Cooperative Security: The Alternative to Pax Americana

A Chapter in War and Border Crossings: Ethics When Cultures Clash

This chapter appears in the book, War and Border Crossings: Ethics When Cultures Clash, edited by Peter A. French and Jason A. Short. Here Cortright seeks to show how multilateral tools of statecraft--including sanctions-based containment and UN weapons monitoring--were working in Iraq and could have continued to serve as effective, relatively low-cost means of addressing U.S. and UN security concerns. He concludes with a summary of cooperative security options that provide the foundation for a comprehensive alternative to unilateral militarism. 2005 By David Cortright

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In the wake of the September 11, 201, tragedy the Bush administration proclaimed a new national security doctrine asserting the right of unilateral militry preemption. The new national strategy reinforced a prejudice in the Bush administration against international treaties and other forms of multilateral cooperation. It strengthened a tendency to see international security problems, and their solutions, primarily in military terms, to the exclusion of diplomatic, economic, and other nonmilitary means of resolving conflict. In this chapter I examine the assumptions underlying this new national security doctrine and present alternatives to it. I review the nature of the threats facing the United States,focusing on the challenge of countering terrorism and weapons proliferation and the merits of cooperative means of addressing these threats. I illustrate how multilateral tools of statecraft--including scnationa-based containment and U.N. weapons monitoring--were working in Iraq and could have served as an effective, relatively low-cost means of addressing U.S. and U.N. security concerns. I conclude with a summary of cooperative security options that provide the foundation for a comprehensive alternative to unilateral militarism.

President Bush first announced the new U.S. national security doctrine at the graduation ceremony at West Point in June 2002. The president stated: "The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."¹

The new policy was formally unveiled in September 2002 with the publication of a thirty-three-page report, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. The document made reference to traditional strategies of building alliances and working cooperatively, but it contained two unambiguous references to the doctrine of military preemption. In the section on strengthening alliances to defeat global terrorism, it declared: "We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country."

In the section dealing with threats from weapons of mass destruction, the strategy stated:

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction--and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.²

These stark assertions of the right to military preemption marked a significant departure from the traditional U.S. emphasis on cooperative approaches to international security.

For most analysts, unilateralism and multilateralism are simply two ends of a spectrum of diplomatic options. For the new unilateralists in the Bush administration, however, the assertion of a right to unilateral action goes a step further. They claim that, because of the dire threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, the United States must escape the constraints of multilateralism and abandon the structures of international cooperation it helped to build after World War II.³ This declaration of the right of preemption became the basis for the U.S. military attack against Iraq. Although a vigorous debate regarding the best strategy for confronting Iraq raged in the international community and within the administration, the unilateralists had apparently decided long before the March 2003 attack that preemptive military action would be the U.S. policy. Internationalists at the United Nations and inside the Bush administration succeeded in bringing the matter to the U.N. Security Council and gaining unanimous adoption of SCR 1441, authorizing rigorous new weapons inspections, but the unilateralists undermined the advocates of multilateral approaches by dismissing the effectiveness of U.N. weapons monitoring and calling for regime change in Iraq.

The Threat Environment

The deadly nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction has become the primary focus of U.S. security strategy. The Bush administration raises these concerns to first-order existential threats to the security of the United States and to the stability of the international political system. The greatest danger, all analysts agree, is that terrorists will collude with irresponsible leaders to acquire weapons of mass destruction. There is considerable evidence that terrorists have attempted to acquire the means to develop weapons of mass destruction. The problems created by this intersection of political radicalism and deadly technology pose an acute danger to international security.

Terrorism itself is nothing new, but the "democratization of technology" over the past decades has made the threat of terrorism much greater. In the twentieth century a pathological leader--a Hitler or a Stalin--needed the power of government to be able to kill millions of people. If twenty-first century terrorists get hold of weapons of mass destruction, this devastating power could for the first time become available to deviant groups and individuals.⁴

The danger from weapons of mass destruction is also increasing. A recent Pentagon analysis showed twelve countries with nuclear weapons programs, thirteen with biological weapons activities, sixteen with chemical weapons programs, and twenty-eight nations with ballistic missile activities. The continuing lack of security in the former Soviet Union raises the grim prospect of terrorists getting their hands on unsecured fissile material and unemployed nuclear scientists. In the United States, some policy makers are advocating the development of new "bunker buster" nuclear weapons and so-called mini-nukes that would lower the threshold of potential nuclear use.

The Value of Cooperation

The threat from terrorism and weapons proliferation is real, but there are safer, less costly, and ultimately more successful means of countering these dangers than unilateral preemption. Through cooperative engagement with other countries, multilateral disarmament, the strengthening of international institutions, and carrot-and stick-diplomacy, the United States can protect itself against terrorism and weapons dangers and realize a more secure future without the costs and risks of constant military engagement. A strategy promoting cooperative approaches to international security has many advantages over unilateralism. It would:

• Make cooperation more likely in the war on terrorism and other international challenges that cannot be met alone, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational crime, narcotics trafficking, global financial instability, infectious diseases, poverty, lawlessness, and environmental degradation

• Increase the likelihood that the United States will not have to act alone in enforcement actions that are in the defense of our and international security interests

• Reduce the risk that the unsurpassed military and economic power of the United States will produce resentment that results in countervailing coalitions among nation states and new recruits for terrorists.

Every significant global institution--the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Global Trading Regime--was built by the United States. These organizations lie at the forefront of the rising tide of democracies and free markets that are sweeping the globe. The United States can use its considerable voice in these institutions to create peace and stability by identifying and consolidating the common ground for cooperation, co-opting "failed states" and isolating outlaw regimes and terrorists.⁵

Targeting Terrorism

Viable diplomatic options are available and have proven effective in recent efforts to prevent terrorism. Soon after the September 11 attacks, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1373, creating an unprecedented worldwide action program against terrorism and establishing the U.N. Counter-terrorism Committee to coordinate this effort. The UN Counter-terrorism program has worked to enhance international cooperative law enforcement and intelligence sharing against terrorist networks, and to deny financing, safe haven, and military resources for al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.

Considerable success has been achieved through these efforts in strengthening international restrictions on terrorists and those who support them. To date, the international community has frozen more than $100 million in terrorists’ financial assets. More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been taken into custody in a wide array of countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Spain, and Turkey.⁶ In the common struggle against al Qaeda, more than one hundred countries have worked together to enforce restrictions on terrorist financing and tighten the law enforcement dragnet. As a result of these efforts, the financial resources available to al Qaeda have been reduced and the operations of the terrorist networks have been disrupted. The terrorist network remains active, however, and continued law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and sanctions enforcement efforts will be needed to counter the global terrorist scourge.

The best way to prevent terrorist attacks is not by waging war against other countries, but by working through the United Nations and other international institutions to mount cooperative law enforcement and intelligence sharing operations, dry up the financial assets of the terrorist networks, and deny them safe haven in every part of the world. The Bush administration has used the metaphor of war to mobilize support for its campaign against terrorism. The real battle against terrorism, however, requires sustained commitment to the unspectacular tasks of cooperative police work, financial cooperation, and border controls.⁷

U.N. sanctions and U.S. diplomatic initiatives have also served as effective means of countering terrorism. In the 1990s, U.S. and UN sanctions persuaded Libya and Sudan to reduce their support for international terrorism. In 1986, U.S. war planes bombed Tripoli, which was pronounced as a great success at the time. Libyan terrorist agents subsequently destroyed American and French airliners in 1988 and 1989. The United Nations imposed sanctions against Libya in 1992, which resulted in a prolonged isolation of the Qaddafi regime. In 1999, Libya finally agreed to turn over terrorist suspects to an international tribunal. The State Department’s 1996 annual report on terrorism stated, "Terrorism by Libya has been sharply reduced by UN sanctions."⁸ In Sudan U.N. sanctions and U.S. diplomatic pressure prompted the regime to expel Osama bin Laden in 1996 and to cooperate with American counterterrorism efforts before and especially after September 2001.

Controlling Weapons of Mass Destruction

Much of the progress toward denuclearization in recent decades has been achieved through diplomatic means. The nuclear reductions of the United States and Russia, the decisions by Ukraine and Kazikstan to give up the nuclear weapons on their soil, South Africa’s disavowal of the bomb, the nuclear restraint agreement of Argentina and Brazil—these and other disarmament successes came not from externally imposed military pressures, but from negotiated agreements and incentives-based bargaining. Inducements and mutual conciliatory gestures were more important than coercive means in bringing about these decisions to denuclearize. Cooperation between the United States and other major powers facilitated the denuclearization of Ukraine and Kazikstan.

International cooperation is the best approach to restricting and eventually eliminating the threat from nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction. The first line of defense against the nuclear threat is the interlocking set of treaties and institutions that form the global nonproliferation regime. First among these agreements is the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), in which the United States and other nuclear powers pledged to negotiate the disarmament of their weapons, in exchange for agreements by all other nations to forgo the nuclear option. The longer they refuse this responsibility, the greater the likelihood that the nonproliferation regime eventually will collapse. The only true security against nuclear dangers is an enforceable ban on all nuclear weapons. Chemical and biological weapons are already banned; the far greater danger of nuclear weapons also should be subject to universal prohibition.

The Gulf War ceasefire resolution of 1991, SCR 687, specified that the disarmament of Iraq was to be the first step toward the creation in the Middle East of a "zone free from weapons of mass destruction."⁹ In making this determination the Security Council recognized that the elimination of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is inextricably linked to the reduction and elimination of such weapons throughout the region and the world. The security policies of the states in the region are unavoidably connected, and the disarmament of any single country must be linked to a broader regional disarmament effort. Regional disarmament in turn must be linked to a global arms reduction and disarmament process.

Of course disarmament measures are meaningless without robust means of verifying and enforcing such prohibitions. The policies that the world community supported for the peaceful disarmament of Iraq--rigorous weapons inspections, targeted sanctions, and multilateral coercive diplomacy--can and should be applied throughout the Middle East and South Asia, and beyond, to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. This would require substantially increased U.N. weapons inspection capability. It would also mean deploying U.N. monitors in various targeted nations and regions to verify bans on weapons of mass destruction. Nations that refused to comply with these weapons verification requirements would be subjected to targeted sanctions and coercive diplomatic pressures from the United Nations and other regional security organizations. Nations that cooperate with disarmament mandates would receive inducements in the form of economic assistance, trade and technology preferences, and security assurances. These policy tools would serve as viable means for helping to assure international compliance with global disarmament mandates.

Containment and Deterrence

The proposed alternative security strategy would not eschew all uses of military force. Military deterrence is a core element of international security. The threat of force is often necessary for the success of coercive diplomacy. In some circumstances the actual use of force--ideally in a targeted and narrow fashion, with authorization from the U.N. Security Council or other regional security bodies--may be required, but only as a last result, when all other peaceful diplomatic means have been exhausetd. The use of force should be employwed only when the threat is imminent and leaves no viable alternatives. Striking first should be a tool of last resort, not a first option.

History teaches that even tyrannical rulers are rational actors who wish to preserve their power and remain in office. Dictators and aggressive regimes with ambitions of acquiring weapons of mass destruction can be contained by military and economic pressure, as the Soviet Union was during the cold war. On the other hand, terrorist groups that seek martyrdom and operate without addresses cannot be easily contained or deterred. The stealthy nature of these organizations makes it difficult to threaten retaliation, and their fanatical zeal and willingness to die makes it less likely that deterrence will work against them. Containment and deterrence may work against regimes that harbor or protect terrorist networks, but the challenge of actually countering the terrorists themselves is difficult and complex. Military operations and cooperative police work can play a role in countering terrorist networks, but the primary emphasis in countering terrorism must continue to rest with long-term efforts involving cooperative action through the United Nations and other international institutions.

Lost Opportunities in Iraq

The controversy over the Bush administration misleading the country into war has obscured another, equally important puzzle: why the president and his advisers cast aside policies that were working successfully to achieve U.S. strategic objectives in Iraq. The administration turned aside from long-held U.S. policies, sanctions-based containment and UN-monitored disarmament, that were weakening and containing Saddam Hussein. Together these policies--widely endorsed and enforced in the international community--ensured the dismantlement of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, prevented the regime from rearming, and blocked the import of specific weapons-related goods. One of the reasons why U.S. forces found no prohibited weapons in Iraq after the war is that the twelve-year embargo and previous weapons inspections were successful.

U.N. sanctions against Iraq hampered the regime’s ability to rebuild its weapons capacity. Although sanctions were not successful in persuading the regime to comply fully with UN mandates, they were effective as means of military containment. Sanctions prevented the Baghdad government from gaining access to its vast oil revenues. In the twelve years of sanctions, it is estimated that Baghdad gave up control over some $200 billion in oil revenues. As a result, Iraq was unable to purchase weapons and military-related goods to rebuild and modernize its own forces after the first Gulf War. According to estimates from the U.S. Department of State, Iraqi military expenditures dropped from $22.5 billion in 1990 to an average of approximately $1.2 billion per year in the late 1990s.¹⁰ As a result the huge volume of military goods that had flowed into Iraq in the 1980s slowed to a trickle.

The cumulative arms import deficit for Iraq from 1990 through 2002 was more than $50 billion. This figure represents the amount of money Iraq would have spent on weapons imports if it had continued to purchase arms as it did during the 1980s. A 1998 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) stated that the Iraqi armed forces suffered from "decaying, obsolete, or obsolescent major weapons."¹¹ As a result, Iraq’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them was curtailed.

Sanctions successfully blocked specific Iraqi attempts to import specialized materials and goods that could be used for developing prohibited weapons. The British government’s September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons noted several instances where sanctions significantly constrained Baghdad’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

• Iraq failed in repeated attempts to import specialized aluminum tubes which could be used as uranium enrichment centrifuges.

• Iraq also failed in attempts to purchase vacuum tubes, a magnet production line, a large filament winding machine, fluorine gas, and other goods that could have potential nuclear weapons-related applications.

• According to the British report, "UN sanctions on Iraq were hindering the import of crucial goods for the production of fissile material."

• Sanctions constrained Iraq’s attempts to build prohibited ballistic missiles. The British study noted the success of the embargo in blocking Iraqi efforts to buy magnesium powder and ammonium chloride, which are potential ingredients of rocket fuel. The British report concluded that "sanctions and the earlier work of the inspectors had caused significant problems for Iraqi missile development."¹²

Sanctions are never completely successful in blocking prohibited imports. Smugglers will always find ways to circumvent even the tightest embargo. In the case of Iraq, however, sanctions were unusually successful in preventing illegal weapons imports, excelling every other U.N. arms embargo.¹³ The reasons for this success were obvious: the United States made a major investment in sanctions enforcement, and the world community working through the United Nations remained united in its resolve to deny Iraq the means to rebuild its weapons programs. As the scope of the embargo narrowed over the years, in response to the humanitarian suffering caused by broad trade sanctions, the focus of international pressure centered on specific weapons products rather than civilian goods, and international compliance improved. By working with the international community through the U.N. Security Council, the United States had created a highly effective containment program to prevent the rearmament of Iraq. The effectiveness of this military containment was reinforced by the successes of U.N. weapons inspections. The combined impact of the two processes--containment and disarmament--created a unique synergy.

Many options were available for improving the controls on Iraqi imports and tightening restrictions on smuggling and various attempts to circumvent UN sanctions. These options were reported in policy briefs of the Fourth Freedom Forum and Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.¹⁴ Among the specific nonmilitary policy options recommended in these reports were the following:

• Improving the monitoring of Iraq’s borders

• Installing advanced detection technology on the borders

• Establishing U.N.-managed sanctions assistance missions

• Improving cargo monitoring at the port of Aqaba

• Exposing and penalizing arms embargo violations

• Tightening controls on Iraqi oil marketing

• Improving reporting requirements for purchasers of Iraqi crude

• Controlling or shutting down the Syria-Iraq pipeline

These were viable policy options that would have further improved the containment net around Saddam Hussein and advanced U.S. policy goals in the region.

The postwar realization that nothing remained of Iraq’s once vast weapons arsenal came as a surprise to practically every close observer of Iraqi affairs. Even opponents of the Bush administration’s war policy assumed that at least some active weapons capability remained in Iraq, although not deployable or in sufficient scale to pose a major threat. The absence of such weapons has led many to reassess the work of the 1991-1998 UN weapons inspection program and to conclude that the U.N. disarmament mission was remarkably successful.

According to voluminous reports by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), and the IAEA, U.N. weapons inspections effectively neutralized much of Iraq’s ability to develop and use weapons of mass destruction during the 1990s. The independent panel of experts established by the Security Council in 1999 concluded, “In spite of well-known difficult circumstances, UNSCOM and IAEA have been effective in uncovering and destroying many elements of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programs.”¹⁵ UNSCOM and IAEA uncovered and systematically eliminated most of Iraq’s nuclear weapons, long-range ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. As former UNSCOM chair Rolf Ekeus wrote in September 2002, “Thanks to the work of the UN inspectors, not much was left of Iraq’s once massive weapons program when inspections halted” in 1998.¹⁶ Actually, it seems that nothing was left.

Conclusion

Cooperative approaches to international security have proven effective. A cooperative global security strategy emphasizes multilateralism over unilateralism, prevention over preemption, and peaceful diplomatic means over military force as the primary tools of influencing policy. It is a strtegy based on the force of law rather than the law fo force, one that relies on the power of trade rather than military might, and employs peaceful diplomatic means for achieving a more just and secure future.

The following is a summary of policy tools that are available to achieve counterterrorism and nonproliferation objectives within the framework of a cooperative global security strategy:

1. Reducing the Threat of Terrorism

• Enhanced international enforcement of the U.N. counterterrorism mandates that criminalize all forms of support for terrorist networks

• Wider cooperation against terrorist threats through regional groupings, the Group of Eight Industrialized Democracies, Interpol, building on the concept that a terrorist threat against one nation is a threat against all nations and that terrorists must not find safe harbor anywhere

2. International Diplomacy and Enforcement

• The use of economic and financial incentives, trade and technology assistance, and security assurances to induce compliance with international disarmament and counterterrorism agreements

• The use of targeted economic sanctions, including financial sanctions, travel bans, and arms embargoes, to enforce compliance with international arms control agreements

• Cooperative containment efforts to isolate and weaken regimes that refuse to comply with international disarmament and counterterrorism mandates

• Strengthened conventional deterrence to provide cooperative security protections against noncompliant or threatening regimes

• The use of the International Criminal Court, the World Court and other legal instruments to hold abusive government leaders accountable to international law

3. Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction

• Enforceable international agreements to reduce and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and to regulate the trade in weapons-useable technologies

• Expansion of the cooperative threat reduction program and related efforts to control and secure fissile materials in the former Soviet Union and globally

• Intrusive, no-notice weapons inspections, following the Iraq model, applied regionally in a first phase to enforce a ban on weapons of mass destruction

• The strengthening of the United Nations and other institutions to enforce compliance with international agreements and oversee weapons inspections

4. Promoting Economic and Political Development

• Strengthened international diplomatic efforts to prevent and resolve conflict

• Large-scale economic development initiatives to encourage democracy, the rule of law, and commercial interdependence, thereby lessening the tendency toward armed conflict and creating incentives for peaceful cooperation

• Greater participation in the political process for people everywhere through the promotion of democracy, human rights, the empowerment of women, and freedom of information--all aimed to strengthen the political foundations of societies and promote cooperation and peace

• Renewable energy technologies and sustainable development policies that lessen dependence on oil imports and reduce the likelihood of conflict over scarce resources

Notes