Disarmament Diplomacy

Civil Society: the "Other Superpower"

David Cortright

The demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in February 2003 were the largest antiwar protests in human history. More than a million people jammed the centre of London. Similar throngs marched in Rome and Barcelona, and hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Sydney, and New York.¹ Further rallies took place in hundreds of cities across the globe. The people of the planet spoke out as never before in one unified voice. "The world says no to war" was the slogan and the reality.

A few days after the February 15 demonstrations, New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler conferred "superpower" status on the antiwar movement. The huge demonstrations were indications, wrote Tyler, of "two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."² Many of us in the antiwar movement adopted the phrase and proclaimed our movement "the other superpower".³ Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan used the phrase in referring to antiwar opinion.⁴ In nearly every country, opinion polls showed solid and sometimes overwhelming majorities against US-led military action in Iraq.

For all the unprecedented scale and scope of the antiwar movement, however, the Bush administration rolled ahead with its planned invasion. The unavoidable fact, as Jonathan Schell poignantly observed, was that "the candles in windows did not stop the cruise missiles."⁵ The antiwar campaign may have delayed the onset of war, as the Bush administration was forced to spend frustrating months seeking an elusive diplomatic consensus, but we could not stop it. The White House was determined to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein regardless of public opinion. In retrospect it seems that no movement, however massive or powerful, could have succeeded in dissuading the president and his advisers from their obsession with armed regime change in Iraq.

The antiwar movement nonetheless had significant political impact. The administration's decision to take its case to the United Nations was a victory for those of us who advocated the rule of law and the use of diplomacy. By pressuring the White House to go through the UN, the movement slowed the march to war and complicated the administration's military preparations and planning for occupation. Hardliners in the administration would have preferred bypassing the Security Council and proceeding directly to military action, but the administration needed at least the appearance of seeking UN involvement to gain political legitimacy in Congress and elsewhere. Once the UN debate began, France, Russia, and other members of the Security Council were successful in forcing substantial changes in the first draft resolution submitted by the US and UK in October. Security Council Resolution 1441, which was adopted in November, lacked the explicit authorisation for military action that Washington and London had sought.

When the Bush administration returned to the Security Council in February to seek authority for war, it was decisively rebuffed. Not only France, Germany, and Russia, but six nonpermanent members - Chile, Mexico, Cameroon, Guinea, Angola, and Pakistan - refused to support the US proposal. The opposition of the nonpermanent members was especially significant, given their political and economic dependence on the United States. Washington made determined efforts to twist arms and sent diplomatic demarches to each country, but to no avail. Despite its lobbying effort the United States could only count on the votes of Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria. Rather than face the embarrassment of such a meagre showing, Washington withdrew its proposed resolution. This was a major victory for the antiwar movement.

The strength of worldwide opposition prevented the Bush administration from gaining Security Council support for its planned invasion and forced the administration to abandon efforts to win UN endorsement.⁶ As a result, the United States and Britain stood practically alone in their drive for war. The importance of this Security Council rebuff to the United States is enormous. It was, according to Immanuel Wallerstein, "the first time since the United Nations was founded that the United States, on an issue that mattered to it, could not get a majority on the Security Council."⁷ This was a humiliating political defeat for the supposed lone superpower.

The interplay between the antiwar movement and the United Nations deserves special comment. Most UN officials and Security Council members were opposed to the war but were powerless to stop it. The UN Security Council by its very design is a captive of the permanent powers, and when its most powerful member is bent on military aggression, the UN has no capacity to prevent it. The most important power of the Security Council is its authority to confer international legitimacy. When it withholds consent, as it did in Iraq, it denies legitimacy. It was able to do so because of the worldwide antiwar movement. A creative dialectic developed between the Security Council and global civil society. The public opposition to war hinged on the lack of UN authorisation. The objection of the UN in turn depended on the strength of antiwar opposition. The stronger the antiwar movement in the United States, Germany, France, Mexico, and other countries, the greater the determination of UN diplomats to resist Bush administration pressures. The stronger the objections at the UN, the greater the legitimacy and political impact of the antiwar movement.⁸ It was a unique and unprecedented form of global political synergy. By defending the UN, despite its many shortcomings, and insisting upon international authorisation for the use of force, the peace movement helped to build the domestic opposition to war and strengthened respect for international law.

The Bush administration seemed to display an almost indecent haste to commence military action, despite concessions from Saddam Hussein, the progress of UN inspections, and feverish diplomatic efforts at the UN. The attempts of officials from France, Russia, and other countries to broker agreements that would have allowed more time for inspections and diplomacy were brusquely swept aside. The administration's calendar for war was dictated in part by the pace of the military buildup, which was largely completed by February. The timing of the attack was also influenced by politics. The administration planned the buildup for war to coincide with the congressional midterm election campaigns, thereby rallying the flag for Republican candidates and distracting attention from Democratic criticisms of the administration's domestic policies. The administration also wanted to complete the war before the presidential election season of 2004, in the hope that it could use the military victory over Iraq's bedraggled army and supposed success in liberating Iraq to bolster the president's campaign.

The administration's haste may have been motivated as well by a desire to launch the attack before antiwar sentiment became too strong. The administration had already made its best case for war (the president's State of the Union address in late January 2003 and Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation at the UN Security Council in early February), but the resulting short-term gain in the polls was trumped by the rising tide of antiwar action, particularly the February 15 rallies. Polls showed a majority of the public opposed to an invasion without Security Council approval. Antiwar momentum was building. Membership lists were growing rapidly at MoveOn, True Majority, and other groups. Plans were being laid for additional rallies, concerts, and television broadcasts. The best way for the administration to short-circuit the antiwar buildup was to send in the troops, thus robbing the movement of its principal, preventive purpose and sparking the inevitable rally-around-the-flag effect that occurs when troops are engaged in combat.

The impact of the antiwar debate that has not been widely acknowledged was the strategic decision of the White House to justify its preplanned war by emphasising the supposed threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In a rare moment of unscripted candour after the war, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that the focus on weapons of mass destruction was politically motivated. During an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Wolfowitz confirmed: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."⁹

This was an admission that the administration could not make an honest case for war and win the debate. Because opposition to war was so great, it was necessary to manipulate and deceive public opinion. By choosing to emphasise the weapons threat - invoking fears of a nuclear mushroom cloud and chemical or biological attack - the administration focused the debate on issues it knew would be effective in mobilising public concern. The tactic was successful in the short term, convincing many Americans that Saddam Hussein had deadly weapons poised to strike. But the strategy backfired when White House claims were exposed as lies, in part through the continuing efforts of antiwar groups.

The political context of the decision to go to war also had an impact on the failure to plan for the postwar occupation, and the subsequent quagmire in which the US-led Coalition found itself. The lack of preparation for the aftermath of war (no police on the streets, no public services, no one to manage government ministries) has been widely criticised, but few have linked this failure to the prewar political debate. In the crucial months leading up to the invasion the administration was claiming that it hoped to avoid war. The declared US objective was Iraqi disarmament, not armed regime change. If the planning for a US takeover of Iraq had been more obvious and visible, diplomatic efforts to win support for American policy would likely have collapsed more completely. Members of Congress would have been more reluctant to issue a blank cheque for military action. Perhaps even the Blair government in London might have balked. The public opposition to war would have been even greater.

To avoid such political resistance, the administration had to maintain the façade of a multilateral disarmament effort, and could not be seen as preparing to take over the Iraqi state. An American official who was involved in the planning for occupation told the New Yorker, "That's the political logic that works against advance planning."¹⁰ To maintain the deceit that was necessary to justify military action, the administration short-circuited preparations for the war's aftermath.

It is too early to tell as of this writing how the crisis over the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq will unfold. The US military easily defeated the poorly equipped Iraqi armed forces, but the challenge of occupying and controlling Iraq turned out to be far more difficult. Iraq degenerated into violence and chaos, and US and international forces have sustained continuing casualties. The Bush administration rammed through its war policy, but it was unable to win the more important struggle for hearts and minds.

The White House lost the war politically before it ever began militarily. Many of the arguments made by the opponents of war were proven correct in its aftermath. The supposed Iraqi weapons threat proved to be nonexistent. No evidence was found linking Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda or the September 11 attacks. The war increased rather than decreased the terrorist threat. It demonstrated the folly of preventive war fought without international support. It overburdened the US military and weakened its capacity to act in other arenas. Postwar criticisms of faulty and manipulated intelligence undermined confidence in the administration's foreign policy, especially its new doctrine of military preemption, which suffered a well-deserved setback.

The growing awareness that the White House misled the country into war has weakened the president's political standing and emboldened his opponents in the Democratic party. Whether these developments will translate into a long-term re-evaluation for US militarism, and a concurrent increase in support for cooperative internationalism, is unknown. The answer will depend on whether the historic legacy of the international movement against war in Iraq is sustained and deepened in the years ahead.

Notes

1. Estimates of the numbers of demonstrators and antiwar events are drawn from the website of United for Peace and Justice, the largest grassroots peace coalition in the United States. United for Peace and Justice, "The World Says No to War," February 15, 2003, http://www.unitedforpeace.org/feb15.html (accessed 24 November 2003). For newspaper accounts of the protests, see Angelique Chrisafis et al., "Threat of War: Millions Worldwide Rally for Peace," Guardian (London), February 17, 2003; Glenn Frankel, "Millions Worldwide Protest Iraq War," Washington Post, February 16, 2003; Alan Lowell, "1.5 Million Demonstrators in Cities Across Europe Oppose a War in Iraq," New York Times, February 16, 2003.

2. Patrick E. Tyler, "Threats and Responses: News Analysis; A New Power in the Streets," New York Times, February 17, 2003.

3. Jonathan Schell, "The Other Superpower," The Nation (March 27, 2003), http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030414&s=schell

4. Jeoffrey Nunberg, "As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation," New York Times, 18 May 2003.

5. Jonathan Schell, "The Other Superpower" op. cit.

6. Phyllis Bennis, "Bush Isolated, Launches Terrifying Attack," War Times April 9, 2003, http://www.war-times.org/issues/9art1.html

7. Immanuel Wallerstein, "US Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony," Monthly Review 55, no. 3 (July-August 2003), p 28.

8. I am indebted for this insight to Jack Odell, interview by author, December 17, 2003.

9. See the transcript of the Wolfowitz interview by Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair, May 9, 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html George Packer, "War After the War," New Yorker (24 November 2003), p 64.

A co-founder of the Win Without War coalition, David Cortright is President of the Fourth Freedom Forum and the author of A Peaceful Superpower: The Movement Against War in Iraq, special ed. (Goshen, Ind.: Fourth Freedom Forum, 2004).

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