Pre-emption (self defence)

Pre-emption is the alternative to suicide for democracies threatened by terrorist-supporting regimes with access to technologies of mass destruction.

For poseur multilateralists pre-emption is the most controversial geopolitical doctrine of the twenty-first century. For others it is an expression of every nation's right to self-defence - a right enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations.

Iraq and pre-emption

George W Bush and Tony Blair defend their toppling of Saddam Hussein's murderous regime by saying that they pre-empted the threat that it posed to the region and world security. Saddam might not have had the weapons of mass destruction (as thought by intelligence agencies) but he certainly had the technology to produce them.

Would America have pre-emptively attacked the Afghan regime had it been known that the Taliban were equipping the terrorists that eventually killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Advocates of pre-emption believe that the question answers itself.

Saddam's murderous human rights record, his funding of suicide bombers against Israel, his WMD programmes and his hostility to neighbouring nations all pointed to a man who threatened world peace. We could have waited for more years to pass and for him to continue to ignore UN resolutions. We could have waited until there was irrefutable proof that he had WMDs that he could deploy himself - or that he could pass to terrorist organisations. But by then, of course, it would have been too late. By then Saddam could have held the world to ransom. Regime change in Baghdad was the only safe option.

The post 9/11 world

In the post 9/11 world the threats are different. Because of the terrible nature of today's weapons technologies, democracies can't wait for threats to their security to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Catholic theologian George Weigel has written:

“Can we not say that, in the hands of certain kinds of states, the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction constitutes an aggression–or, at the very least, an aggression waiting to happen?”

Action in the war on terror cannot wait for unanimity

There are good reasons for building the widest and deepest of coalitions in the war on terror. The war will be a little easier if all available political and moral will is harnessed. But it is more important that this necessary war is fought by some nations than not at all.

Poseur multilateralists have given the United Nations a moral authority that it doesn’t deserve. The UN plays an important role in gathering nations together for discussion but - at least in its current form - it is inappropriate for moral decision-making:

• Members of the UN Security Council like China – which perpetuated the Tiananmen Square massacre and has so repressed the people of Tibet – and Russia – whose war on Chechnya has been conducted with extraordinary ruthlessness – betray the moral inadequacy of the UN.
• The UN’s own record of peacekeeping – particularly after its involvement in the 1993 Srebrenica massacre – is poor.
• Eighteen oppressive regimes, including Sudan, sit on the UN Human Rights Commission; a Commission chaired by Libya and which endorsed suicide bombings against Israel. In 2001 the USA became the first nation to be expelled by the Commission!
• Charges of misuse and mismanagement of resources have dogged the UN throughout its history. Its Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq was allegedly defrauded of $10bn - some of which propped up Saddam's regime and some of which bought French and Russian support for the UN's weak oversight of Saddam.

Waiting For The UN To Authorise Action Could Be Suicide For Civilisation.

Comments

[dimitris]

Blogging was obviously going to suit the right which beeveils in the individual whereas the left likes everything to go through eight well funded committees before you actually say anything .I see the fact the left are so absent as a class issue. The group who have been out of power for the last ten years are above all the lower middleclass. Those above , Cameron you might say , and Blair and Harman etc. ally with the poor' to remove their money and by acts of cultural elitism also their voice .The chief organ of this cultural attack has been the states funded media the BBC still an overwhelming behemoth but these discordant voices were airbrushed out of almost all pubic discourse. This became dominated by the so called progressive agenda of victims , sensitivities and mangerialist contempt for those they see as their inferiors . These Kulak inferiors' however, , are often as well educated and as articulate as their betters .It was an unstable dam to build and the rage pouring from its breech has visibly shocked the BBC now belatedly apologising in its commissioning. Too late I fear. The working classes still lack the confidence to throw of the intellectual and moral knots the patrician establishment have tied them in but I think it will come and the expulsion of Labour from all but the imperceptive in England is a slow electoral fact often not mentionedI can answer you funding point easily enough with reference to the New Statesman , Compass , Labour Home The Guardian and the BBC. In fact as almost all Conservatives are busy working its amazing that we have the predominance that we enjoy .Its not easy providing for a family as well as four or five socialists filling in forms. It left me no time for doing my blog.Where do Labour go from here Bob ? I think they have to be able to say the words tax cut and mean it before they will even get a hearing . The Conservative brand is still weak and Brown was a gift , he is so left Cameron can talk about stopping things getting worse on tax and control and deliver the entire right of centre vote without having to chuck a single public sector gaping beaked cuckoo out of the nest.Yet. !Perhaps its time for a new name ? Middle-aged Labour ?