Bush and Blair's illegal war in Iraq has not made the world a safer
place - only respect for international law can do that

Philippe Sands
Thursday February 24, 2005
The Guardian

In its effort to remake the global rules America has not acted alone.
The legacy of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill's visionary
Atlantic charter, which led to the establishment of the United Nations,
is now in the hands of the Atlantic cowboys, George Bush and Tony Blair.
When Roosevelt and Churchill sprang their charter on the world in the
summer of 1941, the threat to the two countries was of a wholly
different order. And yet, 60 years on, an American president can show
contempt for international obligations, in actions and in words: "I
don't care what the international lawyers say."

His British counterpart pays lip service to international law, and then
proceeds to override the views of those government advisers who know
something about the subject. He feels able to proclaim, as he did in his
speech in March 2004, the need for global rules as though the
achievements of the past 60 years count for nought. What is left of the
transatlantic commitment to international law?

The attacks of 9/11 brought Blair and Bush together to give rise to one
of the great enigmas of modern British political life: why did Blair
lend British support to the war on Iraq? His support for that war and
the "war on terror", as well as the implicit support for the regime put
in place at Guantánamo, provided oxygen and international legitimacy to
acts of dubious legality and effectiveness, which had virtually no
international support.

Why has Britain associated itself so closely with an administration that
has such scant regard for the international rule of law? That is a
difficult question that only Blair himself can answer. If an illegal war
in Iraq had made the world a safer place, then arguably it might be
justified. But there is little evidence that the world is a safer place,
and a great deal more evidence that the Iraq war has provided a major
distraction to the challenge posed by global terrorism and al-Qaida.
Neither can it be said that the Middle East is more stable or peaceful,
nor that the existence of the detention camp at Guantánamo and the
failure to apply human rights and humanitarian law are the best way to
win hearts and minds, or persuade the occupied of your humanitarian
intentions.

The only plausible answer is that the prime minister believed that
solidarity and self-interest required him to place Britain alongside the
US, more or less whatever it chose to do. History will tell whether that
was the right choice. In the meantime, Britain's stock as a law-abiding
global citizen has taken a beating. Its authority and leadership role
are degraded. Many British and American diplomats have expressed
disquiet, recognising that their job has been made that much more
difficult by the events of the past three years. It could be argued, I
suppose, that Britain is following the US because it has taken a
considered decision that the wholesale reconstruction of the
international legal order is justified. But so far I have seen no hint
that that is in fact the case, with the exception of a somewhat emotive
speech by the prime minister, which suggested he was out of his depth on
what the law required or permitted.

But the insurmountable difficulty with this argument is that it is based
on a false premise. The US cannot go it alone, much as its behaviour
might suggest it wishes it were otherwise. American unilateralism is not
isolationism: the US's exposure to the world is premised on economic
objectives, among others, not military objectives. The use of military
power is a means to an end, not the end itself. The business community
will be the first to say that commerce cannot be dictated by brute
force. You cannot intimidate consumers into buying US goods, or
supplying oil and other strategically significant products. Military and
economic considerations cannot be separated, any more than free trade
and environmental objectives can be disconnected. Once that is
recognised, and you accept that some of your foreign policy objectives
are premised on the application of global rules, the marginalisation of
international law becomes more difficult to justify. Moreover, if Iraq
and the war on terrorism have shown anything, it is that the US is
dependent on alliances and coalitions whose members require something in
return. Whichever way you look at it, the US needs international agreements.

The present effort by the US and Britain to remake the global rules will
not succeed. It does not mean that new circumstances - failed states,
terrorism and the emergence of non-state actors in particular - do not
require the existing rules to be continually assessed, and to be
modified where necessary. Nor does it mean that some of the global rules
are not in need of a thorough overhaul, to make them more efficient and
accountable to parliaments and to the people. But change is a process
which inevitably requires cooperation and a broad degree of support. It
cannot be imposed at gunpoint.

In this interdependent world it is hopeless to conceive of a return to
nature, to a pre-regulatory environment in which each state is free to
act as it wishes, unfettered by international obligations. Nor is it
realistic to give effect to any sort of à la carte multilateralism, in
which states are able to pick and choose those areas of international
law they like and those they don't. The lessons from the World Trade
Organisation and elsewhere make it clear that different social
objectives are interdependent.

Imperfect as some of the international rules may be, they reflect
minimum standards of acceptable behaviour and, to the extent they can be
ascertained, common values. They provide an independent standard for
judging the legitimacy of international actions. I do not think recent
events have changed these basic assumptions or created a new paradigm.

The rules of international law will turn out to be more robust than the
policies of the Bush administration. Tough guys are not enough in
international relations. In the 21st century you need rules, and proper
lawyers too.