Stumbling Into War

James P. Rubin

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Why did most of the world abandon Washington when it went after Saddam Hussein? The war in Iraq could never have been an easy sell, but nor should it have been such a difficult one. The Bush administration badly botched the prewar maneuvering, presenting a textbook study in how not to wage a diplomatic campaign.

James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.

The third scenario involved Saddam's "shooting himself in the foot," as he did in 1998 and on numerous occasions in the past, starting with his refusal to pull out of Kuwait in 1991. Another such provocation this spring would have again led to widespread support for war. If, for example, Iraq had refused to allow access to suspected weapons sites or did not at least appear to cooperate with UN inspectors, all the key governments would have backed an invasion. Ironically, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin even made it clear privately that had another power such as Russia or China tried to veto a war under such circumstances, France would have joined the military coalition anyway.

What actually happened, however, was the fourth scenario, one for which Washington was wholly unprepared: partial compliance. Iraq did not accept that it bore the burden of proof of showing that it had disarmed, and it gave the UN a preposterously implausible declaration of its weapons programs (comprised, in part, of previous reports to the UN). But it did allow inspectors unfettered access to suspected sites, and it generally cooperated with them. Iraq granted inspectors access to presidential palaces and other locations that they had been barred from or where they had been harassed in the past, and it destroyed dozens of al Samoud missiles after the UN declared that they exceeded their allowed ranges. Some key scientists were also allowed to be interviewed, and new methods were proposed to prove the past destruction of banned weapons. Washington, however, was caught flat-footed by these developments, and the result was disastrous.

The right way to deal with partial compliance would have been to develop a timetable for completing the verification of Iraq's disarmament and a way to judge whether Baghdad had actually met it. To achieve such an outcome would have required careful multilateral diplomacy. The Bush administration could have approached all the key players at the outset to discuss this method and all the other options. Putin, for example, would have viewed summit-level discussions about how to respond to different scenarios as a sign of respect for Russia and a demonstration of real partnership. According to key Russian officials, he would then have agreed in advance to setting a deadline for Iraq's compliance. French officials similarly claim that Chirac would have gone along with the use of force if a nine-month schedule had been set at the beginning. The swing voters on the council (Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan) would have been satisfied with as little as four months. But no such consultations took place between Bush or Secretary of State Colin Powell and their counterparts.

In fact, the partial compliance scenario was not even seriously examined before or immediately after the passage of Resolution 1441. When Iraq then took such an approach, the United States seemed unprepared. This result may have occurred because of divisions within the administration over what to do in such a case, with hard-liners determined not to respond to anything short of unequivocal compliance. Regardless of the reasons, however, Washington had no plan in place. Not having laid the diplomatic groundwork, the allies waited until February to start scrambling for support of a resolution endorsing war.

MUSTERING A MAJORITY

Having decided to seek a second resolution, why couldn't the United States even muster a majority of votes? This failure will be long remembered. The convenient response was to blame Chirac, on the grounds that his veto threat made it impossible for the undecided council members to support a losing cause. But the real story is more complex.

During the negotiation of Resolution 1441 in the fall of 2002, the administration repeatedly argued that a second resolution authorizing force would not be necessary. That remained its view for months, until February 2003, when Blair convinced Bush that he risked losing his leadership of the Labour Party if they did not seek a second resolution. Given Blair's staunch support up until that point, Bush understandably decided to switch his stance to try to help his friend.

About the same time, the French also reversed their position. After insisting from the beginning that war would require a second vote to authorize it, suddenly Paris began scrambling to avoid a showdown with the United States. France's ambassador in Washington, Jean-David Levitte, told Cheney in February that Washington and Paris should simply "agree to disagree." Through other diplomatic channels, the French advised the Americans to bypass the council entirely. "Your interpretation [of 1441] is sufficient [to justify war]," they counseled Washington, and "you should rely on your interpretation."