UN secretary General Kofi Annan caused quite a stir recently when he stated in an interview that he believed the Iraq invasion was illegal. Leaders of countries who contributed troops to Iraq, including Japan, were quick to reassure their publics that their actions were legal, but were they?
From my perspective, the invasion was completely unjustified from the beginning and has been made even more so now that the main reasons for it have been proven false. What is at stake here is whether the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive self defence" is at all a legitimate concept. Under even minor consideration it seems evident to me that it is not. Not only had Iraq not attacked the US or threatened to do so, even if it had WMD it would have been completely incapable of using them against the US. The rationale therefore, is that all you need is the mere possibility that at some unspecified time in the future an as of yet undetermined threat to your security may develop in order for you to invade another country.
When using this as the standard, it is clear that any act of aggression, no matter how blatant, could be justified as "pre-emptive self defence." To take one example, Pearl Harbor would be considered a completely justified act of self defence if this new standard were to be applied retroactively. The US battleships at Pearl Harbor represented, if anything, a much graver and more immediate threat to Japanese security than Iraq's alleged WMDs (which, given Iraq's lack of missile technology, would have had no way of reaching the US in the first place) ever did to the US. If we cannot take into consideration (as the Bush doctrine demands)the fact that the US had neither attacked nor threatened to attack Japan, then Pearl Harbor would fall into the category of a 100% justifiable and legal action. Ditto with the Nazi invasion of Poland, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and just about every other act of blatant aggression commited in the 20th century. If the Nuremburg tribunals are to be taken as a precedent, then the Iraq war was an illegal act of aggression and the people responsible for it should be brought before a judge.
From my perspective, the invasion was completely unjustified from the beginning and has been made even more so now that the main reasons for it have been proven false. What is at stake here is whether the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive self defence" is at all a legitimate concept. Under even minor consideration it seems evident to me that it is not. Not only had Iraq not attacked the US or threatened to do so, even if it had WMD it would have been completely incapable of using them against the US. The rationale therefore, is that all you need is the mere possibility that at some unspecified time in the future an as of yet undetermined threat to your security may develop in order for you to invade another country.
When using this as the standard, it is clear that any act of aggression, no matter how blatant, could be justified as "pre-emptive self defence." To take one example, Pearl Harbor would be considered a completely justified act of self defence if this new standard were to be applied retroactively. The US battleships at Pearl Harbor represented, if anything, a much graver and more immediate threat to Japanese security than Iraq's alleged WMDs (which, given Iraq's lack of missile technology, would have had no way of reaching the US in the first place) ever did to the US. If we cannot take into consideration (as the Bush doctrine demands)the fact that the US had neither attacked nor threatened to attack Japan, then Pearl Harbor would fall into the category of a 100% justifiable and legal action. Ditto with the Nazi invasion of Poland, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and just about every other act of blatant aggression commited in the 20th century. If the Nuremburg tribunals are to be taken as a precedent, then the Iraq war was an illegal act of aggression and the people responsible for it should be brought before a judge.