Arguments of Mass Confusion

Abstract

While public discourse has been correct to question the credibility of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it has demonstrated the extent to which international law remains exposed to a set of serious — and serial — confusions in terms of the justifications used for analysing where a given intervention stands as a matter of the jus ad bellum. These confusions have presented international law with an important methodological challenge and, to address this challenge, the essay returns to the jurisprudence of the Nicaragua case (1986), where it finds that the International Court of Justice outlined discrete principles for the identification and assessment of justifications for the application of force under international law. In its judgment, the Court distinguished between legal and political justifications for action, but it also recognized that states operate in formal and informal spheres of action. The principles form part of a coherent and viable framework for use beyond the four corners of the courtroom, in simulated scrutinizations of legal justifications given for the application of force. That framework is articulated and explained, before it is considered in the context of Operation Iraqi Freedom — where it provides us with a sense of how best to organize and evaluate the arguments made in defence of that intervention: the authorized enforcement of Security Council resolutions, the right of pre-emptive self-defence, humanitarian intervention and pro-democratic intervention. In the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom, public discourse on both sides of the Atlantic has been consumed by the persistent claims of the humanitarian and political benefits derived from the change of regime in Baghdad as well as the integrity of intelligence information on ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that had precipitated the intervention against Iraq. Whereas the former consideration has been pressed into MFK-Mendip Job ID: 10126BK-0133-2 1 234 Rev: 26-04-2004 PAGE: 1 TIME: 14:23 SIZE: 61,11 Area: JNLS OP: XX EJIL 15/2 chg201 234 EJIL 15 (2004), 233–278 2 See Duffy and Carney, ‘A Question of Trust’, Time, 21 July 2003, 22. Not even the foremost internet search engine has been able to oblige: readers are advised to visit http://www.google.com and enter ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in the search bar, before clicking the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ icon. 3 Lowe, ‘The Iraq Crisis: What Now?’, 52 ICLQ (2003) 859, at 860–861. service by those who advocated Operation Iraqi Freedom, the latter consideration has been taken up and pursued by the critics of intervention — who have alleged that the very credibility of the intervention lies in terminal doubt by the subsequent (and ongoing) failure to retrieve weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In these circumstances, it has proved difficult to resist the temptation to pair together these claims and establish a certain correlation or confluence between them — to construct some neat element of cause and effect between the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the benefits of intervention as we come to mould our perceptions and understanding of the ‘justifications’ for Operation Iraqi Freedom under international law. ‘Weapons of mass destruction’ had, after all, become the forbidding clarion call for recourse to force on that occasion that now, in the immediate wake of intervention but still absent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also present regime change in Baghdad, what better raison d’etre to accompany military victory than to proclaim humanity’s and freedom’s own decisive triumph? Such impressions have become more and more pronounced within the realm of public discourse, but they have also begun to resonate within international law deliberations with their unceasing emphasis on a perpetual rotation of arguments in defence of intervention. As such, they have threatened to defer or frustrate substantive assessments on the lawfulness of Operation Iraqi Freedom, because the justifications for intervention have been made out to be moving or transcendental targets, enigmatic to the core and elusive to sustained examination. At other times, the justifications have been portrayed as operating in tandem with each other or, indeed, as running in to one another to the point where phenomenal uncertainty and confusion has gathered around the reference-point for calculating where Operation Iraqi Freedom stands as a matter of the jus ad bellum. To these seeds of confusion — or, perhaps, it could be said that as the root source of this confusion — it has not helped that, at different times and in different places, the arguments made in anticipation of Operation Iraqi Freedom underwent something of their own telling evolution. From President Bush’s commitment to expanding the boundaries of pre-emptive self-defence in a terror-struck world to the utilization of an intriguing complement of Security Council resolutions stretching as far back as 1990, we became perplexed spectators to the sport of nurturing different arguments as possible candidates for the legal justification of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Precisely how this evolution transpired, what its starting and ending coordinates were, and ascertaining whether these candidates for justification did indeed become the justifications for intervention are all questions calling out for further inquiry, but, before their details can be mastered in the fullness of time, we should at least be conscious of the narrative of nuance which they contribute to our proceedings. That narrative cannot afford to be missed if the complete tale is to be told but, critically, it is MFK-Mendip Job ID: 10126BK-0134-3 1 235 Rev: 27-03-2004 PAGE: 1 TIME: 07:12 SIZE: 61,11 Area: JNLS OP: CS EJIL 15/2 chg201 Arguments of Mass Confusion 235 4 See, in particular, Miller, ‘A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein’s Weapons’, NY Times, 20 July 2003, A1. also a narrative which speaks to the experiences of but one of the states which participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom: it is not a narrative which can or should be assumed for other intervening states, or indeed, for the coalition when taken as a totality. As if this were not enough, Operation Iraqi Freedom occurred against an ever-shifting factual landscape in which accusations and facts seemed to change and to continue to change in real time. Nowhere was this made more apparent than with the failure of intervening forces to locate or secure anything approximating ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in the opening chapter of their occupation of Iraq. That matter alone has forced us to confront the precise bearing which these accusations and facts have and should have on the lawfulness of Operation Iraqi Freedom: which of these factual assertions are relevant — which count and which do not — in making that determination? With what consequence those accusations redeemed and those left unredeemed? Has Operation Iraqi Freedom been trapped in a state of provisional lawfulness until the time that offending arsenals do indeed surface? Or does it lurk in the twilight zone of provisional unlawfulness until that same time? Or will discoveries of weapons of mass destruction make no difference to that determination? To be sure, the methodological challenge posited for international law by the apparent justifications for Operation Iraqi Freedom is not unique to Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, Operation Iraqi Freedom magnified the challenge several fold because it enhanced the opportunities for confusion — for confused analysis — by its most extraordinary cocktail of historical and modern and changing and speculative circumstance. More so than before, international law appeared wholly exposed to a set of serious — and, given their recurring nature, we should contend serial — confusions in terms of the identification and assessment of justifications for the application of force under international law. To ward off these eventualities, it is incumbent on us to investigate whether international law has designed its own framework for addressing this challenge, so that the mission of this essay is to discern and provisionally work with such a framework for Operation Iraqi Freedom. We are therefore concerned with exploring the particularities of such a framework, but, in our conclusion, we shall also reflect upon the possible problems and limitations of its function in practice. Our objective is not to set about the passing of final judgement on the lawfulness of Operation Iraqi Freedom in these pages — for that would require a far more programmatic study than is ever attempted within — but, rather, to gain a better sense of how international law has sought to moderate the thinking and making of such judgements on previous occasions as part of its own methodological record.