Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Michael Walzer on TNR Online about inspections in Iraq:

"If the inspectors had been forcibly supported, their employer, the U.N., would be much stronger than it currently is, and it would be very difficult for the United States or anyone else to plan a war without going through the U.N.'s decision-making procedures. But the failure of the '90s is not easy to rectify, and it doesn't help to pretend that the U.N. is an effective agent of global law and order when it isn't. Many states insist that they support the renewal of the inspection system, but so long as they are unwilling to use force on its behalf, their support is suspect. They profess to be defending the international rule of law, but how can the law "rule" when there is no law enforcement? When the Bush administration worries that the return of the inspectors would be (in Vice President Dick Cheney's words) "false comfort," it is reflecting a general belief, shared by Saddam, that our European allies would never agree to use force in order to ensure that those inspectors receive unfettered access to possible weapons-development sites. Indeed, until this last week, the Europeans were not seriously trying to renew the inspection system--probably because they were reluctant to face the enforcement question. U.N. negotiators dithered with Iraqi negotiators in a diplomatic dance that seems to have been designed for delay and ultimate failure. It still isn't clear that the dance is over.

Delay is dangerous because once Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and effective delivery systems, our threat to use force against Iraq will be far less plausible than it could be today. But as I have stipulated, Saddam doesn't have them yet. If the administration thinks that Iraq is already a nuclear power, or is literally on the verge of becoming one, then the past months of threatening war rather than fighting it would seem to represent, from the administration's perspective, something like criminal negligence. If there is even a little time before Iraq gets the bomb, the rapid restoration of the inspection system is surely the right thing to aim at--and immensely preferable to the "preemptive" war that many in Washington (including this magazine) so eagerly support."