This past weekend, Iraq delivered to the UN nearly 12,000 documents to prove it has no weapons of mass destruction.  Arguably, the world community is skeptical.  How should we think about the UN role as inspectors, specifically the role of Hans Blix?  Also, if war does occur, is this a just war?

• First, the matter of the inspectors.  Gary Milhollin has raised some important questions about the inspectors’ prospects of success under Blix’s leadership.  Championed by Russia and France, Blix took over the present UN inspection organization (UNMOVIC) in January 2000.  He was chosen over the US preferred candidate, Rolf Ekeus, who is more aggressive and firm.  Blix brings a record that is hardly superb.  For example, from 1981 to 1997 he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), responsible for inspecting nuclear sites around the world, including Iraq.  Blix characterized Saddam’s cooperation as “exemplary,” while he was producing plutonium and enriched uranium for nuclear weapons - all in clear violation of the IAEA’s rules.  Some of the work went on at the same places that were being inspected, hidden with the help of an Iraqi official who was himself a former IAEA official.  As Milhollin observes, “Had the Gulf War not intervened, Iraq might have made its first bomb. . . .”  Iraq possessed more than 45 kilograms of highly enriched uranium before the Gulf War; far more than the 25 kilograms that the IAEA officially said was enough to make an atomic bomb.  When a country has more than a bomb’s worth of weapon-usable uranium, the IAEA is supposed to inspect it every three weeks, because that is the time needed to fashion it into a warhead.  Under Blix, however, the IAEA was inspecting it only every six months.  Iraq stored the uranium in a number of separate “material balance areas,” only a mile or so apart.  Blix chose not “to annoy” the Iraqis.  Only the Gulf War ended this folly.  Blix continued his accommodation with Iraq even after the Gulf War.  As Milhollin has demonstrated, “On repeated occasions, the commission had to use its power to designate sites for inspection in Iraq over Mr. Blix’s opposition.  He objected on the ground that the sites were sensitive, and the inspections risked being too confrontational.”  Finally, Blix has characterized that his new powers under the recent UN resolution 1441, which would allow Iraqi scientists and their families to be taken out of Iraq so they could tell the truth, as having “practical difficulties.”  The world should demand that Blix confront Saddam now with the best evidence the West can muster and insist on compliance.  If he does not do this, he will be ignoring his responsibilities and accommodating his agency to a ruthless dictator who will use such weapons to destroy countless numbers of people.  Blix must be held accountable.  See Milhollin’s article in The Wall Street Journal (26 November 2002).

• Second is the matter of the just war and its application to a war with Iraq.  The America Catholic bishops, the National Council of Churches and others have questioned whether a preemptive war against Iraq would be just.  As Robert P. George has shown, three questions are most important:  (1)  Can military action be morally legitimate if it is preemptive?  (2)  Is it morally permissible to use force to oust a tyrannical and aggressive regime, as opposed to merely disarming it?  (3)  May the US legitimately lead a coalition against Saddam Hussein if the UN refuses to authorize the use of force to remove or disarm his regime?  For Christians, the issue is whether the just war tradition applies to these questions.  President Bush argues that the just war principles do apply to this situation; other religious leaders contend they do not.  Which one is correct?  As George maintains, preemptive military action is “defensive” when it is motivated by a reasonable belief that a proven aggressor is equipping himself with the means to carry out further aggression with impunity.  Those who are intellectually honest realize that Saddam is amassing weapons of mass destruction and would use them against his neighbors and, if he could, against the US.  Former President Clinton, Senators Lieberman and McCain have all agreed with this proposition.  Further, it seems prudent to conclude that if a regime’s aggression cannot be prevented without removing the regime, then force may be legally used to remove it.  Finally, one of the tenets of the just war tradition is that of “right authority” to wage the war.  Some argue that without the action of the UN, the US lacks that right authority.  President Bush has acted prudently in obtaining a UN resolution requiring Saddam to abandon his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and submit to inspections.  However, should the UN fail to act, it is wise for the US to act to protect itself from the future aggression of Iraq.  In this sin-cursed world, sometimes statecraft demands that if statesmen cannot prevent aggression and resist tyranny through diplomatic means, then the just war tradition supposes that the decision to fight is not only an option, it is ethically required.  See George’s article in The Wall Street Journal (6 November 2002).

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NIGERIA AND ISLAM

Nigeria is an African nation that is clearly emerging as a hotbed for radical Islam.  There are half-dozen Muslim countries in West Africa.  Several others are, like Nigeria, split between a Christian south and a Muslim north.  But only Nigeria struggles with strong radical Islamic tendencies, and only Nigeria has Shariah, the strict rule of law based on the Quran.  For example, in Nigeria, when Isioma Daniel, a journalist, said in a newspaper article that Muhammad might have married a Miss World contestant, Muslims then vandalized churches and attacked Christians.  More than 200 people have died from this violence.  Why the difference between Nigeria and the rest of Muslim West Africa?

• First is a historical reason.  Usman dan Fodio led a jihad across northern Nigeria in the early 19th century, resulting in a theocratic caliphate.  By mid-20th century, northern Nigeria was the only region outside the Arabian peninsula where Islamic criminal law was fully enforced.  After the lawlessness of independence in the 1960s, Muslim students, in the 1970s, inspired by the Iranian revolution, demanded a return to Islamic law.  In 1999 democracy returned to Nigeria and Shariah become a popular campaign issue, where 12 of the 36 Nigerian states have adopted it.  Nigeria has a federal system, inherited from the British, which allows northern states to elect pro-Shariah governors, who could never win a national contest.  All other Muslim West African nations were colonized by the French who left a centralized government model that does not permit local governors to have independent power; they are appointed.  With the election of an evangelical Christian, Olusegun Obasanjo, as president, Christianity has found favor in the government and is growing in the north.  Therefore, there is a feeling among Muslims that they are losing power.  The historic faultline between Islam and Christianity has shifted and become more fluid and dangerous.

• Second is the economic change in the nation.  Once awash in oil earnings, corruption has robbed the country blind.  Nigerian per capita GNP has declined from $750 in 1982 to less than $250 today.  Agriculture has been neglected, infrastructure is in disrepair, once fine universities are left without books, and equipment and power outages and fuel shortages are common.  Its foreign debt is $30 billion.  In this situation, religion is exacerbating an already volatile situation.  Al Qaeda could find this a most attractive place for its terrorist cells.  Besides, in 2003 there is a presidential election scheduled.  Either Obasanjo will run again or his successor will face these massive difficulties.  Nigeria is on the brink and, as an oil rich and large nation of 130 million, it outnumbers the rest of West Africa combined.  We cannot ignore the plight of Nigeria. 

See Matt Steinglass, The New York Times (1 December 2002) and Princeton Lyman, The Wall Street Journal (27 November 2002).

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THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES (1919)

The Bible makes it clear that history is important for the Christian.  History gives us a sense of how God has worked in the past and also gives us a needed understanding of the present.  To understand the modern world the best starting point is the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I.  In the course of World War I, four old multinational empires had fallen - the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman.  The fate of hundreds of millions of people, throughout the Eurasian continent was at stake.  A new book by revisionist historian Margaret MacMillan of the University of Toronto, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, provides one of the best overviews of how critical this Treaty is to understanding our world today.  She records in vivid detail the events that took place between January and June 1919.  The Conference involved representatives of 29 countries that drew many of the boundaries of Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans that exist today.  Here are some of her salient themes:

• First, led by President Wilson, the American idea of self-determination dominated the Conference.  The peoples and nations now released from imperial activity were each to receive their own geographical space.  As MacMillan shows, the idea of self-determination was wonderful but the reality was disastrous.  Here is the check sheet:  Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, created at the conference are gone today.  The Greek-Turkish animosity can be traced directly to the Conference.  So can the Balkan wars of the 1990s; the tribulations of Albanians in former Yugoslavia; the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict; the modern Israeli-Palestinian hostilities; the claims of the Kurds and the territorial sensitivities of the Turks.  Iraq and the borders of virtually the entire Middle East are a product of this conference. 

• Second, she attempts, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to show that Versailles did not inevitably give rise to Adolf Hitler and World War II.  Although one can follow her argument clearly, the fact remains that had there not been Versailles and the Carthaginian settlement for Germany, there would probably not have been a Hitler or another World War.

What MacMillan demonstrates is that the same problems faced by the 1919 peacemakers are virtually the same ones we face today: civil wars in the Balkans, rebellions in Africa, fighting in Palestine, squabbling minorities in Iraq.  Making peace and settling centuries-old rivalries are not easy; they were not in 1919 and they are not today.

See Justin Ewers, US News and World Report (2 December 2002), Richard Bernstein, New York Times (27 November 2002) and Tony Judt, New York Times Book Review (1 December 2002).

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