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Lättinformation om det förestående Irakkriget och kampen mot “Saddams onda imperium” presenteras i två nya guideböcker. Sören Sommelius är skeptisk. boken DESERT WARThe new Conflict between the US and IraqAn Illustrated Guide to: Attack Options, Aircraft, Battle Scenarios, Weapons Technology, Political and Economic Factors and moreAv: John T CampbellNew American Library, 2003 CONFLICT IRAQWeapons and Tactics of the US and Iraqi ForcesAv: David MillerMBI, 2003 Nu har de publicerats , nya illustrerade guider – inte till Greklands tempel eller Thailands stränder – nej guider till det kommande Irakkrigets värld, med information om alla dess extraordinära trestjärniga inslag. Jag har kommit över två sådana skrifter. Båda har publicerats i år, med syftet att orientera läsarna i det väntade Irakkrigets mentala landskap. John T Campbells “Desert War” presenterar krigets “förutsättningar”. Jag sätter citationstecken runt ordet. Hela sanningen är det nog inte frågan om. Det här lätt-information, avsedd för den stora amerikanska publik som via medierna...

There is little doubt that the White House seems resolved to wage war against Iraq, however weak its legal case, and despite the withering away of support even at home. It is probably late in the day to stop this militarist juggernaught, but it is not too late to try. There are several constructive steps that could still be taken at this stage. A UN General Assembly resolution, relying on its residual authority to uphold world peace, could convene an emergency session of the General Assembly to oppose recourse to war against Iraq, as well as a reaffirmation of the Charter rules governing the use of force. It would also be significant if Congress could be persuaded to reconsider its premature authorization of the use of force by the President, hold high profile public hearings on the legal and political case for and against war, debate, ideally, pass a restrictive...

LONDON – We are all in danger of becoming terribly glum. War is nearly upon us. A particularly dangerous war that, as John Major, the former Conservative prime minister of Britain just warned, may create an “Armageddon” in the Middle East. Yet much of the world remains as it was before. Saddam Hussein and George Bush provoked each other into stirring up this particularly rabid hornets’ nest: it is a better place. Michael Mandelbaum writes in his very learned new book, “The Ideas That Conquered The World”, in a delightfully unlearned way, that “In the last decade of the twentieth century social scientists found a strong relationship between democratic politics at home and peaceful conduct abroad. For the politicians and citizens of the democratic Western core this finding had a double attraction. It was flattering, for it meant the more the world reproduced their own political arrangements the more tranquil it...

When I interviewed former President Harry S Truman in Independence in 1957 for my book The Korean Decision: June 24-30, 1950, I asked, “Mr. President, as a devout Baptist, when you made the decision to engage the United States in the fourth largest war in its history [now fifth after Vietnam] did you pray?” “Hell no!” he replied, “There’s right and wrong going back to Greece and Rome. It was the right thing to do. I made the decision and went to sleep.” Unfortunately war-rooted United States policy toward Korea, both North and South, has been deep in righteous sleep for more than fifty years. Officially everything about American engagement with its ROK South Korean ally has been right and everything about its DPRK North Korean enemy has been wrong. But now events raise alarm that it is long overdue time to wake up. Confronted with the threat of nuclear weapons...

LONDON – For the first time in the history of treaty-making a signatory unsigned a treaty. That was the United States in March 2002 when President George Bush gave the order for the U.S. to pull out of the International Criminal Court, an institution that would probably have never got off the ground if his predecessor, Bill Clinton, together with American legal experts and non-governmental human rights activists hadn’t been so behind it. It seemed to many that the U.S. was shooting itself in the foot. Not only does the U.S. have a vested interest in making sure that the reach of a world institution with the legal right to detain and try war criminals is as robust as possible, but it alienated important political forces, particularly in Europe but also elsewhere, that has left a bad mark at the back of their minds. It makes for one more good reason...

Just nu ansamlas de allierades mäktiga arme, sjö och flygstyrkor i länderna och farvattnen runt Irak. Armeförband har under månader ha tränats för det avgörande slaget. De är väl utrustade och skyddade mot biologiska och kemiska stridsmedel och understödda av pansar och artilleriförband som med sin eldkraft och precision vida överstiger 70 och 80 talets förband. I närliggande farvatten befinner sig hangarfartygsgrupper som med de mest sofistikerade vapensystem kan nå långt in i Irak och nästan på metern när träffa i förhand programmerade mål (när de inte missar). 100 tals strids- och bombflygplan gör sig redo för att återigen bringa ett land i kaos genom förödande bekämpning av strategiska mål d.v.s ledningscentraler, kommunikationscentra, truppkoncentrationer m.m. Olyckligtvis tillhör även kraftförsörjningscentraler, vattendistributionsanläggningar, kanslier och departement samt andra för samhället viktiga tekniska och kommunikativa funktioner de s.k. strategiska målen. Som i alla krig inleds striderna med en förbekämpning syftande till att bereda mark...

LONDON – Until Mr Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons’ inspector, made his presentation to the UN’s Security Council last week it was still unclear which way the Europeans were going to vote on authorizing war against Iraq. Many had assumed the French in the end would go along, to get along – to maintain their status at the UN and to make sure their serious economic interests in Iraq were not jeopardised. This is no longer true. Indeed one can go even further and say that Britain, until now America’s most faithful ally, is beginning to waver. One can see it in parliament, one can see it in the newspapers, one can see it on the street and, most important of all, one can see it on Prime Minister Tony Blair’s face. The Americans, in particular Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have tried to divide Europe, to mock the notion of...

I tal och TV-program om Irak och senast under utrikesdebatten ger utrikesminister Anna Lindh uttryck för åsikten att sanktionerna inte är en orsak till det irakiska folkets lidande. Det är däremot Saddam Hussein. Ministern säger att Irak ju får importera livsmedel och mediciner. Från riksdagens talarstol hävdade hon t ex att cancerbekämpande utrustning fritt kan importeras, men bara går “till eliten.” Utrikesministern förklarar att sanktionernas negativa effekter är en följd av regimens felaktiga prioriteringar. Undertecknade har vistats i sammanlagt en månad i Irak. Vi har besökt sjukhus och talat med läkare och sjukskötare, t ex på Mor Och Barn-sjukhuset i den helt nedgångna staden Basra i söder och med österrikiska läkare som arbetar i staden. Vi har talat med patienter och med föräldrar till döende barn. Vi har sett barn med leukemi vars behandling har måst avbrytas i brist på medicin. Vi har talat med koordinatorn för FN:s humanitära program,...

LONDON – The United States is rushing full tilt at Iraq when, as Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister said a few days ago, “we haven’t finished the first job [in Afghanistan]; we can’t see the end of it”. He puts his finger right on the sore point: where is Osama bin Laden whom President George Bush is meant to be “smoking out”, the overriding foreign policy objective until the diversion of Iraq suddenly appeared (or was concocted)? Just to be mischievous the current issue of Prospect magazine, the leading British political monthly, muddies the waters even more. What if China chose this moment, when America is preoccupied with Iraq, North Korea, and Afghanistan and supposedly bin Laden to launch an attack on Taiwan? This could be the perfect moment to strike and regain the renegade island for the motherland whilst the U.S. has its hands full. After all since 1972...

Lecture at the Social Summit in Porto Alegre, January 2003 The ceaseless bombing and imminent invasion of Iraq by the USA and allies, particularly the UK, is one more step in the geo- fascist march toward world hegemony. It is “fascist” because of ruthless use of blunt state power, only “geo” as long as some US democracy is left. Serving a three-point agenda – oil, bases and Israel – other points have been brought up to legitimize war. But these points can all be solved by governments, building on successful governmental diplomacy after the Second World War. A Conference for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, CSCME, modeled on the Helsinki Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, CSCE, 1973-75. The initiative was taken by a small country, Finland, the veto making the UN inadequate. Today Germany could take the imitative, or, even better, the EU. Participants would be...

We are on the brink of a war that will undoubtedly be disastrous for the people of Iraq, and likely even more so for the people of the United States. Listening to President Bush’s rhetoric, one has the feeling that it is Hate Week in Orwell’s 1984.  Surely, Saddam Hussein is a dictator who has committed atrocities in the past. Surely, the American people can be aroused to hate Saddam. These are the buttons that are being pushed by Bush and his militant advisors who are eager for war.  As Bush raises shrill charges against Hussein, US troops take up their positions on his orders surrounding Iraq. According to Bush, “Saddam has the motive and the means and the recklessness and the hatred to threaten the American people.” But exactly what motive could he have? Self-destruction? The desire to see himself and his country destroyed? On the contrary, his motivation seems...

LONDON – Let’s assume we are all hardliners. Let’s assume the worst about North Korea. But don’t be too surprised, as we analyse the situation as card-carrying hawks, if we end up in the same position as President Bill Clinton when he was thinking of bombing North Korea’s nuclear installations at the time of the last big crisis in 1994 and conclude that we have no choice but to heed the advice of the doves. Victor Cha is a professor at Georgetown University, a North Korean specialist and a hawk. He has always believed the worst about President Kim Jong-il. Everything he says and writes is charged with an acceptance of worst-case scenarios. He takes nothing the North Koreans say or do at face value. He is suspicious of the regime’s apparent desire to be friendlier to South Korea, assuming that this is a tactical manoeuvre rather than a strategic shift....