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BOOK REVIEW
When weapons come back to haunt
Disarming Iraq by Hans Blix

Reviewed by Ian Williams

When Hans Blix came to the United Nations for a press conference and book-signing on the eve of the anniversary of the war in Iraq, it was almost like a popular demonstration in his support. Within half an hour some 300 people had bought his book Disarming Iraq and were lined up to have it signed by Blix, former head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), created to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

As they did so, UN staff, ambassadors and others expressed their appreciation of his integrity and honesty in admitting that no WMD had been found. Telling the truth these days seems to be rare enough to receive special recognition, and in a world short of heroes, the softly spoken, avuncular Swede is as close to one as it gets - a multilateral David against the unilateral Goliath.

Even so, Blix was careful in his accusations, even of those who vilified him. When asked for his opinion of neo-conservative Richard Perle, former chairman of the US Defense Policy Board, who a year before had gloated "the UN is dead - thank God", referring to UNMOVIC's failure to find WMD and the Security Council's failure to take British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush's word for it, Blix was dismissive, referring to Perle as "an exotic". And he commented laconically, "It is an interesting notion that when a small minority has been rebuffed by a strong majority, it is the majority that has failed the test."

As a post mortem, he said: "In March 2003, the policy of containment was abandoned in the case of Iraq ... a combined UN and International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspection force of fewer than 200 inspectors costing perhaps [US]$80 million a year was pushed out and replaced by an invasion force of some 300,000 costing approximately $80 billion a year."

But Blix was not always everyone's favorite poster child, even if one poster from a New York antiwar demonstration proclaimed "Blix Not Bombs". He previously was attacked for providing excuses for war when he reported accurately on the lack of cooperation by president Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime. He then was attacked by the other side when he reported that the inspections to find WMD in Iraq were going ahead relatively unhindered and had not turned up anything. His accusers variously charged him of accelerating or slowing down the rush to war, which shows how much of a different universe he was in. "It was like reporting on the weather," he said. "If it is sunny, that's what I report, and if later it snows, I report that as well."

In the days of expedient reports, with civil servants and intelligence agencies rushing to feed the prejudices of their masters, objectivity like Blix's stands out. In fact, a thread throughout the book is "the lack of critical thinking" posed by the governments involved. He characterized the Bush administration view by saying, "The witches exist. You are appointed to deal with these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witchhunt."

When the Iraqis delivered the famous 12,000 pages of full, frank and open disclosure demanded by the US Security Council, "my reaction was that this is devoid of new evidence", but the US reaction was that it was false and there were omissions. But, he asked with a smile, "Are there omissions if you don't include documents that you do not have?"

While he was careful not to fall into hero worship of French President Jacques Chirac, who he remarked operated on the dual principle of high-principled rhetoric and the rough-and-tumble of French politics, he quoted him approvingly. "I went to see him before the war, and by then we had begun to have some doubts, but certainly, by and large, we thought there were weapons. But he doubted it and he also was among the first who doubted the intelligence reports. He said that the agencies 'intoxicate each other'."

Blix recalled that his own first suspicions that Saddam Hussein might have been telling the truth about destroying the WMD was in January 2003. "We received tips about sites from Western intelligence agencies and when we went to them we did not find any weapons of mass destruction. Then we realized that although this intelligence was the best they had ... it did not give us anything."

He added, "Now I feel that the most important thing that could have happened is if the Iraqis had allowed the inspections to go on all of the sites that the agencies had claimed had weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps it would have dawned on them that the intelligence was not so good."

An optimist, Blix said he did not really give up hope that inspections could avert war until US assistant secretary of state John Wolf "phoned and told us 'you better move out'". That same week, the British were working on a resolution requiring Saddam to make a television speech in Arabic with five different benchmarks. And according to Blix, if Saddam had grasped that and made a spectacular speech, "who knows what would have happened? It could have changed the situation. I don't think anything is done until it's really done," he said.

When probed at the seeming naivete of ignoring the clear signals of war from the Bush administration, he recalled that Paul Wolfowitz as late as January 2003 "made an interesting comment that a regime change is one thing, but however, if a regime changes its character, that will also be a regime change. So one had the impression, yes, they could live with Saddam provided he changed his manners."

Indeed, looking back at the early days of the Bush administration's support for "smart sanctions", Blix commented that "certainly [Secretary of State] Colin Powell was no more hawkish than [his predecessor Madeleine] Albright at the beginning. I don't think they had plans for occupation then, although it may have been in the formative stages. Nothing really happened until [September 11, 2001] - without that they may have continued the policy of containment. But in that case, I'm not sure the inspectors would have got in. It would not have happened easily without the military buildup."

As for the military plans that were afoot from the summer of 2002, he compared them with laying railway tracks. "You can build them, but the speed and route of the trains to run on them are still under control," Blix said.

He also is keen on reminding those who question him that in fact he is no pacifist, and that "like Kofi Annan, who talks of diplomacy supported by military pressure, I doubt they would have gone along with inspections if it was not for the beginning of military buildup in summer 2002". He remembered that at that time, "We were in the dialogue between [the] UN and Iraq under Kofi Annan's leadership, [and] the Iraqis were really wriggling quite a lot and were not very forthcoming. They were saying, 'Maybe they will have the inspections in the context of many other things,' a sort of bizarre game-playing."

Which leads to the bigger question. Why did Saddam Hussein, in effect, try to bluff the world into thinking that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when it now appears that it did not?

Blix mused: "My first speculation is that while the UN resolutions would let off the sanctions provided he came clean on the weapons, he nevertheless would hear many times from the US spokesman that only the disappearance of Saddam would lead to that result - that did not give him many incentives. So he felt he could play cat-and-mouse with the inspectors anyway - they did not have any importance."

Alternatively, Blix said, "He might have put a sign on the door saying 'beware of the dog' without having the dog. He might have then sent a signal to [the] neighbors, who would think, well, although he denied [having] weapons, maybe they are there - and he might look dangerous."

He also suggested that Saddam's bluff could have been based on wounded pride and a fear of what would happen once he "let inspectors into ministries, his own palaces and so forth", Blix said, adding, "they knew that some of the UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] inspectors had reported on military sites they saw directly to their authorities. And perhaps thereafter the sites could become bombing targets."

While allowing the possibility that Blair and Bush were sincerely misled, and "intoxicated" by their intelligence agencies, he was clear that the invasion was both unwise and illegal. "Saddam Hussein posed no threat to his neighbors, although he was indeed a terror to his own people." In the end, Blix said, "I don't think that it is valid to maintain that these resolutions gave authority to individual members of the Security Council to go to war. I think the SC owns its resolutions and it was for the council to authorize action, not the individual states [to] arrogate themselves that authority."

He concluded that the whole sorry episode has several positive features. One of them, "it has to be admitted, is the removal of Saddam Hussein", Blix said. The other is a renewed drive to reinforce the superiority of multilateral weapons inspections that can be independent and that produce findings that are not likely to be "sexed up" by governments, and which ensure that those gains outweigh the "greater price" of the invasion "in the compromised legitimacy of the action, in the damaged credibility of the governments pursuing it and in the diminished authority of the United Nations".

While he wonders whether some of the UN's more fervent fans actually do more harm than good with their uncritical support, he is a great supporter of multilateral institutions. Since his retirement from the UN, the Swedish government has made him head of an international commission on disarmament and non-proliferation, which he hopes will produce some "doable and constructive" findings, although he noted that "news of the new American bunker-buster nuclear bombs may make it harder to raise enthusiasm for a non-proliferation conference in 2005". And as is typical of his style, he did not name the US president when discussing those responsible for the decision to invade Iraq, even as he made it plain about whom he was speaking.

But with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar down, British Prime Minister Blair losing support and US Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry gaining in the polls, perhaps it is unnecessary. Blix's book once again brings the missing weapons back to haunt those who fought a major war to hunt the Snark that was not there.

Disarming Iraq by Hans Blix. Pantheon. March 2004. ISBN: 0-375-42302-8. Price US$24.00.

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Mar 20, 2004

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