Michael Byers: Self-defence? It's the economy, stupid

Sunday 22 September 2002 00:00 BST
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Durham, North Carolina. Seen from the heartland of America, there are two incontrovertible truths about Iraq. First, Saddam Hussein is an evil man who brutally oppresses the Iraqi people and seeks to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Second, the Bush administration's frantic beating of the war drums this autumn has little to do with that threat and everything to do with domestic politics.

A decade ago, presidential challenger Bill Clinton taught then-president George Bush Sr a hard lesson: "It's the economy, stupid." Foreign policy may preoccupy Washington politicians and pundits, but ordinary Americans vote with their pocketbooks. The President, having watched his father ejected from the White House by Clinton, will not have forgotten this lesson. And yet the number of unemployed in the US has more than doubled since George Bush came to office. Economic growth has slowed to a dismal 1 per cent annually, and the Dow Jones industrial index has lost a quarter of its value. A healthy federal budget surplus of $256bn (£165bn) has been transformed into a deficit of $160bn.

Americans next go to the polls on 5 November in the mid-term congressional elections. One-third of the seats in the US Senate are up for grabs. The Democratic Party holds the slimmest majority, thanks to the defection from the Republican Party in March 2001 of the maverick Vermont senator James Jeffords. Much of Bush's neo-conservative legislative agenda has been blocked ever since, as has his ability to appoint reactionary judges to the federal courts.

Adding to the President's economic woes is the fact that the party controlling the White House traditionally loses seats during mid-term elections. As a result, Bush faces the real prospect of continued domestic gridlock. The larger interests of the Bush family are at risk, too: 5 November is also the date for gubernatorial elections in some states, including Florida. Should Jeb Bush not be re-elected to the governor's mansion in Tallahassee, long-term plans for a third President Bush would suffer.

In America's personality-obsessed politics, the President's approval ratings will impact on all these elections. And there is no way the economy can be turned around by November. The Democratic Party knows this and is seeking to take advantage. The Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, recently characterised Bush's economic record as "tragic, deplorable, abysmal". Faced with this dire domestic situation, the President's advisers have done everything possible to turn a legitimate, long-term concern about Iraq into a crisis of utmost urgency. They know that Americans usually rally behind their presidents in wartime – as Bush's own stratospheric ratings after the 11 September terrorist attacks confirmed.

Timing their efforts to coincide with the end of the summer vacation, Bush's cabinet members have spent the past three weeks forcing the Iraq issue to the top of the domestic agenda. A number of justifications have been advanced for acting forcefully against Saddam. Possible links with al-Qa'ida, attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction, a past record of using poison gas and of attacking other states, oppressive treatment of the Iraqi people, the undemocratic nature of the regime – all these grounds, we are told, demonstrate the need for prompt military intervention. In his speech to the UN, the President even made the Iraqi government's treatment of women part of his rallying cry. There could be no more conclusive evidence that the intended audience was not the international community, because a number of America's closest Middle-East allies, such as Saudi Arabia, have never paid much attention to women's rights. George Bush was not speaking to the representatives of 190 countries gathered before him in Manhattan. His audience was the swing voters, including the famous "soccer moms" in Florida, Ohio and upstate New York.

The media onslaught is paying off for him. In North Carolina, many moderate Democrats do not question the wisdom of "preventive war". In the past fortnight, the debate has shifted from the question of "if" to the question of "how". Other potential opponents have been silenced by the conflation of the Iraq issue with the "war on terror", and the real risk that any criticism of the President on this issue could be framed as unpatriotic. During this time of geopolitical turmoil, the race to fill Jesse Helm's much-coveted seat in the US Senate has centred on the economic damage allegedly caused to North Carolina's industry by cheap textile imports from Mexico.

In Washington, sitting Democrats are rushing to provide the President with congressional authorisation for an attack against Iraq – with or without UN support. They calculate that the expedient course of action is to affirm their patriotism quickly, so as to leave time for a refocusing of the public's attention back on to economic issues. Expect a strongly worded joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives to be adopted within the week.

The President did not go to the UN over Iraq because he wanted its backing, butbecause he wanted to shore up domestic support. According to a Newsweek poll, 82 per cent of Americans favoured asking the UN for assistance before attacking Iraq, whose announcement that it will allow the resumption of inspectors is too little, too late. It is true that this unexpected move may have divided the UN Security Council, and thus made a strong resolution authorising military action less likely. But from the White House perspective, a Security Council resolution directed at weapons inspections might interfere with the President's plans by delaying any military action until after 5 November. For this reason, the US is unlikely to allow any draft resolution to come to a vote unless that resolution explicitly supports the immediate use of force against Baghdad. The more likely scenario – a divided Security Council – would enable the President to look decisive as he took the steps that other world leaders were too timid to contemplate.

Whatever Tony Blair might say in Parliament on Tuesday, there is no credible evidence that Saddam has the intent to attack the US this autumn. If he had, the Iraqi leader would already be dead. An air campaign involving British and US planes will begin in mid-October. Ground operations, which are inherently more dangerous to soldiers and politicians, will not commence until after 5 November. The President's approval ratings will climb ever higher, Jeb Bush will be re-elected in Florida, and the congressional mid-terms – well, they remain too close to call.

Michael Byers is professor of international law at Duke University, North Carolina. Alan Watkins is away

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