Chris Smith: No, it's not right to invade

Hatred will be fostered against the West. Saddam Hussein will become a bizarre kind of hero. And the battle against terrorism will become infinitely harder

An audible gasp of surprise rippled through the House of Commons last Wednesday when the result of the vote on the Iraq amendment was announced. None of us had expected that there would be 199 votes in the division lobby saying the case for war was as yet unproven, especially as the Government Whips had spent the day exerting as much pressure as they could. The result of the vote did, and does, signal the depth of unease among backbenchers of all parties about the apparent rush to war.

Parliament has expressed doubts. Members of the public have done so, in their millions, across Europe. Experienced military strategists, Gulf War veterans, leading academics, thoughtful people from all shades of political opinion, have followed suit. Yet the Prime Minister is fervent in the clarity of his conviction: we are wrong to harbour doubts; the practical and moral case for military action against Iraq is, in his mind, unanswerable. Why do I believe – equally fervently – that it is not so?

Sometimes, of course, it is right for a nation to go to war. I supported the action we took in Kosovo, because the cause was clear: to prevent genocide against an entire people. I supported action in Afghanistan, the principal breeding ground for terrorism around the world. I believe the intervention in Bosnia came too late, and many lives and much history could have otherwise been saved. In some cases, these decisions to intervene were taken with a leading role being played by our Prime Minister. He was brave, and determined, and right. The same does not apply with Iraq.

For military action against a sovereign nation to be justified, three things need to be in place. First, there has to be a clear moral case for intervention: a threat to the peace of the region or the world, an invasion of a neighbouring state, an imminent danger of genocidal slaughter. Second, there has to be a genuine international consensus – if at all possible reached through the rules-based UN system – that action is appropriate. And third, all other possible means of resolving the problem have to have been exhausted. None of these three tests is fully met in relation to Iraq.

In particular, all other options have self-evidently not been exhausted. The weapons inspection process is under way, and is beginning to yield results. The inspectors themselves say they need more time to do their job properly. They have received at least some co-operation, even if more could be forthcoming. They have identified the missiles that can travel 20 miles beyond their supposed limit, and they are being dismantled. The inspection process, in other words, is working. Yet the response from Washington and London is deeply dispiriting: the Iraqis, apparently, are only playing games. Whether or not they are, the reality is that decommissioning is happening, and happening peacefully. Surely we should be building on this, not deprecating it and seeking to cut it all short?

Let's not forget, either, that the weapons inspection process worked last time round. Between 1991 and 1996 the inspectors found large quantities of chemical and biological materials, and destroyed them. As former president Bill Clinton has remarked, more weapons of mass destruction were removed by the inspection process than by the Gulf War itself. If inspection worked last time, why on earth aren't we straining every sinew to make it work again this time?

Inspection was one of the elements of a general policy of containment towards Saddam Hussein; and so long as you maintain the pressure from outside, a containment policy can succeed in preserving some sort of regional stability. It is an imperfect policy, of course, but then all other options are even more so. The maintenance of external pressure is essential; and this is why I would certainly not rule out the use of force if circumstances warranted. But it must be there only as a lever of last resort, not as something to be seized as a first or second opportunity because patience is running out.

And that, effectively, is what is now happening. The issue of Iraq is running on a timetable set by the White House. It was the President who decided that Iraq was the "next issue" to be focused on. It was he who drafted most of Resolution 1441. It is he who insists that the "final opportunity" is being ignored, even when some disarmament is happening. And I fear that, inexorably, we are moving towards war in the course of the next three weeks, at a date to be determined by the President. The Security Council has become an entity to be wooed and cajoled into going along with this; and even if it doesn't, the timetable will still operate, come what may.

One of the worrying developments in all this has been the adoption by the American administration of a new doctrine of global politics. They argue that nations – especially the US, as the world's strongest nation by far – have a right of pre-emption: that they can not only attack another country in direct self-defence when themselves under threat or attack, but can also take action if they think it possible that the country in question might cause potential harm to them at some unspecified date in the future. It doesn't take much thought to recognise that this new doctrine of pre-emption has breathtaking consequences for order and sovereignty across the world if taken to its logical conclusions.

Over the past few weeks, our own Prime Minister has shifted the argument. The principal issue now, apparently, is the liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's regime. And this is, of course, a goal devoutly to be sought. His regime is evil, repressive, ruthless, and has no regard whatsoever for human rights. If he fell from power there would be cheering from one end of the country and the region to the other.

But how best do you secure this end, without in the process doing far more damage than the tyranny itself is doing? How can you claim to liberate a people by bombing them? These are profoundly difficult questions, and we need to do some serious international thinking about how, through the UN, we can bring the greatest pressure to bear on countries whose governments oppress their own people: through economic intervention, perhaps, or through the targeting of aid and development, or through support for opposition groups, or through legal indictment. But an all-out military assault in order to secure this end is surely the bluntest of blunt instruments.

Let's remember, after all, that it is war we are talking about here. And the consequences of war are almost always traumatic. An assault on Iraq will cause thousands of innocent casualties, however smart the missiles may be. People will die, whose only fault will have been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our own forces will suffer. The Kurds in Northern Iraq may lose the autonomy they have painstakingly put together over recent years. Iraq itself will probably descend into a chaos of warring factions. There will be increased instability across much of the Middle East. Hatred will be fostered against the West. Perversely, Saddam Hussein will become a bizarre kind of hero. The resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict will become more difficult, rather than less. Moderate Muslims across the world will become more militant. And the battle against terrorism will become infinitely harder.

The Prime Minister believes these risks are worth taking. I beg to disagree. I respect the conviction and seriousness and passion with which he advocates his case. I respect the boldness with which he is prepared to swim against the tide of public opinion, because he adheres so strongly to the conclusions he has reached. I respect the strength, but believe it to be wrong.

There is one argument, however, which I cannot respect: the accusation that those who urge caution, and speak of war as a last resort, are somehow the equivalent of the appeasers of the 1930s in the face of Nazi warmongering in Germany. This is the shallowest argument of all. Every leader taking his or her country to war in the past 60 years has raised the spectre of appeasement to aid their cause. Sometimes, as in the case of Churchill himself, they have been right. Sometimes, as with Eden over Suez or Johnson over Vietnam, they have been most definitely wrong.

Strength doesn't necessarily lie in rushing to war. Strength lies in making the right moral judgments. It lies in maintaining the most effective pressure we can. It lies in building the largest possible international consensus. It lies in being passionate about the human rights of those facing torture and of those facing bombardment.

And it lies in saying to our great friends and allies in the US – a nation that has given so much to the world – that now is not the time for war.

The Right Hon Chris Smith is Labour MP for Islington South & Finsbury