WEB NOTES

 Douglas Hurd Speech to the Royal United Services Institute, London

 Rt. Hon Lord Hurd of Westwell
January 27, 2003

The decision between peace and war facing our government in the next few weeks is a new one; that is to say it does not flow inexorably from decisions already taken. Many of us have accepted the argument put particularly by the Foreign Secretary that the best way of ensuring without war that Iraq is finally deprived of weapons of mass destruction is to pile up the pressures on Saddam Hussein, including the deployment of weaponry and troops.

But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war. We are not in 1914 when according to some critics it was their earlier decision to mobilise which forced the Kaiser and the Tsar to declare war. No considerations of face could prevent President Bush and our Prime Minister from accepting a climb down by Saddam Hussein to comply with UN demands or a peaceful coup in Iraq resulting in his exile. Such an outcome would certainly be best for the world and for Iraq. No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.

It seems likely that Saddam Hussein, as well as being an odious dictator, has again sought to deceive us - that is, that he possesses chemical and biological weapons and has been groping for the nuclear. We have faced such deceit from dictators before. I remember the day when President Yeltsin told me in the Kremlin how his predecessors had deceived us in precisely this field.

The United States successfully led us in a policy of combined deterrence and diplomacy in dealing with the threat from the Soviet Union. It is following the same policy today in dealing with North Korea. President Kim of North Korea knows that he and his colleagues would be obliterated within hours of using against us any of the weapons of mass destruction which he possesses. In dealing with the smaller though still real threat from Saddam Hussein the United States is inclined to abandon deterrence and go for pre-emptive strike. There seems to be two reasons for this. First, such a strike is more certain in one of its results; the risk that deterrence might not work is removed. Second, Saddam Hussein is weaker militarily than either the Soviet Union or North Korea. It is hard to dispute this discrimination as a calculation of reality - but also hard to put it in any consistent moral context.

Before a final decision is taken to send in our servicemen to kill and be killed several questions need to be considered of which I name two.

The first concerns the Middle East as a whole. Would it be a safer and better place after a successful attack to overthrow Saddam Hussein? I do not myself doubt that military success would come quickly. Loyalty to the dictator would be a rare commodity once the missiles began to fly.

Neither the Iraqi people, nor other Arab governments nor indeed Islamic fundamentalists have any reason to admire or trust Saddam Hussein. He has failed to establish himself, as Nasser once did, as the accepted leader of Arab nationalism throughout the region.

Furthermore, we have an interest in doing anything we reasonably can from outside to further democracy in the Middle East. The democratic deficit in the region holds back the healthy growth of a stable civil society.

I believe that Egypt in its own way, the Palestinians when they are given a chance, and others will before long move towards greater democracy. Some smaller States, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have taken their own initiatives already. A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur. But everything would depend on the circumstances. At one end of the range of possibilities a new Iraqi government installed by British and American military force and sustained by our occupying troops for months or years after a war in which many Iraqis were killed, could have the opposite effect. The reaction against what would appear as imperialism rather than liberation could be destructive. We might win the war in six days, and then lose it in six months.

The risk would be increased because of the most serious mistake the Americans have yet made. They have put on hold any sustained and insistent initiative towards an even-handed peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The mistake is not yet irretrievable. But so far they have swallowed whole Mr Sharon's argument that Israel is a straightforward ally against terrorism, and ignored his policies of oppression and settlement which inevitably breed new violence. They have made their own and our task in the Middle East more doubtful and dangerous. Conditions in the West Bank and Gaza are appalling as every Arab viewer of television now knows. We run the risk of being seen not as liberators but as protectors of an oppressor.

This leads to the second question: what is the effect on our own safety? It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

We freed the Afghan people from the Taliban, but after Bali, Mombasa and the alarms which sound around us every day, who can say that he or she feels safer now than before the Afghan campaign? We kicked the hornets' nest to pieces, and the hornets buzz more angrily around us. It seems certain that we are now faced with a ruthless long lasting struggle against growing numbers of Muslim fundamentalists and extreme nationalists through Asia and North Africa who do not hesitate to use violence against the west. For them murder is an aim in itself. It is not clear what connexion exists between those who shot at American soldiers and civilians in Kuwait, those who murdered Baptist missionaries in Yemen, and whoever stabbed a British police officer in Manchester. Whether there is a pyramid of terrorist authority called Al Qaeda or, more likely, a loose network of different groups with similar ideas, these are our enemies. Do we help or hinder this essential struggle against terrorism by attacking Iraq? Do we increase or diminish the numbers and determination of those enemies? Would we thus turn the Middle East into a set of friendly democratic capitalist societies ready to make peace with Israel, or into a region of sullen humiliation, a fertile and almost inexhaustible recruiting ground for further terrorists for whom Britain is a main target?

The outcome would probably lie somewhere in-between, neither wholly good or bad. The scales are evenly balanced and I do not envy the British Cabinet its decision. The test is not one of virility, but of wisdom. You will see from the way I phrase the questions that I am inclined to pessimism about the answers. I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

There are some who will always be opposed, as they were in the Gulf War in 1991. There are many others, in all political parties and none, who supported that war of straightforward liberation but who this time are doubtful. These are strong supporters of NATO, the Anglo-American alliance and our armed forces. If a decision is made to commit our forces to war, such people (including myself) will shut up and hope that we were wrong. But the issues are cloudier than in 1991, and the awkward questions not always answered. There is still time and need for the government to listen and respond.