War is a terrible calamity. However carefully conducted, it causes intense suffering to innocent people, and the extent of that suffering cannot be predicted with any confidence. On the other hand, war may be the only available means to prevent suffering that promises to be even greater. Opinions may therefore differ honestly on whether it is justified on any particular occasion, the more so when the circumstances are clouded, as with the threatened invasion of Iraq.

The questions here are:

• whether Iraq is actually engaged in developing, constructing or deploying nuclear, chemical or biological weapons;
• if so, whether they constitute a serious threat to ourselves or others towards whom we have obligations of defence;
• whether military action against that threat requires explicit and specific authorisation by the United Nations;
• whether lacking such precise authorisation, the USA acting alone or with a few other nations would be unduly compromised by history or by material interests in the area; and
• whether invasion would do more harm than good.

On the first, past experience suggests that international inspectors will have excellent co-operation from working contacts, but it appears at the time of writing that there is sufficient prevarication and concealment on the part of the senior Iraqi authorities to warrant suspicion falling little short of certainty. (A friend in Baghdad believes otherwise, but he left the nuclear programme for an academic post many years ago and is unlikely to have much reliable current information.)

Saddam Hussein’s record is of immense harm to his subjects and neighbours, with complete disregard for common humanity. Collateral damage, although inevitable in military action, is unlikely to compare with the devastation that an Iraqi government of the present complexion would be ready to cause. The main questions are therefore of United Nations authorisation and the legal or moral position should it remain imprecise.

General agreement on dealing with the threat is obviously desirable, but cannot be obligatory if action appears essential. Granted that motives for invasion are probably mixed, the issue is not about moral superiority but about preventing a possible disaster, of which American fears are genuine and long-standing. We private citizens do not have the information to be sure that the situation is actually grave enough to warrant over-riding the substantial legal scruples; nevertheless the possibility certainly exists.

In a perfect world, violence would never be appropriate. In real life, international as well as civic, we are faced with people whose unrestrained activities would be too destructive to tolerate, and who can be restrained only by a convincing threat of superior force. Paradoxically, the best chance of peace then depends on being clearly determined, however regretfully, to apply that force if all else fails. Well-intentioned protests against preparations for invading Iraq are thus liable to make war more likely rather than less.

Peter Wilson

Seascale

January 2003.