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March 11, 2003
The War is Inevitable, As Is Saddam's Fall
Perle Addresses JINSA Policy Forum
"There is going to be a war."
Opening his Tuesday night address to the inaugural meeting of the JINSA Policy Forum in Washington, Richard Perle definitively answered what was likely the first question on the minds' of his audience. Perle emphasized that President Bush will act to protect the American people regardless of whether Cameroon, Syria or Guinea agree that he should. Pointedly referring to just three of the small states currently serving on the UN Security Council, the influential Chairman of the Defense Policy Board made clear that the UN is rapidly proving to have outlived its usefulness.
Perle, prefacing his talk by noting that he was not speaking for the government or in any official capacity, said that the leaders of France and Germany, in championing their strong opposition to forcibly disarming Iraq, have cast the U.S. as a unilateral bully and imperialist hegemon. In the case of France, President Jacques Chirac, a self-described friend of Saddam Hussein and chief booster of nuclear technology sales to Iraq for several decades, has steam rolled French opposition to Saddam's flagrant defiance of the UN. In Germany, Chancellor Schroeder set his country's opposition when he cynically exploited German pacifism and anti-American sentiments to win a heavily contested election.
France and Chirac were handed severe criticism by Perle. The former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy said that ironically Chirac's recent comments dismissive of the opinions of Central Europeans might have done more to weaken the European Union and strengthen NATO, where America still runs the show. In fact, growing American displeasure with France may drive U.S. policy makers to question, devoid of a Cold War rationale, whether France should continue to derive NATO benefits while choosing to remain outside the treaty organization's common Defense Planning Committee.
Turning back to the UN, Perle said the Security Council is totally ineffective in any situation where a member state has had divergent interests. Furthermore, as a consensus-oriented body, he continued, the UN is impotent on moral intervention issues since there are more than enough tyrants and despots voting down action inimical to their narrow interests. Nevertheless, very soon the Security Council will vote on the 18th resolution calling on Saddam to disarm. "It will fail," Perle declared, and President Bush will take military action regardless. No President can subordinate the Constitutional obligation to protect the United States of America to the whim of an international organization or any other country, Perle said.
Perle dismissed the citation of international law by those opposed to the forced disarmament of Iraq. "International law must not be used as a shield to protect despots." He explained that America is in a new century with new threats emanating from non-state or trans-state actors and their state sponsors. The situation today represents the first fundamental change in relations between nation states since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and demands new solutions and strategies such as unilateralism and preemption. The costs of accepting a first strike to prove an adversary's harmful intent is too high, as the September 11 attack amply demonstrated, Perle declared.
This new conflict is not about material issues such as borders or resources, Perle noted. These groups seek to kill Americans by any means and the only way to improve the odds is to take the war to the terrorists, Perle contended. He related an encounter at a meeting in Prague last week. "Another participant noted that the UN may not be perfect but it's the only institution we have, and a metaphor came to me. If you have a fire extinguisher that you know doesn't work, you don't approach a fire with it [just] because it is the only fire extinguisher you have. You get another fire extinguisher, you find another way to suppress the fire."
One strategy considered by Perle to suppress these fires would bypass 'the unanimous consent or inaction' of the UN. He called it the "posse approach." Recalling that law enforcement in the Old West often depended on the ability of solitary sheriffs responsible for enormous territories to assemble groups of citizens to assist in tracking down and arresting law breakers, the approach would find the United States forming coalitions of like-minded countries to deal with common threats. If the threat were severe enough, the U.S. would proceed unilaterally if necessary.
The Policy Forum is a new series, bringing together JINSA members and policy experts in Washington to discuss issues of defense and national security. More than 80 members and prospective members attended the first meeting, which will be followed by another in May.
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