6 - Force, legitimacy, success and Iraq

Summary

Having apparently abandoned war as a device for settling their own quarrels, developed countries, in the wake of the Cold War, have had an opportunity to cooperate to deal with the two chief remaining sources of artificial or human-made death: civil war and vicious regimes. In addition, international law has evolved to allow them to do so, variously conferring legitimacy on most international policing measures even when they involve the use of military force and even when they violate the policed country's sovereignty.

Until 2003, these policing ventures had generally been successful, at least in their own terms. However, despite this general record of success, it seems unlikely that developed countries will be able to carry out such exercises with any sort of consistency or reliability. This is because they often have little interest in humanitarian problems in distant areas of the globe, because they sometimes subscribe to a misguided impression about ancient ethnic hatreds that provides them with a convenient excuse for neglect, because they have a low tolerance for casualties in such ventures, because they have an aversion to the costs and problems that attend long-term policing, because there seems to be little domestic political gain from success in policing ventures, and because they harbour something of a bias against undertakings that could be construed as aggression.

Moreover, the war upon Iraq being conducted by the United States and the United Kingdom will very likely substantially reinforce the developed world's already considerable reticence about such enterprises.