09 April 2003
Scholar Says U.S. Had Legal Grounds for Iraq Invasion
(Cites U.N. resolution at end of first Gulf War) (880) By Ralph Dannheisser Washington File Special Correspondent Washington -- A U.N. resolution passed at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 provides all the legal basis needed for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a U.S. legal scholar says. Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, said well-intentioned efforts by the Bush administration to gain a stronger U.N. mandate by pushing through a supporting resolution in the fall of 2002 merely muddied the issue. Wedgwood, in Geneva, Switzerland, outlined her views in a television conference with journalists, academics and government officials in Stockholm, Sweden, April 4. She said the 1991 U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, required for the cease-fire of the first Gulf War, demanded that Iraq give up its weapons of mass destruction forever and permit verification. "Security Council resolutions don't expire at the end of the term of a particular secretary general or a particular membership of the council," Wedgwood said, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had "a continuing duty" to comply with 687. "When the central condition of the ceasefire (destruction of WMD) ceases to be observed, it seems to me that in every real sense ... the ceasefire is suspended," she added. The irony of the recent situation, in her view, was that the problems in the Security Council resulted "because George Bush was trying to be too multilateral." He could simply have cited 687 to the Security Council and said, "here's what we're doing and here's why, and we'd like you to come along with us," Wedgwood said. Wedgwood said an invasion was not only legally sanctioned, but also a practical necessity. U.N. weapons inspections would have worked only so long as the 150,000 U.S. forces deployed in the region remained there, and such forces could not have been sustained for long, she said. "The real number of inspectors was not 300 or 400 or 200. It was 150,200. And if you started flowing those troops out of the region because you couldn't sustain that force structure over ... (the necessary) length of time, there is no doubt what Saddam would do," Wedgwood said. Hussein was a "master of delay," who understood that "the international community can only take one crisis at a time," Wedgwood said. "If you can get past the hump of a particular confrontation, then you're good for another two [to] four years." She said his actions during the 1998-2002 inspection lapse illustrate that. Wedgwood, who also is on the law faculty at Yale University, serves on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Public International Law and as a consultant to the Department of Defense. Wedgwood rejected suggestions by some of the Swedish questioners that U.S. actions were not fully consistent with international law, saying, "International law can't wholly divorce itself from the practical realities of the world." "The overall moral lesson of the '90s ... is that declining to use force can at times be as immoral an act as the inappropriate use of force," she said. She said failure to protect the vulnerable -- including victims of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- "is itself a failure of human rights as much as old-fashioned realpolitik." Wedgwood insisted that the United States takes seriously the duty of trying to settle disputes peacefully, but said "some disputes can't be settled pacifically." The need to address the nuclear threat posed by North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il was another reason for taking military action against Iraq, Wedgwood said. "You can't sit there for another two years letting Kim Jong Il take more and more provocative steps, knowing that we can't really respond in force at that time," she reasoned. When a Swedish journalist asked about the legal implications if U.S.-led forces in Iraq fail to find any WMD --- existence of which was advanced as a key justification for the invasion, Wedgwood said the United States was acting on "the best information ... [it had] at the time." In a discussion about the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense," Wedgwood said the justification for the Iraq invasion "stands on its own." Iraq is "the unique state that can't have any WMD ever," she said. She said it was necessary for the United States to pursue the disarmament of Iraq because often the Security Council "has good intentions and cannot quite summon the will to act." But she said she does not see the U.S. action as turning its back on the Security Council. The council body "works better or worse depending on the degree of amity among the major players at the time," she said. The council did not work very well during the Cold War, she said, and the end of that period brought "a naïve belief" that it could now work perfectly -- a belief that was "inevitably going to be disappointed." Still, the council remains "the only multilateral, wholly inclusive architecture that we have" and can play a valuable role in international affairs, she said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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