The Gulf War and the Criterion of Last Resort

Extract

The last resort criterion was employed by many critics of the war who believed that sanctions ought to have been given more time. Because sanctions were not given the chance to work fully, but were in effect preempted by the November 8th decision to double the American forces in the Gulf in preparation for a military solution, many people—including myself—held and still hold that claims for the overall justice of the war were seriously compromised. But we must consider a counter-argument to this, powerfully put by Oliver O’Donovan among others, which says that comprehensive sanctions such as were approved against Iraq are themselves a form of war: indeed of indiscriminate warfare, particularly aimed at the weakest and most defenceless members of the opposing nation. According to this view, morally speaking, there was little to choose between on the one hand bombing Iraqi civilians and destroying their essential life-support systems (water, electricity etc.), not to mention the wretched conscripted victims of Saddam’s military machine; and on the other hand starving them to death by sanctions. This case has force and we must not suppose that sanctions are anything other than ferocious and indiscriminate. The Ahtisaari report to the UN in March makes this perfectly clear. Nevertheless, distinctions do have to be drawn. Comprehensive economic sanctions first of all are clearly a legal means of pressure: the UN Charter says so in Article 41. Use of them is a case of upholding, not undermining, the rule of law. Furthermore the UN charter makes it plain in Article 42 that sanctions are clearly to be used first, before the use of force is permitted. To this extent, international law gives an obvious priority to sanctions over military operations.