Iraq War: Was Iraq an "Imminent" Threat?

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has posted about a new defense that Iraq War fans are making, claiming that the Bush Administration never argued that Iraq was an imminent threat. This led me to a thought that seemed kind of original. But one of his correspondents came up with the same idea. But that's even better. Now I already know that at least one person out there in cyberspace agrees with me!

It seems like a really strange position. Now, I'm certainly no specialist in international law. But I do understand some of the relevant concepts. If a nation is threatened by imminent attack by an enemy, the threatened nation has a legal right of self-defense that could include launching a pre-emptive war.

In the Iraq War, this was particularly important for Tony Blair's government, because the British government's legal advisors were telling him that absent UN Security Council authorization, only an imminent threat from Iraq could justify an invasion. Otherwise, it would be a preventive war, which would count as an illegal "aggressive war" (the Nuremburg Tribunal term) in international law.

The Bush Doctrine emphasizes that the US will be willing to undertake "pre-emptive" war against potential threats. But as critics like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., have emphasized, the Bush Doctrine looks more like a doctrine of preventive war.

To state it a bit more briefly: In the absence of an overt aggressive act (like Iraq invading Kuwait) or Security Council authorization to enforce UN resolutions, an invasion of Iraq could only be a legal, pre-emptive war if the threat from Iraq was imminent. Otherwise, it's hard to see how it would be anything other than a preventive war, which is not allowed under international law.

So, it is really strange that Bush's supporters are making that argument. If the Administration wasn't even claiming that the threat was imminent, it's hard to see how the war could be justified under international law. And that argument certainly isn't going to help poor old Tony Blair out very much, either.

Tags: bush doctrine, iraq war