I protest.

Justifying War, by James Mayhar

My brother James, who has a Ph.D. in Political Science, emphasis International Relations, and who has been thinking about this sort of thing for quite a long time, has written a good essay about the attempt to justify the war on Iraq. He comes to a pretty compelling conclusion. Read on...

As is true of so many, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this war. Unlike most, I've also spent much time over the last few years thinking about war in general, reading theories of why nations go to war, why they get out of wars, how and why they cooperate, what types of regimes they develop to facilitate cooperation and how they justify not cooperating.

The arguments I've seen, here and in other venues, go back and forth, some arguing that Iraq has W'sOMD, some that a brutal regime must be removed for the good of humanity, the people of Iraq, it's neighbors, or what-have-you. Those opposed seem to fall into two camps: those opposed to war for any reason and those who believe that this is a Bush political adventure without sufficient, or even any, justification.

I fall somewhere in between. As I've said before, I'm solidly in the neoliberal camp, believing that the power possessed by nation-states is an important factor in determining how the international community of states interacts but that those interactions can be moderated by the strong, liberal states building regimes and institutions that encourage cooperation on every front. We don't have to give up sovereignty, but if we build structures to make dealing with "rogue" nations a multi-lateral problem with some set of acceptable and pretty standard responses, then we can minimize the human and economic costs associated with unilateral decisions to go to war. I do accept, however, that war is sometimes a necessary, although always unwanted, behavior.

If our goal is to minimize the human and economic costs, then why are we at war in the Persian Gulf? At first, this questions seems to require a pretty complex answer, but when you break it down, it isn't so tough. The rationales are pretty straightforward.

1. Eliminate regimes that have or will soon develop W'sOMD and that will threaten the Advanced Industrial Democracies (AIDs) with those weapons.
2. Remove from power any regime that supports terrorism and terrorist organizations that target AIDs.
3. Eliminate repressive regimes that engage in systematic human rights violations and in brutalization of their subjects.
4. Eliminate threats to the economic stability of AIDs that occur in critical regions of the world.

So far, so good. If we have good evidence that Iraq possesses or will possess W'sOMD, good evidence of brutality, terrorist support, and economic disruption of the oil economy, then we have some pretty compelling reasons to effect regime change. Unfortunately, when dealing with a strong totalitarian system based on power through threat, brutality, and fear, regime change from within can be very difficult and can be deadly to those within who try to bring about that change. Short of waiting until the dictator dies and hoping for a more moderate individual to take his place, few alternatives to war exist to bring about that change. Why, though, did we end up making a unilateral decision to go to war in Iraq?

Make no mistake, it was a unilateral decision. Our current administration stated repeatedly that we would "Go it alone" if we had to. The fact that two other states have provided military aid and some forty others have pledged other types of aid does not change the fact that we are the ones who made the decision to go to war. I seriously doubt that the British or Australians would have taken on the task without the U.S. involved. Out of 190 some odd countries in the world, we could only get about 1 percent to support us militarily, despite offering some rather generous loan packages in return, suggests that we could not provide sufficiently compelling evidence of an immediate threat to make the costs of war worthwhile. Let's assume, though, that they were all wrong and we were right and that we have sufficient evidence of the four items above to justify going to war and that we are doing the right thing in this case. We still encounter some difficult questions.

Why Iraq? Why not Pakistan, Inda, North Korea, Syria, Libya? The list goes on. Some (hi Kenn!) argue that failure to do the "right thing" in one area does not constitute a condemnation for doing the "right thing" in another area. Just because we fail to bring justice to North Korea doesn't mean we are criminal for doing so in Iraq. This is an emotionally compelling argument that I struggled with for a long time. I, like so many, want my country to do "the right thing" and try to find ways to justify what we are doing. I do think war is justifiable for the reasons stated above. Unfortunately, the argument that lack of effort in one area doesn't cast doubt on effort in another is an inherently flawed argument.

When you look at the history of the U.S. becoming involved in armed inter- and intra-state conflicts, you can see a lot of variation. We committed troops to Bosnia and East Timor to help to stabilize the regions under the auspices of the United Nations. We committed troops to Somalia for the ostensible purpose of helping to feed the starving. We mined the harbors of Nicaragua to prevent the spread of communism. We went to war in Southeast Asia to prevent the spread of communism (among other reasons :)). Did I mention we invaded Granada? Now, we find ourselves picking and choosing which dangerous regime we decide to attack. It's tempting to say merely that we choose the one that presents the most immediate and severe threat, and that would be fine, if we then proceeded to choose another dangerous regime, build a case, generate international debate, and remove it, and so on and so forth.

The trouble is, we haven't been doing that. We have an administration that has chosen its potential targets based on an articulation of an "axis of evil" that does not constitute an even nearly exhaustive list of the dangerous and brutal regimes in the world. We have left some of the most immediately dangerous regimes to be dealt with diplomatically. Worse, we have ignored the humanitarian abuses in quite a number of countries until it became politically expedient to render aid. It seems clear from this vantage that, had Afghanistan not been harboring Al Qaeda, then we would never have engaged in a military campaign to remove the Taliban. So, again, one would ask how this is a criticism of doing the right thing in Iraq?

If we do not address international problems systematically, but instead use political and emotional reasons for choosing our targets, then we are not working to promote stability and safety. We will not build regimes and institutions that are effective agents for preventing war and other atrocities. We, instead, use the wonderful sounding humanitarian reasons as justifications for engaging in RealPolitik. We abandon our ideals in favor of national power and prestige. We make the world a more dangerous place by reducing the effectiveness of the mechanisms that limit warfare. We once again embrace the Westphalian self-help system that took root following the 30-years war and declare our position that our sovereignty and right to project force cannot be infringed by any international institution. We deliberately and with great effectiveness break the only hope we have for the future in an ever shrinking world.

This war is wrong. Not because we are killing people. Not because war is inherently evil. Not because people at home disagree with the war. Because we are endangering the only systems that have ever been developed that can bring coordinated international, multi-lateral, forces to bear to prevent atrocities.

In no time in the past has the technology existed that would allow non-state actors to bring *any* country to its knees. That is no longer the case. The supplies of Strontium 90 and Cesium 137 floating around the former Soviet states are of sufficient quantity to do incalculable damage to virtually any country in the world. We desparately need effective institutions that are capable of cooperating in reducing the threats associated with these and worse agents in the hands of fanatics. We are quickly throwing that ability away.

James A. Mayhar

Oh, and on the matter of Democracy in Iraq? It would take a dramatic cultural shift. Bush has already told us the military is coming home as soon as the fightings done, so how do we accomplish that cultural shift?. But that's another issue entirely.