The landscape had been altered also by the Bush administration’s approach to nuclear arms control. In December 2001, Bush had unilaterally withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty—a cornerstone of U.S.-Soviet nuclear détente since 1972. In May 2002, Bush and Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), an agreement referred to jokingly in diplomatic circles as “sort of” a treaty, because: (1) it included no verification of its pledged reductions in nuclear arsenals; (2) the reductions called for were not required to be permanent; and (3) withdrawal from the treaty required a mere three months’ notice.
To nuclear policy experts, the signals from these actions were clear. The United States was not serious about following through on its disarmament obligations under the NPT. Rather, it was intent on retaining and even reinforcing its privileged nuclear weapon status, with minimal accountability. At the same time, it was determined to come down harder on potential WMD proliferation by other countries.
This was the context in late 2002, when the crosshairs began to focus on Iraq. A rash of statements had appeared in speeches, political talk shows, and press articles. They ranged from hints to outright declarations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda or that his hand had been present in the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Of specific interest to the IAEA were the U.S. and U.K. claims that they possessed conclusive evidence that the Iraqi leader had failed to dismantle his WMD programs. The Agency had been absent from Iraq since our hurried departure just before the 1998 Desert Fox bombing, which had severely limited our ability to stay current on developments there during the intervening four years.
President Bush was one of those making bold assertions. A speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 2, 2002, was a typical example:
Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq’s eleven-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.
Later in the speech, Bush continued:
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahedeen”—his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
With statements like this—replete with information that was inaccurate, unproven, and misleading—the United States began pressing openly for regime change.
The aggressive rhetoric was no empty threat: crippling sanctions had been in place for a decade; the United States and its allies had recently demonstrated, in Afghanistan, their willingness to take decisive military action. And indeed, the pressure on Iraq appeared to produce results. While denying that the country had rebuilt its WMD programs, Saddam Hussein wrote a letter finally inviting the UN weapons inspectors to return. After much discussion, on November 8, the Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441, authorizing a new round of Iraq inspections.
The action behind the scenes was both less coherent and more revealing. A good example was the process of drafting Resolution 1441. The initial draft was not made public. As formulated by the United States, it would have put the five permanent members of the Security Council squarely in the driver’s seat of the inspection process.[1] It proposed the use of military escorts to accompany the inspectors in the field, a departure from the past. It also proposed that representatives of the P-5 be part of the inspection teams, and worse, that the UN inspectors report their findings directly to the country that requested the inspection of a particular site or the interview of a particular Iraqi. In short, it suggested a return to the same orientation and mechanisms that had led to the discrediting of UNSCOM.
In early October 2002, before the vote on the final, reworked resolution, Hans Blix and I were invited to a meeting at the U.S. State Department. Colin Powell was our host. Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Lewis Libby[2] rounded out the group. I was just completing my first term as Director General of the IAEA. Blix had come out of retirement to become the executive chairman of the successor organization to UNSCOM, UNMOVIC, which had been somewhat dormant since its creation because of the lack of access to Iraq. UNMOVIC would focus on chemical and biological weapons and missile technology.
The atmosphere was tense. It was obvious that the Americans were in sharp internal disagreement about the best way to proceed. Powell was advocating for the United States to use a typical UN inspection process, while Wolfowitz and other hardliners wanted to sidestep the UN altogether, or like Rice, create a UN cover for what would be, in essence, a United States–directed inspection process. Rice even went so far as to suggest that the person manning intelligence in UNMOVIC should be an American. “We trust our people,” she said. Blix balked, saying that a Canadian had been designated and would be in charge.
It was starting to feel like 1992 all over again.
Their goal in this meeting was to try to persuade us to accept some of the clauses in the draft resolution to which we had taken exception. Blix was blunt, telling Rice that he was not going to act as a “façade” for a U.S. operation. “If you want a U.S.-led operation simply blessed by the UN, you can have [one] modeled after the South Korean operation in the ’50s.[3] But if you want a UN operation,” he declared, “you cannot have people on the teams that are not under the authority of the heads of the inspecting organizations.”
Rice was unambiguous in her views of the UN system. At one point in the meeting, Blix stressed the need for the draft resolution to conform to UN standards and for the inspections to be perceived as a “legitimate” UN operation. Rice’s retort was sharp. “Mr. Blix,” she announced, “the UN Charter is based on the primary role and responsibility of the five permanent members of the Security Council. As you are aware, the security of the United States is threatened, and it is therefore free to take whatever measures necessary to protect its security.” I found myself feeling grateful that she had stopped short of saying that the United Nations is the Security Council, and the Security Council is the United States.[4]
Wolfowitz appeared indignant that he even had to be present. He was stiff and disinterested; his body language indicated that the meeting—and perhaps the whole notion of involving the United Nations—was a waste of time. When he finally spoke up, his tone was condescending. “Mr. Blix,” he announced, leaning across the table, “you do know that these Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction?”
1
The shorthand reference to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—is the P-5. Not coincidentally, these also are the five countries named in the NPT as the possessors of nuclear weapons.
2
Rice at the time was the national security adviser. Wolfowitz was the deputy secretary of defense. Libby was the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.
3
The United Nations Command (Korea) of the early 1950s was a command structure that combined military forces from multiple countries, to provide assistance to South Korea in repelling North Korean hostilities. Security Council Resolution 84 recommended that UN member countries contributing troops and other assistance make them “available to a unified command under the United States of America.”
4
An underlying viewpoint was reappearing here: certain political factions in the United States have often viewed the United Nations as merely a tool, to be used when convenient, as a way to make U.S.-driven actions more palatable to other countries, but to be discarded or circumvented when UN objectives are not in U.S. interests. These individuals or groups tend not to view the United States as one UN member among many—nor really as a member of the community of nations—but rather as a sort of patron or custodian of the UN, exempt from the rules it helps set for others. This viewpoint was perhaps most strongly in evidence during the George W. Bush administration.