Ravenman Do you disagree with my overall response to his statement about the source of our nominal authority to go to war over Iraq’s WMDs? Absent the first gulf war and cease fire agreement is it likely that the UNSC would have spent nearly as much time and effort on the issue of Iraqi WMDs or that the resolutions would have had as much oomph as they did?
Yes, the NPT has provision for inspection to determine compliance. That is a good thing. But there is, understandably, not really any statement of consequences within the treaty.
What are the consequences you are referring to: continued or increased opprobrium and probable economic and possible diplomatic sanctions or something more? I think that economic and diplomatic sanctions are certainly in order if Iran violates the treaty or backs out. That is the decision of each individual country. I think that the threat of these sanctions (along with the carrot of removing existing sanctions) will probably work at quelling Iranian nuclear aspirations (for now).
But I don’t think, that within the NNPT, there is any authority for any country to go in and start blowing shit up. (I also tend to think that even if it were referred to the UNSC little more than a moderately worded resolution would come of it - there are two many permanent members who believe very strongly in minimizing the UN’s ability to interfere with states’ sovereignty). I think using the NNPT as a club to beat signatories with rather than a club for upright states to join runs the risk of weakening it rather than strengthening it. (At the same time I acknowledge that doing nothing could effectively weaken or kill it as well, depending on how the signatories respond)
Whether an individual country attempts a military strike on its own is another matter, but its rationale will have to (in my opinion, anyways) be justified by some other means than NNPT noncompliance.
I agree with you in that UNSC resolutions, including the ceasefire, helped increase pressure on Iraq. I completely disagree with your conclusion that Iraq’s violations rendered the ceasefire null and void, allowing the US to attack Iraq at its convenience. There is nothing at all within the historical record of 687 that contemplated any sort of automaticity for the resumption of hostilities. Even the White House has not dared to lay serious claim to that bit of legal fiction.
The UNSC is the only competent legal authority to decide whether countries are in compliance with its resolutions, and what steps to take if they are not. Countries may, of course, formulate their own foreign policies toward other nations, but the members of the UN have freely chosen to abide by UNSC decisions by becoming a signatory to the UN Charter.
Whether the 1991 ceasefire was in place or not was a matter to be decided by the UN and Iraq, not the United States and Iraq. To suggest that states ought to have the authority to independently interpret and act on UN resolutions without regards to UNSC actions (or inaction) is an invitation to chaos.
Arab states could claim authority under UNSC Resolution 242 to invade Israel again, because that resolution has never been fully implemented. Greece or Turkey could claim UN authority to invade each other over Cyprus. Japan could up and one day decide to invade North Korea because of a perceived technical violation of the armistace. That’s the kind of stuff we should be trying to avoid, let alone provide legal precidents for.
I think you’re missing my point. I said that the fact that a number of countries have freely bound themselves to forswear WMD, and then flip-flipped on that commitment, gives other countries the moral authority to confront them in an attempt to change their behavior. That’s what the OP was asking.
What constitutes legal authority is another kettle of fish, which has been debated to death in other recent threads.
*First we got the bomb, and that was good
'Cause we love peace and motherhood
Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s okay
'Cause the balance of power’s maintained that way
Who’s next?
France got the bomb, but don’t you grieve
'Cause they’re on our side (I believe!)
China got the bomb, but have no fears
They can’t wipe us out for at least five years
Who’s next?*
I am 100% in agreement with you here. My point (in response to Nattoguywas that the ceasefire agreement was the figleaf, the crowbar that allowed the UN to have authority to deal with what Iraq did inside Iraq. The UN did not merely assume authority, it negotiated for it with Iraq. Breaking the ceasefire agreement would almost, by definition, break the ceasefire agreement, although for any non shootin’ violations the cognizant authority (the UN) would have to decide exactly what a constitutes a violation and what that would mean.
Okay I guess I see where you are coming from - you are addressing a third party’s (neither violator nor possessor) moral authority to deal with a proliferatin’ nonproliferator. I would agree that they have a moral authority to confront Iran, although I am not so sure that I would say that such authority would extend into the realm of contemplating military action (even disregarding the legality of all this). Censuring and embargoing Iran would be okay by me, but an invasion by Indonesia and Brazil would not necessarily be a clear improvement over a nuclear Iran.
As to the OP, my answer would be that there isn’t necessarily any moral high ground, merely a vast weight of advice about the cost, complications, and general pain-in-the-assedness involved for everyone. I’d probably refer them to various countries that were nuclear aspirants in decades past and have subsequently renounced such a course of action - I’m thinking some South American countries might give some convincing testimony here.
Moral ground? None whatsoever. It’s a classical case of the golden rule, real-world version: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
From a pragmatic point of view, I could argue that: The fewer who have nuclear, bacteriological or chemical weapons, the safer we’ll all be. There’s little or no chance that the countries who have these weapons now will give them up, so we’ll just have to make the best out of a bad situation, and try to prevent these dangerous weapons from spreading further.
I’m not sure I could argue that with a straight face, though, in light of the tens of thousands - possibly hundred(s?) of thousands Iraqis who would most likely still be alive if Saddam Hussein’s regime had possessed a big, scary nuclear stockpile. I don’t doubt that the rest of the world is safer as a result of Saddam’s inability to get WMDs, but I’m not able to make the same claim for Iraq’s citizens.
The Chemical Weapons Convention, which went into force in 1997, has banned the possession of chemical weapons. The US, Russia, and many other countries are now in the process of destroying all of their huge stocks of chemical weapons. All that destruction is supposed to be complete by 2007, IIRC.
The Biological Weapons Convention, signed in 1972, required the US, the Soviet Union, and others to get rid of their germ weapons. There may have been some cheating on the Soviet side, but by any measure, the number of biological weapons held by these countries is a tiny, tiny fraction of what it once was.
South Africa had the nuclear bomb. After apatheid ended, it unilaterally disarmed. It is the first former nuclear power in the world.
Countries can most certainly disarm. That is why countries who have disarmed have a moral high ground over those who do not.