Crean leaves room to move

Labor's position on Iraq is an inherent contradiction, argues Daniel Mandel.

Simon Crean's Iraq policy was always crafted to ensure him wide discretion. By calling for an enabling resolution from the UN Security Council, he could simultaneously favour disarming Saddam Hussein while opposing the threat or use of military measures that alone could achieve this result.

He could provide a sop to the tendency within his party to see panaceas in the UN and malignity the US. And with the caveat of an unreasonable veto" by the council, could even change his mind.

In this page yesterday, Crean argued strenuously that Labor's two conditions for a war on Iraq without a new resolution had not been met.

These were establishing 1) a connection between September 11 and Iraq, and 2) that lraq's weapons mass destruction posed an immediate'' threat to Australia and its allies.

Examined closely, however, both conditions leave Crean as the sole arbiter of evidence because ultimately he can rely on what the Council decides.

Labor's device has been to implicitly transform the Security Council from a political body argued with maintaining peace and security into a judicial body determining questions of fact. But as a representative of nothing more than the interests and wisdom of its members, five of whom hold a veto, is perfectly possible for the council decline to take action regardless of the facts, as is now happening.

Thus, the opposition can ignore evidence of the training of al-Qaeda in bacteriological warfare and the sanctuary provided by Saddam Hussein to individual al-Qaeda members. It can ignore the new strategic nightmare posed by non-sovereign, non-territorial terrorists which precludes the option of overwhelming retaliation and thus deterrence, on which the world once relied.

And it can ignore defining "immediacy" of threat, which such a situation must drastically alter.

Historically, no one has ever succeeded in peacefully disarming an unwilling, unoccupied aggressor.

Yet if Paris, Beijing or Moscow veto or insist on the demonstrated fiction that an alternative, peaceful method exists to disarm Saddam Hussein, Crean can simply say: "case not proved". But why would Crean do this? The polls, an integral part of his case, provide an answer. As matters have developed, many people, including in his own party, are opposed to military action, even with UN approval.

Crean has every right to agree with the electorate or his colleagues. But neither popularity nor unpopularity is a guarantee of wisdom.

Iraq is the unique case where its regime was regarded as such a threat that the council authorised measures to disarm it by force.

Resolution 678 authorised military measures to eject Iraq from Kuwait, to "restore peace and security'' and to give effect to "a subsequent resolutions " on Iraq which included 687, calling for it complete, immediate and unconditional disarmament of weapons of mass destruction.

With 12 years of Iraqi violation of disarmament conditions endorsed by the council, this authorisation remains operative which is why Crean is raising the alleged illegality of "pre-emption" by the US in Iraq as a red herring.

So too is deploying an ambiguous phrase – "not in conformity" with the UN (Hansard, February 4) – when, in fact, wars of individual or collective self-defence do not depend for legitimacy on such sanction.

Crean is aware of all this, or he would not have changed tack and told Laurie Oakes on Channel 9's Sunday (March 16) that the ''jury is still out" on legality even as foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd was still insisting on the ABC's Insiders that military action without a new resolution was "illegal".

The spectacle of Crean calling for Australian troops to be pulled out but for US ones to remain exposes the contradiction produced by a policy of deferring to anti-war populism while appreciating that only the threat or use of force can effect disarmament.

Crean has argued that the Second World War was "the consequence the collapse of the League of Nations because countries chose to go outside of the collective authority."

In fact, the countries that rendered the league impotent were precisely those opposed to military measures to thwart the aggressors while there was still time. Their names today would be France, Russia and China – and Australia, were the opposition in office.

• Daniel Mandel is a fellow in history at Melbourne University and associate editor of The Review, published by the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.