Self-interest makes the world safer for no one
Date: March 2 2003
An open letter to Jose Ramos Horta, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of East Timor. By Ray Cassin.
Minister,
When a Nobel Peace laureate endorses the threat of war, as you have done with regard to Iraq, he is entitled to a respectful hearing. The citation for the 1996 peace prize, which you shared with Bishop Belo, declares that it was awarded for the contribution that each of you made to "a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor". A man does not earn such recognition - particularly a man whose country has suffered so much, and whose own share in that suffering has been so great - if the cause of peace means nothing to him. But I have to say, minister, that I am puzzled by the case you make for going to war, and by your criticism of those who stand for peace.
You observe that it has been the threat of war, made credible by the US military build-up in the Gulf, that has forced the Iraqi regime to readmit weapons inspectors. Yes, it probably did, although the lesson about the threat of force that may be drawn from this is not a simple one, is it? As I am sure you remember (though many of the political leaders now making the case for war conveniently forget), the last time force was used against Iraq on a major scale - Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998 - the result was the collapse of the previous UN inspections regime.
With regard to the present round of inspections, you wisely urge the Bush Administration to give the inspectors more time: "The US is an unchallenged world power and will survive its enemies (The Age, 27/2)." This is, perhaps, an implicit recognition that the nature of the threat posed by Iraq, whatever weapons of mass destruction it may retain, is not grave and imminent; and that, therefore, according to the traditional just-war doctrine in which, minister, you and I were schooled, the threat does not constitute sufficient reason for going to war. But I will not pursue that line with you, because it seems to me that the real reason for your support for the US on Iraq, and for your unease about the rallies that have been supported by millions around the world, lies elsewhere.
It is not really the weapons, or Iraq's evasion of its legal obligations, or the efficacy of containment, though you have something to say about all of these. It is the nature of the Iraqi regime itself, isn't it? You think that it is justifiable to threaten Iraq with war, and, ultimately, to carry out that threat, because Saddam Hussein is a dictator who oppresses his people and has attacked his neighbours.
This argument deserves to be heard with greater respect from you than from some others who are making it, because you know what it is like to live under a tyrannical regime: "I still acutely remember the suffering and misery brought about by war . . . Yet I also remember the desperation and anger I felt when the rest of the world chose to ignore the tragedy that was overwhelming my people. We begged a foreign power to free us from oppression, by force if necessary."
You offer us a moral argument for going to war, minister. And, unlike the others I referred to above, you make it from the outset of your intervention in this debate, and not after discovering that the strategic arguments that were initially used to justify the Gulf build-up have failed to win general acceptance. "If the anti-war movement dissuades the US and its allies from going to war with Iraq," you write, "it will have contributed to the peace of the dead. Saddam Hussein will emerge victorious and ever more defiant." If the threat hanging over Saddam were abandoned, the anti-war movement would be able to claim victory, you say, "but it would have to accept that it also helped keep a ruthless dictator in power, and explain itself to the tens of thousands of his victims". And here I come to what puzzles me about your argument, minister. If the reason for going to war with Iraq is that it would be a war of liberation for the oppressed Iraqi people, surely we should be fight
ing to liberate other oppressed peoples around the world?
The people of West Papua, for example. They are oppressed, just as the people of your country were, and by the same oppressor. And, just as the people of East Timor yearned for someone to lift the yoke from them, I am sure the people of West Papua do, too. But you, the Foreign Minister of East Timor, their close neighbour, have nothing to say about them. Or about the people of Aceh, or the Maluku Islands, or other places in the archipelago where calls for independence, or even for greater autonomy, have prompted swift and brutal repression of a kind that is all too familiar to you. You are silent on all of these, while insisting that the democracies must serve notice on the oppressor of Iraq that his time is up.
Is this the hypocrisy that you condemned for so long while you were an exile, and while the Indonesians ravaged your country? It might seem so to some, minister, but I accept that the foreign minister of an independent state has to work within an international system based on law, not on force. You could not call for foreign powers to undertake a war of liberation in West Papua without implicitly challenging that system.
The problem, minister, is that the strategic doctrine being followed by the US Administration also challenges the system. Indeed, it effectively repudiates it, for it claims the right to fight "preventive" wars whenever it believes them to be in the US national interest. Suharto's strategists invoked a similar doctrine of national interest in 1975, didn't they, minister? It is not a doctrine that can make the world safer for anyone, oppressed or free.
Ray Cassin is a staff writer rcassin at theage.com.au