‘Latest Excuse for Moving Toward War’

The Administration has lately been relying on the emotionally charged argument that we confront a present danger because of the possibility that Iraq may at some point acquire a nuclear capability. In other words, not oil, not Kuwait, but Iraq’s nuclear program has become the latest excuse for moving toward war.

The nuclear issue is of particular and understandable concern to Israel and its friends. Nonetheless, this case for war does not meet the tests of vitality or urgency to the American national interest. When the United States was threatened more directly by the far more powerful and dangerous Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, it refrained from engaging in preventive war.

Moreover, Israel already has nuclear weapons and can thus deter Iraq, while the United States certainly has the power both to deter or destroy Iraq.

Deterrence has worked in the past, and I fail to see why thousands of Americans should now die in order to make sure that at some point in the future--according to experts, some years from now--Iraq does not acquire a militarily significant nuclear capability.

It is within our power to sustain a comprehensive embargo on Iraq to impede such an acquisition. Unlike India or Israel, Iraq does permit international inspection of its nuclear facilities. Moreover, much can happen during the next several years, including Saddam’s fall from power. Hence the precipitation of war on these grounds meets neither the criterion of urgency nor vitality.

On the level of principle, one cannot help but worry that we may be buying support for our military undertaking by sacrificing Lebanon for Assad’s cooperation, the Baltic peoples for Gorbachev’s, the Chinese dissidents for Li Peng’s, and perhaps the Eritreans for Mengistu’s.

And we are doing so because in fact the international community is not pressing for military action, but the Administration wants to obtain that community’s sanction so that it can argue at home on behalf of military action by pointing to the international support that the Administration has thereby marshaled.