Listen to the world before waging war

THIS WAS WRITTEN A LONG TIME AGO, SHORTLY BEFORE THE IRAQ WAR IN 1993

I was surprised at the [discussion after church service] yesterday to hear views on the Iraq situation that were mostly so conservative. By what standards, you may ask? The standard of Truth, I will say with tongue in cheek -- a little. By the standards of US political discourse today, they weren't so conservative ofcourse.

Lasting social change comes about one mind at a time, and I will try to stir up a little extra unrest in some minds. I will not reiterate arguments heard in the press for and against military action -- the most liberal position of which seems to be that we should disarm Iraq (a euphemism for "invade, conquer, and occupy Iraq") if we have convincing proof of weaponsof mass destruction or a program to build them.

Most of us liberals are opposed, often with some vehemence, to the policies of the current administration under George W. Bush. "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" said Lord Acton. We might be willing to apply this with scorn to Bush, another in a long list of complaints against the man. But I suggest that the corruption of power has spread silently, without reflection, to most Americans and many of us in FUSN as well.

Most of us live pretty well, even with the current economic downturn. We might prefer Democrats to Republicans, or liberal Democrats to conservative ones, but the system does pretty well by us. If not always proud, we're at least content to be Americans. In response to conservative allegations that we are not patriotic, we are generally happy to say that our wish for peace is patriotic. But in accepting that word "patriotic" I think we are silently assenting to the broad outlines of US foreign policy, if not the recent changes towards hawkishness.

The BBC this morning reports that US military spending exceeds that of the next 20 nations combined, a statistic that surprised me. How many of us, if we look deep within, cannot find a little bit of glee that our nation can whup any other nation on earth? I can. This is followed immediately by a little embarrassment, and a hurried affirmation that of course that doesn't affect my thinking about a just foreign policy at all. Sound familiar to anyone?

With this power, we have the ability to affect the outcome of various conflicts throughout the world. Terrible things are happening; might we not use our power to make them right?; do we not have a solemn obligation to do so? The US is very powerful (if not all-powerful), we as individuals are mostly good (if not all-good), so doesn't it also make sense that we're very knowledgeable (if not all-knowing) -- knowledgeable enough to decide for ourselves when force should be used? Here's a subtle hint as to my opinion: NO. If our intentions are truly good, we need to listen to the wisdom of the whole world. If we don't think world opinion matters, then we are becoming just another in history's list of empires, destined (by the corruption of power) to be hated by its subject peoples. If we cannot convince the United Nations that use of force overseas is justified, it's not justified. Even United Nations approval is suspect, given the concentration of power in the hands of powerful nations, and given the US ability to bribe or threaten others to vote our way. How many of us, joining in the debate on the use of American power, think beyond what America decides is best to an insistence on including a decision by theworld?

In insisting on a preponderance of international support for any overseas military adventure, I am assuming that military force is truly a last resort. It is tempting to see a regime doing bad things, and figure that replacing that regime will make the bad things stop. But war itself is a source of great suffering, new regimes usually do some bad things too, and the long-term goal of peoples exercising self-determination is undercut if outside force is seen as threat or savior.

A few thoughts on the specific situation at hand:

Nuclear weapons are known to be in the hands of the US, Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Russia, and Pakistan, and we live uneasily with this situation despite instability in the latter nations. The military threat of the USSR that dominated my youth, and to which no end was visible, ended not by military intervention but by a largely peaceful transformation inside the country. While Saddam Hussein threatened and invaded his neighbors before 1991, he has not done so since and will not do so again, with the US airpower lurking nearby that so thoroughly routed his forces. His pursuit of nuclear and chemical weapons since 1991 was probably intended to deter just the sort of attack he now faces. Hussein will not live forever, and eventually forces within Iraq will lead to a transformation of that society.

The example of intervening to stop the rearming of Nazi Germany in the 1930s is often brought to bear on the side of activist intervention. Such intervention would have fallen primarily to Britain and France, the two nearby powers, and could have been done with a coalition of nearby states and perhaps the US. However, no one knew in the 1930s that Nazi Germany would be so spectacularly effective on the battlefield, so the problem did not warrant sufficient attention in the politics of the time. I have heard that in the interwar years, nations wanting to improve their militaries looked to France, not Germany, as the source of wisdom. If we seek to overthrow every government that speaks of conquest outside its borders or social policies we find offensive, our guns will be very busy indeed.