australia’s chances of securing quickly a meeting with the French and German governments.
2. The Australian government should present to the French and German governments, as the basis for their own subsequent adoption of an alternative approach within the UNSC, the following broad arguments:
A. Iraq now poses a WMD threat to global security. More accurately, Saddam Hussein is now perceived by the world as posing such a threat. True or not, America is now irrevocably committed to disarming him. US disarmament of Saddam Hussein means removing him from office. America currently intends to invade and occupy Iraq to achieve this.
B. North Korea now poses a serious confirmed WMD threat. America is the only country with the military capability and geographic and diplomatic reach required to deal effectively with this genuine ‘rogue nation’ threat, and in a way acceptable to the broad international community.
C. It is now in the interests of the United Nations and the international community, including America, to achieve disarmament of Saddam Hussein without necessitating and/or allowing a full-scale American invasion and subsequent unilateral occupation of Iraq to occur. This latter development would represent a serious global threat over-reaction which will force upon America unpredictable military-strategic, diplomatic-alliance and political-economic changes, of a magnitude likely to hinder at least her short-term capacity to deal properly with the immediate, serious WMD threat posed by North Korea. It will also increase the threat to global security posed by violent expressions of Islamic Fundamentalism through intensified anti-Western terrorism, increasing internal instability in large Muslim countries (some possessing WMD), and greater international co-ordination, co-operation and coalescence of many diverse extremist groups. This is particularly the case in Australia’s immediate region.
D. Australia now has a very strong interest in urging the international community to remove Saddam Hussein from power prior to an American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
3. The Australian government should press upon the French and German governments, in an attempt to influence their posture within the UNSC, Australia’s preferred approach to achieving this end. The following hypothetical progression of events from now is how I would present it to them:
1. UNSC passes a new resolution authorising US invasion and occupation of Iraq under one circumstance only (see below). The current UN weapons inspection process continues, with extensions of time as requested. The full provision of all remaining American WMD intelligence to these teams occurs. American U2 and other reconnaissance overflights of Iraq are authorised, without limitation. A UN protection force is assembled, possibly consisting of lightly-armed French and German troops and multilateral police personnel, possibly commanded by a New Zealander; this supplements the inspection teams as soon as possible. The new UNSC resolution authorises immediate freedom of all US military activity, including unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq, only if this protection force is refused access to Iraq and/or subsequently hindered in its inspection movements and/or threatened and/or attacked. Military commanders and inspection team leaders to jointly manage an increasingly aggressive pursuit of WMD inspection teams aims, using on-ground discretion.
2. US conduct of surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, and invasion preparations continues at a mid-term sustainable level. UNSC new resolution also authorises limited US-coalition Special Force and target-specific aerial bombing operations against any identified Al-Qaeda-derivative terrorist enclaves in northern Iraq, and suspected attempts to move WMD beyond Iraq’s borders while inspections progress. Following any such operation, the US to brief the UNSC, which in turn formally ‘advises’ Iraq (within normal operational security limitations), re-iterating each time the strict limitations of the new UNSC resolution (that is, blocking ‘sanctioned’ US invasion and occupation in all but the one circumstance).
3. UNSC directs a UN committee represented by Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Canada, the Gulf Security States and Iran, to prepare a plan for a post-Saddam UN transitional administration. Canada to assemble and deploy the command-and-control skeleton of a peace-keeping force to support the administration, with major assets and personnel to be cherry-picked from US invasion forces already in AO Iraq. UNSC requests humanitarian agencies to launch humanitarian operations in Iraq as extensive as logistics and security will allow. UNSC directs the ICC to begin preparing CAH cases against Saddam Hussein and identified senior regime figures. These charges, and the UN plan for transitional administration, to be formally presented to the Iraq Ambassador. (UNSC continually to re-assure Iraq’s UN Ambassador that invasion and occupation of Iraq by America will not be sanctioned, except in the one circumstance of aggression against the inspection teams.) The UN accepts on behalf of the international community in principle responsibility for the cost of the on-going US military deployment in AO Iraq, provided the US continues to abide by the terms of the UNSC new resolution; UN begins negotiating a reparation scale and schedule with all UN member states.
4. International Criminal Court (ICC) formally requests, through the Iraqi Ambassador, Iraq to present for trial Saddam Hussein and names Iraqi ‘Co-conspirators against Humanity’. These first round suspects are targeted with the help of internal sources, so best to skew Saddam’s current regime through selective isolation, and foster opportunistic internal re-positioning and plotting.
5. The United Nations continues the armed inspection – and disarmament – process. The US-coalition continues military operations monitoring for signs of WMD-terrorist movement; to strike hard and precisely where necessary, and withdraw; and to maintain invasion readiness. All regional governments and authorities, and international commercial and NGO organisations, continually urged by the UNSC to exert maximum pressure on, and where possible provide maximum assistance to, anti-Saddam forces within Iraq. The international community to wait for the Iraqi people to decide their fate for themselves.
6. The secular, liberal, democratic West holds our secular, liberal, Western democratic nerve.
7. Saddam is toppled from within Iraq, preferably handed to the ICC alive. The UN-transitional administration, supported by the Canadian-commanded US peace-keeping force, assumes control of Iraq. American invasion plans are shelved. Remaining US-coalition forces disperse and continue the war against terrorism
Could we pull off something like this within three months? Six? I think so, if we really wanted to do it this way. Is it now impossible, given the US military build-up and tempo of events? Almost certainly.
But if Australia is truly an ally of the US, it could and should make an unexpectedly bold use of its temporarily-enhanced – if only marginally – world leverage, in at least some way. We’re small, we’re usually politically insignificant, we’re geographically remote, and we’re probably still a bit naive and unsophisticated when it comes to global realpolitik, but Iraq is our best shot at affecting world history for the better. I think our kids will truly regret our lack of guts if we don’t have a go. It all depends on how hard those who want to avoid a US invasion and occupation of Iraq are prepared to fight for an alternative resolution, and how hard those who positively crave an invasion will fight back.
John Curtin would give it a rip, anyway.
***
The thing that has been troubling Australia lately is that if Iraq is invaded by military force, the people of Iraq will never consider themselves truly free until the invader is repelled by force. President George W. Bush was wrong about ‘freedom’ – hopelessly wrong. Freedom is not ‘God’s gift to Humanity’ either, George. Freedom is every man’s gift to himself. No-one else controls it. Not a God, not a President, not even a brave, bronzed ANZAC with a gun. That simple truth represents the one – the only – bright and eternal light towards which Humanity has spent all of its recorded history stumbling, lunging, and very occasionally soaring.
President Bush seems not to have read our history beyond the Renaissance, at best.
Somehow, you sense that something very precious is at stake for us all here, still smack on the cusp of a brand new millennium. The way the international community, and America in particular, chooses to resolve this crisis will have far-reaching implications, in many ways for Australia more than most countries.
That the world’s only remaining superpower has contrived to be drawn into this wretched impasse by a minor regional thug just when it is facing two real and immediate threats – North Korea, and the rise and rise of Islamic Fundamentalism – is something for American voters to ponder next year, I suppose. I hope.
But in Australia we should be under no illusions. Once the US has invaded and occupied Iraq with our help – my alternative above, or anything like it, now being a forlorn fantasy – our country will have been changed forever, too. Maybe only a bit, but what we’ll lose we’ll never get back.
I oppose an American-coalition invasion and occupation of Iraq, UN-sanctioned or not. We don’t have to do it this way. We have choices. There are alternatives. Mine is above. It might seem a bit fantastical, but it’s far better and safer and more efficient and more honest and more moral than a full-scale pre-emptive invasion, supposedly to remove one evil man – an evil man Donald Rumsfeld today casually said the US might allow to go and live peacefully in exile, anyway.
Improvements or variations on my cunning plan are welcome. Meantime, hope like hell that Saddam is toppled from within soon anyway. It’s now Australia’s best realistic outcome.