Saddam Hussein’s mountain of documents now awaiting analysis by UN experts has temporarily flummoxed those in hot pursuit. It has thus bought a little more time before a final reckoning is visited upon him. He is playing a weak hand with customary tactical adroitness.
But the underlying realities have not changed. Despite seasonal injunctions to moderation by respected generals, ambassadors and bishops here, we should not allow ourselves to fall prey to the liberal illusion that, so long as no clear or present danger from Iraq is seen to threaten directly the national security of the UK or the US, international inaction is a cost-free option. The evidence of Iraq’s proscribed mass weapons programmes during the 1990s was compelling. The litany of Iraq’s defiance and deception of the UN over more than a decade has set a new standard of cynicism for unscrupulous world leaders. It bodes ill for law and order in the years ahead.
That said, the case for preferring pre-emptive military action against Iraq to traditional policies of containment and deterrence depends on at least four important conditions being first fulfilled. These bear on intelligence, authority, support and consistency. The record on these so far falls short of the cumulative weight needed to carry political conviction and to underpin a safe cost-benefit analysis for the use of force.
Even with maximum diligence by UN inspectors in the paperchase, it is unlikely that any breakthrough on such technical issues as the material balance for key biological agents or chemical-weapon precursors will be dramatic enough by itself to persuade public opinion at large that Saddam Hussein has once again been caught in flagrante; especially if key people or materials have meanwhile been moved out of Iraq.
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