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.

As for the French, until the very end of the process they feared ending up in the minority. They desperately wanted to avoid using their veto and thus being excluded from any role in a post-Saddam Iraq. This is why de Villepin went on his infamous trip to Africa to line up opposition to the United States and why, at the 11th hour, even after his explicit veto threat, Chirac proposed a 30-day timetable based on a weaker version of the British benchmarks.

But from the White House's perspective, Chirac had already crossed the line. In a phone call with Bush, Chirac told him, "I am convinced there is no immediate or urgent threat," but Bush insisted that Iraq "threatens the American people." Rightly or wrongly, the administration believed that vital U.S. interests were at stake and thus regarded Chirac's veto threat as profoundly unfriendly.

It is true, then, that France's opposition made passage of a second resolution impossible. But it is also true that the United States' failure to lay the diplomatic groundwork and offer modest compromises made achieving even a moral majority on the council impossible.

THE POWER OF PAYBACK

The public struggle in the Security Council over the second resolution was about more than just Iraq. The opponents of the American and British resolution say they were fighting a White House that they believed threatened to undermine international order.

Above all, it was the so-called preemptive strike doctrine, published in last September's National Security Strategy, that harmed America's diplomatic cause. Viewed through this lens, the war in Iraq looked less like a way to uphold UN Security Council resolutions than like the manifestation of a new American approach. Whichever U.S. officials decided to include the now-infamous language about preemptive strikes and the primacy of American power in the annual document, and then singled them out as marking a new U.S. doctrine, either did not consider or did not care how it would affect the debate.

Whatever the explanation, the result was that every time U.S. officials insisted their goal was to enforce UN resolutions on Iraq, they ran up against a wall of skepticism. Is Iraq the first in a series of preemptive attacks? they were asked. Who decides when an existing threat justifies preemptive action? How can the UN endorse an unprovoked attack on another country? What will happen if other countries, such as India, Pakistan, Russia, or China, insist on their right to attack preemptively whenever they see a threat? Much of the world became determined to prevent the Security Council from rubber-stamping American decisions to conduct preemptive strikes. If gaining support for action against Iraq was truly Washington's highest priority in the fall of 2002, it is hard to imagine a more counterproductive step than to initiate a debate over whether the United States has the right to attack whomever it wants, whenever it deems it necessary.

Having said that, the controversy over preemptive strikes might, by itself, have been manageable. But international relations are a lot like interpersonal relations. Every country has a certain amount of goodwill on deposit with others. Unfortunately, by last fall, the United States' goodwill account had been exhausted. The president seemed to have forgotten the tenet he had articulated so well as a candidate: "It's important to be friends with people when you don't need each other, so that when you do, there's a strong bond of friendship."