Political Science Professor Ellis Goldberg has been director of the UW’s Middle East Center since 1995. His latest book is about child labor and globalization in Egyptian society.
Can you give us an overview of this war, why it happened?
I think it was clear in the last few years that the sanctions regime against Iraq was going to expire. The question was, should you lift sanctions (which is what France and Russia wanted), do you try to reinforce sanctions, or should the regime be toppled? If sanctions go away, it is possible that Iraq would reconstitute itself as a regional threat.
One word I like to use is “rescue.” Here we had a regime that was so violent to its neighbors and its own people that it was no longer possible to accept it in the international community.
There has been a lot of talk about “democracy in the desert.” Do you think this is possible?
Look, there is a tendency to confuse democracy and elections with the rule of law and respect for individual rights. If we think about Iraq, we need to constitute a government with a respect for the rights of individuals first. We need to ensure that the state has a more limited role in shaping its citizenry. It’s more crucial than moving to a routine and frequent election system.
The Arab reaction in the Middle East has been extremely negative, despite the joy of the crowds in Baghdad over the fall of Saddam. Why is Arab public opinion so negative?
It is difficult to say without being there. I think what you are getting now is a profound sense of disappointment. People didn’t expect the Iraqi government to collapse as quickly as it did. They saw yet another Arab government promising to fend off and fight the Western imperialist powers but being incapable of doing so.
On the other hand, what has been ignored is the degree of debate in the Arab world. We don’t pay enough attention to it. There was a study done at Harvard of Arab public opinion that showed people in Arab societies have a healthy skepticism of what their governments are up to.
There is a small current of opinion in the Arab world that the tyrannical nature of the Iraqi regime invited the American attack and also made it impossible to withstand the attack. There is a small stream of thought that says, “We need to think about what kind of society we have here.”
After the first Gulf War there was talk about a breakthrough in the relations between Israelis and Palestinians, and we did have the Oslo Accords two years later. Is it possible we could have another breakthrough today?
It is a possibility but not a probability. We may have a prime minister for the Palestinians who is committed to some significant reforms and committed to lowering the threshold of violence. But is the Israeli government going to be willing to deal with these issues — settlements and a viable economy for the Palestinians? I think it is going to be very difficult for the two parties, especially their leadership.
Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak warned that an invasion of Iraq would create 100 Osama bin Ladens. Do you think he was right?
Citing bin Laden is a threat that many Arab governments brandish before the U.S. They use it when they want us to do something, and they use it when they don’t want us to do something. He may sincerely believe it, but I think it is less likely. I think Al-Qaeda has been far more damaged than we first thought.
Are there aspects of the war and its aftermath that you think are underreported?
There are two things. One is the degree of debate in the Arab world. The other is that, until recently, the levels of repression and violence to which Arab societies have been held hostage was really underplayed and underreported. I guess it doesn’t make good television. Look at the civil war in Lebanon or the terrible violence in Algeria. It is apparent to me that people underestimated how terrible the regime was in Iraq. They were far more aggressive, if not hostile, than most people realized. The Iraqi people feel much more comfortable protesting the Americans than they ever felt protesting their own government.
History Professor William Rorabaugh is a social historian and author of four books about American history, including Berkeley in the Sixties about the anti-war movement during Vietnam.
As a social historian, you are used to making parallels between events in U.S. history. Supporters of the Iraq War liken it to a war of liberation, such as the invasion of France during World War II, while critics compare it to a war of occupation, such as what happened in the Philippines after the Spanish American War. How do you see this war in the context of American history?
To make such comparisons in this case is not terribly useful. The United States has never invaded and occupied a Middle Eastern country. That part of the world has not been secularized and modernized. You have a part of the world that is intensely Islamic.
But could this become a successful occupation such as what happened in Japan and Germany after World War II or less successful like the guerrilla war in the Philippines?
It could become one or the other, depending on how events play out. If we take a longer time and larger role in the occupation, we have the risk of being hated. We could see suicide bombers and sniper attacks on American troops. It could become unhappy and unpleasant.
After World War II you had a real occupation. No one doubted who ran Japan and Germany. We redid the school systems, we redid the banking systems, we rewrote the Japanese constitution. … But we have a different situation here. Have you noticed, there was no surrender? Maybe there never will be. It makes things much more difficult. In these other cases, there was a recognition that a new start was needed. Where is this recognition here?
Some critics say the war is “Un-American,” that the United States has never made a pre-emptive strike on its potential enemies before. It’s counter to American tradition.
I just don’t buy that it’s Un-American. This is a direct response to 9-11. September 11th is the attack, the Pearl Harbor, that started this war. There are terrorists in this world and they are out to get us. The only chance we have to avoid a truly spectacular disaster is to track down and obliterate the terrorist networks. There are fairly massive terrorist networks with access to modern equipment run by smart people with lots of money. If you do nothing, sooner or later they will get weapons of mass destruction. You cannot afford to wait until 30 million Americans are killed in an attack.
You studied Vietnam War protests and wrote a book about Berkeley in the 1960s. What is your view about recent protests against the war in Iraq?
Well, it seems to me that an awful lot of people in the anti-war marches were gray-haired 50-year-olds. I was also surprised by so much organized opposition to the war before there even was a war. It was rather curious. It seems to me that the WTO protests were the beginning of a new cycle. In this case, the war wasn’t the real issue. The resentments go deeper. They are protesting the whole rotten society. It’s a generalized anger and the economy and Enron scandal feed into that mentality.
There seems to be a lot of post-war euphoria right now, with President Bush high in the opinion polls. Do you think this will carry over to the 2004 elections?
First of all, you can’t have euphoria after a three-week war. It just isn’t long enough. George W. has serious problems. If the elections were being held this fall, it would be different. In a year’s time he can’t take the credit for the war anymore. It could become a burdensome thing by then.
People are much more interested in their paycheck, and on that score, he doesn’t seem to do very well. He’s just too conservative for the country. He is way over to the right. A Democrat could beat him, but the Democrats don’t have any candidates. Bush could end up being re-elected because of his opponent.
Could this war be a tipping point in American politics, where the electorate moves firmly into one party’s camp, in this case the Republicans, the way it moved into the Democrat’s camp during the Depression?
I doubt it, but it is too fluid to say. If things play out in Iraq positively and the economy does better, I suppose it’s possible. The American mood is ambiguous. Even if the economy is doing better in November 2004 than it is doing today, it still won’t be doing as well as it was during the bubble in 1999. People could feel the let down from the bubble for the next 10 years.
The late Law Professor Joan Fitzpatrick had been teaching international law for 23 years, the last 19 at the UW law school, when she was interviewed for this article in late April. In her career she wrote or co-authored eight books on international law and specialized in international human rights and refugee law. She died unexpectedly on May 16th, after the print version of Columns had gone to press.
There have been many questions about the legality of the Iraq War under international law. Can you explain President Bush’s position?
There are many rationales out there but only one is very convincing. The argument is that the U.S. is implementing Security Council resolutions 676 and 687, which were passed in 1991 during the invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War. The argument is that these resolutions were never fully implemented and that they authorized the use of force. … When Iraq kicked out the inspectors in 1998, it was a material breach of these earlier resolutions.
On the other side we have countries such as France, Germany and Russia saying the war is illegal. What was their argument?
The Security Council did not re-authorize the use of force in 2002-2003.. You see, the use of force is the last resort in international law, it’s the essence of the U.N. Charter. You don’t resort to the use of force until you have used up all peaceful methods. Their argument was that the inspections were working.
Critics have said that international law and institutions, such as the U.N. and International Court of Justice, were weakened when the U.S. and U.K. bypassed the Security Council and went to war. Could this be the tipping point — from now on less trust in multilateral organizations?
It’s potentially very detrimental. The whole idea of the U.N. Charter was collective security. The Security Council would have the monopoly on armed conflict, except for imminent attack. Now we have the Bush administration arguing that the opposing nation doesn’t have to be a imminent threat, just a potential threat. Instead of pre-emptive self-defense you have preventative self-defense. Some of the advisers go even farther. They feel the U.N. Charter regime is obsolete and needs to be revised. You could have a situation where there are no rules. We could go back to the late 19th century or early 20th century where there was gunboat diplomacy — if we didn’t like the way a Central American country was treating a banana company, we’d send down a gunboat.
On the other hand, the U.S. needs the U.N. as much as the U.N. needs the U.S. I don’t think the Iraqi oil revenues are going to cover the costs of reconstruction. Is the American taxpayer going to want to foot the bill? There needs to be a shift of responsibilities to the international community and that means the U.N. They’ve done it in Kosovo and in East Timor and other places. The U.N. is not going to disappear.
Speaking of reconstruction, what are the responsibilities of the U.S. and U.K. as occupying powers in Iraq?
The United States is responsible for restoring law and order and providing for the basic needs and security of the people of Iraq. That’s the price of invading another country. Providing security against looting is our responsibility because by displacing the existing regime, we have created a legal vacuum. Responsibilities of an occupying power with respect to the civilian population are detailed in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. An insufficient number of troops to restore order is no excuse. It was our choice to invade without a large number of troops.
If Saddam Hussein, his sons or the top Iraqi leadership are caught, there may be a war crimes tribunal. How would that work?
There are several possibilities. You could have an ad hoc international tribunal created by the Security Council. This is what we have for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Or a nation with universal jurisdiction — like Belgium or Spain or Switzerland — could try Saddam under their existing criminal statues. Or you could have a U.S. military court tribunal like we had after World War II in Japan, where we tried Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita for war crimes during the occupation of the Philippines. The Iraqis themselves could try them in their own courts. Most likely is a hybrid tribunal where you have international jurists sharing the courtroom with Iraqi judges. That model is what we have right now in the Cambodia tribunals.
Political Science Professor John Keeler is the director of the European Union Center in the Jackson School of International Studies and chair of the Division of French and Italian Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. His latest book, published in April, is Defending Europe: The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy.
As an expert on Europe — and France in particular — you’ve been interviewed extensively about the European position on Iraq. Can you explain their reasons for opposing the war?
To begin with the French, I think President Chirac simply was not convinced that war was necessary — as of the deadline imposed by the U.S. and the U.K. — if the goal was to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The inspection team seemed to be making progress and there was no apparent short-term threat. Crucial in this regard is that Colin Powell’s presentation at the U.N. failed to generate any sense of urgency.
It is worth noting now, in retrospect, that Saddam Hussein either had no remaining weapons of mass destruction — or had them hidden in such a way that they were not accessible for immediate use — or was less evil than portrayed by Bush, since he did not use them even when faced with the most dire circumstances imaginable, the looming destruction of his regime and the probable loss of his life.
Chirac clearly felt that, for Bush, the goal not primarily disarming Iraq but rather producing “regime change” through pre-emptive war. Not only the French, but also the vast majority of our allies were reluctant to grant U.N. legitimacy to what they viewed as a dangerous doctrine of pre-emptive war. Many Americans and British citizens shared this concern.
What about the German and Russian line of reasoning?
Well, for obvious reasons the Germans are very familiar with the tragedy of war. Polls showed that most Germans shared the concerns voiced by the French, and the German government was a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens who won the last election largely by taking a strong anti-war stance. Also, the U.N. holds a special place in the German constitution as the source of legitimacy for the use of German troops. In part for that reason, the Bush administration’s denigration of the U.N. did not play well in Germany.
The Russians shared these concerns, but were no doubt even more troubled by the extension of American power that pre-emptive war would bring. There is now a string of new American bases stretching from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.
What about ulterior motives — that the French wanted to preserve their Iraqi oil contracts?
The French certainly had economic interests, including repayment of debts incurred by Saddam. But I don’t think economic interests were paramount for the French — or the Bush administration. The easiest way for Chirac to have guarded his economic interests would have been to join the US-UK coalition, which everyone knew would win the war if it were launched. Why don’t we give the French credit for taking a position on principle even when it jeopardized their economic interests?
Sounds like you think the French are getting a bad rap.
The French bashing has been very upsetting to me. First, the French position reflected majority public opinion throughout Europe — including the U.K. — and was similar to that of virtually all of our allies, including Canada and Mexico. Second, if the French are to be portrayed as ungrateful for America’s decisive support in World Wars I and II, aren’t some Americans forgetting Yorktown? It was French seapower that bottled up Cornwallis’ troops there and assured victory. (I’d like to point out that the treaty ending the Revolutionary War is called “The Treaty of Paris.”) Third, it’s been 59 years since D-Day. Will we expect a democratic government in Iraq to agree with us on every major issue 59 years from now? If so, we may be disappointed.
Your new book talks about the rise of a common European defense as a counter to the U.S. Do you think the Iraq War will be the tipping point that drives a wedge between the U.S. and its allies in NATO?
It’s the latest in a series of tipping points. The Iraq War has reinforced divisions between the U.S. and Europe that developed through the Clinton years and were very pronounced in the Kosovo War, then again in Afghanistan. On many issues, the U.S. and European NATO countries continue to have common interests, so NATO is likely to survive in one form or another. However, it is unlikely to be used again as a vehicle for war-fighting, as in Kosovo.