Friede im Forum und im Iraq?

verfasst von Popeye, 06.07.2002, 17:29

In der Artikelserie im Economist vergangener Woche,aus dessen Lead-Artikel Wal Buchenberg hier Auszüge gepostet hat Amerikas neue Weltpolitik[/b]
, befindet sich auch folgender Artikel zum Thema Iraq (vielleicht ist Wal so nett ihn zu übersetzen?), der die derzeitige Konstellation und die Alternativen - aus meiner Sicht - eingigermaßen zutreffend skizziert.


SURVEY: AMERICA'S WORLD ROLE

Saddam and his sort
Jun 27th 2002
From The Economist print edition


Toppling Saddam Hussein would be to strike three
birds with one stone

IN THE litany of anti-American
criticism, one of the main
charges is that the arrogant
superpower ignores
multilateral laws and
procedures and goes its own
unilateral way. A prime
example is said to be its
headstrong desire for a
"regime change" in Iraq, a plan
virtually all its allies except
Britain currently oppose. It
must just be a Bush family
feud, say some, given the
elder Bush's failure to
complete the Gulf war in 1991.
Or a macho disregard for
others' views, led by
Republican hawks. Yet Iraq is actually the best
example there is of America following multilateral
procedures, which an arrogant unilateralist called
Saddam Hussein proceeded to flout. The question,
then, is what you do when international deals and
procedure are broken. Sit back and pretend it hasn't
happened?

That, alas, has been the multilateralist approach.
During the 1980s, Saddam sought to develop nuclear
weapons (along with biological and chemical ones)
despite having sworn not to do so by signing the
NPT. He used chemical weapons during his long war
against Iran, and then on his own people in Kurdish
areas. In 1991, after Saddam had invaded Kuwait and
then been defeated in the Gulf war, the United
Nations voted in its Resolution 687, which required
Iraq to disclose, destroy and abandon all nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons and associated
research, as well as long-range missiles. It laid down
a timetable for inspection and removal which was
originally envisaged to last one year, during which
economic sanctions were imposed as an enforcement
mechanism. The sanctions permitted some exports of
oil in return for imports of food and medicine.

Yet Iraq did everything it could to thwart and evade
such disarmament, stringing the process out for
seven years before eventually kicking the UN
inspectors out altogether. Although during that time
much progress was made in detecting and destroying
weapons materials, Iraq was also shown to have lied
at every stage-for example, about having ever
produced a deadly nerve agent called VX, a denial it
then replaced with a claim it had made only 200
litres, until the UN inspectors proved it had made at
least 3,900 litres. So even what was discovered and
admitted to cannot be considered definitive.

In the four years since the inspectors last visited
Baghdad, four things have happened. First, Iraq
rejected a much diluted new inspection regime, which
offered a suspension of sanctions if it had been
accepted. Second, Iraq succeeded in spreading the
story that the sanctions have been responsible for
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
children-which they have, but the sanctions would
have been gone long ago if Saddam had co-operated
with the UN. Third, in 2001 Russia blocked a proposal
to target the sanctions more specifically at particular
imports while allowing more exports of oil. Fourth,
while the UN's failed policy continued to be
"enforced" by sanctions and by two"no-fly" zones
policed by American and British aircraft in northern
and southern Iraq, Saddam has been free to resume
his weapons programmes, funded by oil and other
exports channelled through a thriving black market.

At every stage, the multilateral approach has failed,
blocked by Iraq or by permanent members of the UN
Security Council, chiefly France and Russia. Those
countries, China and others have been circumventing
the sanctions. Recently Russia has changed its ways,
to a degree, and has at last agreed to a modified
(so-called"smart") sanctions regime. But what can be
done now? All the options are terrible:

1) Continue with containment, ie, the status quo,
allowing Iraq to blame America (to which the UN
sanctions are ascribed) for children's deaths while
rebuilding its weapons programme.

2) Demand that Iraq submit to a new inspections
regime.

3) Give up altogether and wait till Saddam does
something aggressive or barbaric that he can be
punished for. This would make him a hero to those
Arabs who like the thought of him seeing off the
West.

4) Try to get a UN consensus to support an
American-led invasion, intended to depose Saddam
and to bring in a new regime willing to abide by
Iraq's past international commitments.

5) Just invade, hoping that success will convince
others that it was a good idea.

The apparent multilateral consensus is for either the
second of these options or the fourth, though
agreement is not universal even on those measures.
And the question still arises: what do you do if either
measure is (in effect) voted down or, in the case of a
new inspections agreement, fails? Thus, the limit to
a purely multilateral approach, under the ambit of the
1945 UN Charter, is exposed. Beyond economic
sanctions, which have already failed or been
scuppered by UN members, there is no enforcement
mechanism except for American leadership. And that
is what is likely to happen. There will be a
multilateral process along the lines of option two. It
will fail. And then America will invade.


Practical matters

It will be right to do so. Without an enforcement
mechanism as a last resort, treaties and conventions
designed to control the spread of the ghastliest
weapons will ultimately collapse. There has to be a
military sanction, albeit used extremely reluctantly.
The trouble is that with these sorts of weapons, that
sanction cannot wait until a nuclear or biological
attack has taken place. It has to be applied
pre-emptively.

But when? America has been saying at least since
1997 that it wants Saddam's regime to go. The case
for acting soon is that it has already been left so
long that America's credibility is damaged, and that
the momentum gained by success in Afghanistan is
there to be exploited. The case against is that with
Israel and Palestine locked in violent conflict, no Arab
country will support an invasion as they did the Gulf
war in 1991. Saddam may be helping to stir up that
conflict, and he may have links with the al-Qaeda
terrorists, but little evidence of either has been
disclosed.

In practice, the timing will be determined
pragmatically. America will attack once the
multilateral process has been under way for a while
and has failed, and at a time that looks propitious.
That choice is unlikely to be made while the
Israeli-Palestinian war remains hot. Unless America
has some clear evidence up its sleeve, it would be
best advised to keep the case for invasion separate
from the pursuit of al-Qaeda: the need to enforce the
world's controls on weapons of mass destruction
would make it strong even had September 11th never
happened. The link to terrorism is a distraction.

Contrary to what some gung-ho armchair strategists
say in America, an invasion would carry big risks.
Those are not mainly of opposition by allies, though
militarily the invasion would be a lot easier with
logistical help from at least Kuwait and Turkey. The
risks are that there could be large numbers of civilian
Iraqi casualties if (probably when) Saddam uses them
as shields, and that he might use whatever chemical,
biological or even nuclear weapons he possesses. In
either event the war could become very costly,
including in American lives, and Saddam could seek
to achieve a stalemate. Since failure looks
unthinkable for the Bush administration, it would
surely fight on. But the risk is then of Iraq becoming
a new Vietnam, or Korea.

There are, though, big strategic gains to be had from
a successful invasion, which are likely in the end to
make the effort irresistible. First, there is the
potential effect on would-be weapons proliferators all
around the globe of a signal that international norms
will ultimately be enforced. Both Iran and North
Korea, the others named as in"the axis of evil", have
already been showing signs of greater willingness to
talk. Syria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt and others among the
"at least 25" countries said by Bill Clinton's defence
secretary, William Cohen, to possess or be trying to
get hold of such weapons would also think at least
twice.

Second, depending on what regime replaces
Saddam's, a pacified Iraq could help tilt the balance
inside its neighbour, Iran, between reformists
favouring a friendlier relationship with the West and
more democracy, and the anti-American, generally
clerical, hardliners. During the Iran-Iraq war of the
1980s, America supplied Iraq with some weapons in
order to prevent Iran from dominating the region, a
move that has yet to be forgotten, let alone forgiven.
If Iraq, Russia and Pakistan all become more stable
and less hostile, many justified Iranian worries will
evaporate-after a period, to be sure, of fierce
condemnation of American interference.

Third, a pacified, disarmed Iraq, under a new
government, would provide the chance for a new start
in America's dealings with the rest of the Arab world.
It badly needs one. Thanks to unholy but necessary
trade-offs made in past decades it is not only tarred
with the brush of supplying Israel with money and
arms but also with doing the same for a repressive
regime in Egypt, as well as offering support to Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf states. Democracy exists
nowhere, but economic failure and popular
disenchantment exist almost everywhere.

This is the swamp in which fundamentalist or
messianic terrorism has been able to breed, directed
first at local regimes (especially Egypt's) but then,
during the 1990s and on September 11th, at America.
Somehow, the swamp has to be disinfected, even if it
cannot be drained altogether. The first step in doing
so will be the removal of Saddam Hussein. But that
will be only the beginning of a long journey.

Quelle: Economist (nur Abo)

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• Friede im Forum und im Iraq? - Popeye, 06.07.2002, 17:29