www.guardian.co.uk Comment

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Monday January 27, 2003 The Guardian

Next month, Lord Black of Crossharbour - Conrad Black, the owner of the Daily Telegraph - is giving a lecture in London entitled "Is it in Britain's national interest to be America's principal ally?" There may be no prizes for guessing his answer, but that is indeed a very interesting question, and has been for many years. The closer one looks at the relations between the two countries in terms of national interest, the more unequal they seem, though distorted by a misreading of history and a misunderstanding of motives.

A hundred years ago, England was the only global superpower, whose territories covered much of the Earth's surface, and whose City of London owned much more of the world than the British empire formally controlled. That included the US, which was to a large extent a financial (as well as a cultural) dependency of London until the first world war. This was much resented by an American nation which had, after all, emerged from rebellion against British rule, and one episode after another showed that whatever affection the English felt for the Americans was simply not reciprocated.

After the US civil war there was a fierce dispute about the Alabama, an English-built Confederate warship which had inflicted damage on Union shipping. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts demanded a sum amounting to six times British annual state spending (he was prepared to consider the cession of Canada as an alternative) before London paid a sum equivalent, in relation to state spending, to £150bn today. This set a pattern for American aggression and British conciliation which was repeated in 1895 when the two countries almost went to war over a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. President Cleveland played on a deep vein of American Anglophobia, showing that, as one historian put it: "An Anglo-American war would still be the most popular of all wars in America".

In the 20th century, the two countries twice became wartime allies, but this quite wrongly led the British to suppose that they had identical interests. For one thing, the Americans entered both world wars belatedly, at very little cost in casualties, and very much on their own terms. That was especially true in the second world war, one of whose outcomes was the end of Great Britain as a great power, at the behest - and to the considerable advantage - of the US.

Only in this strange age of historical amnesia could a senior White House official tell the Washington Post that the US now faces the same responsibilities as when it was "standing between Nazi Germany and a takeover of all Europe". And with his own frightening historical ignorance, Tony Blair has spoken of our duty to support the Americans as they supported us during the Blitz. He is apparently unaware that, far from supporting or standing between anyone, America was neutral at the time. The US didn't enter the war until December 1941, and then only because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler had declared war on the US, not the other way round.

Before the US joined the war, there was, of course, the Lend-Lease agreement, which was represented as an act of generosity. The reality was that, in return for some obsolescent warships, Washington ruthlessly stripped British dollar reserves. The process was completed by the terms of the postwar American loan whose effect - combined with Lend-Lease - was gravely to weaken the British economy, especially the exporting economy, to the very great benefit of American business. Any remaining illusions about a coincidence of British and American interests should never have survived the Suez episode, when London had the financial rug pulled from under its feet by Washington.

To say all of which may sound "anti-American", that quaint catch-all term. In fact, one can perfectly well like and admire much about America while discussing its political conduct objectively. And there is anyway no reason why the US shouldn't ruthlessly pursue its national interests as it sees them. But that only emphasises the sheer one-sidedness of the Anglo-American relationship, going far beyond the inevitable inequality between a former global power, now living in reduced circumstances, and the superpower which succeeded it.

This can be illustrated in the words of two Victorian prime ministers. When a pompous colleague said, "I shall always support you when you are in the right," Melbourne less pompously replied, "What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong."

Palmerston said that England had no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. His phrase is sometimes quoted today by those who direct the Bush administration, inside or outside the White House, and it is a perfectly plausible basis for any country's foreign policy.

The trouble is that America follows Palmerston, while expecting the British to follow Melbourne. They have no permanent friends: we must always support them. More surprisingly, this is accepted by some of our own official class, through what Hugo Young has called "the convenient rationale, now much heard in Whitehall, that Britain has a selfless duty to act alongside the US in its military ventures precisely in order to show the world that Washington is not alone". It is hard to see how that is either convenient or rational. "My country right or wrong" is bad enough, but "your country right or wrong" is barely sane.

Never has the relationship been more one-sided than it is today. Blair loyally acts as the frontman for George Bush, putting the case for war against Iraq with a fluency the president can't match, even if it means telling what would be called, in a person of less exalted station, plain lies about Saddam Hussein's military threat to this country and his connections with al-Qaida. As for Blair's claim that, in return for our loyalty, we enjoy unique influence in Washington, there is no more evidence of that than there is for an Iraqi connection with September 11.

Washington conspicuously did not support us in the years when we tried to defeat the IRA. Blair's devoted loyalty the autumn before last was shortly rewarded by a US tariff designed to destroy what's left of the British steel industry. And if the prime minister really enjoyed the influence he claims, then Washington would have backed his pet scheme for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference, at least to the extent of telling Sharon to let the Palestinians come to London. Nothing of the kind happened.

The sad truth is that Tony Blair is the last victim of an illusion which has long bedevilled British policy, the myth of the "special relationship". Actually, the chief characteristic of this relationship was that only one side knew it existed - and relationships don't come more special than that.

wheaty@compuserve.com

www.globeandmail.com By BRIAN MILNER

Monday, January 27, 2003 – Page B2

There's nothing like a deepening threat of war in the Middle East and an eight-week strike by oil workers in Venezuela to frighten the bejeebers out of investors and send the price of crude skyrocketing on world markets. And it doesn't help when pundits paint pictures as bleak as any conjured up by Francisco de Goya.

Warning bells have been going off everywhere in recent days, roiling the markets. Oil and gold both shot up again on Friday after U.S. officials helpfully went public with their concerns that Saddam Hussein is prepared to blow up his own oil fields at the first signs of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

Last week, former Saudi oil minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani warned that if Mr. Hussein retaliates against an American invasion by blowing up Iraq's wells, crude could soar to as much as $100 (U.S.) a barrel.

"Saddam could resort to the destruction of his oil fields and this means the global strategic stockpiles will sharply decline and the entire world will be pushed toward a horrible abyss," Mr. OPEC himself declared. "I think the U.S. could cause an international catastrophe if it attacks Iraq."

Last fall, he wondered about an Iraqi chemical assault on the oil fields in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait driving prices to that magical $100 figure.

But setting aside the alarmist rhetoric, a case can be made that $25 oil is just as plausible -- and a lot more probable -- even if the bombs start falling in Iraq and most of Venezuela's crude stays in the ground. And if the Venezuelan and Iraqi crises are resolved quickly and peacefully, oil will be more plentiful and considerably cheaper.

On the Iraqi front, the markets have been paralyzed by fear that Washington is moving inexorably toward war, with the countdown possibly starting this week.

The United Nation's chief arms inspector, Hans Blix, is scheduled to report today on his team's progress or lack of it; and U.S. President George W. Bush will make what could be an extremely bellicose State of the Union address to Americans tomorrow. But Mr. Blix has already indicated there is no definitive proof yet that Mr. Hussein is hiding those celebrated "weapons of mass destruction." And Washington's allies, including Canada, have been urging Mr. Bush to wait until the inspectors have had a chance to complete their work or else show clear evidence that the Iraqi dictator has such weapons at his disposal.

In Venezuela, there are signs the national strike that has crippled production is running out of steam. The latest shipping data show that Venezuelan oil exports jumped last week to nearly 700,000 barrels a day, about one-quarter of the prestrike output, but considerably higher than the average during the past month.

That doesn't mean the country is any closer to resuming full production, which would take months, even if all the striking workers returned tomorrow. Or that a political solution to the crisis is imminent.

So let's assume the worst -- or nearly the worst -- in both cases.

Mr. Bush unleashes his military firepower on Iraq, remembering to dispatch enough troops to safeguard the oil supply. Meanwhile, the impasse in Venezuela between embattled President Hugo Chavez and opposition business, labour and political groups continues.

That could leave refiners scrambling to replace an estimated 500,000 barrels a day, according to a scenario outlined by the Middle East Economic Digest. But that does not mean we'll be looking at massive shortages, gasoline rationing or freezing homes and offices.

At worst, the business weekly suggests, the West would have to tap strategic reserves, which should be more than enough to cover a prolonged shortfall. Counting the huge U.S. oil stocks, which have yet to be touched, the developed world has enough oil to replace all Venezuelan and Iraqi shipments for at least half a year. Even longer, if the Saudis can crank up more production, as they have long promised.

Current Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said at Davos on the weekend: "There is no shortage in the market and there should be no reason for prices where they are today."

There are reports that the Saudis and other Middle East producers are already stockpiling reserves outside the region, in case shipments are disrupted.

If the Venezuelans can get back to pumping at full volume, the global economy remains sluggish, and there is a normal decline in demand of the sort that occurs just about every spring, the phrase we are most likely to be hearing from analysts is "oil glut," rather than more hand-wringing about tight supplies.

www.miami.com Posted on Mon, Jan. 27, 2003 BY ANDREA ELLIOTT aelliott@herald.com

The family fled Venezuela with a suitcase, certain the country's political crisis would pass by Christmas.

But from their Doral vacation home they watched daily as the chaos only deepened, and when the schools in Caracas shut down, they decided to stay.

Their children are among nearly 500 Venezuelans who enrolled in Broward and Miami-Dade County schools in January -- many with tourist visas -- a move that could endanger their legal status if they take steps to settle here permanently.

''It's a double life. We don't want to stay, but we don't want to go back,'' said the 35-year-mother, who asked not to be identified for fear of deportation. Her daughters are among more than 100 new Venezuelan students at the Eugenia B. Thomas Elementary School in Doral. ``I'm away from all the people who are fighting for us. We wish we could help them out. It's for the kids we are here, not for the adults.''

But by putting her children in a Florida school, the woman has violated immigration law, and now her family -- along with the hundreds of other Venezuelans enrolled in schools while on tourist visas -- faces the prospect of being deported.

CONFUSING GAP

Their predicament underscores a confusing gap between federal immigration law and school board policy: The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service forbids tourists to enroll in schools without first obtaining student visas, while public schools enroll students without asking about their immigration status.

As a policy, the INS does not go after foreign children improperly enrolled in schools because other investigations take priority, said John Shewairy, chief of staff of the INS district office in Florida. However, should these families 'come to the INS' attention'' they could face deportation, he said.

Otherwise, they will become undocumented once their tourist visas expire, usually within six months.

''People have to understand that they're breaking the law,'' Shewairy said. ``If you come in on a tourist visa and do anything here that shows you are intending to establish residency in the U.S., that's a violation of your status.''

Many schools in Venezuelan enclaves such as Doral and Weston have absorbed the influx of students with no questions asked, leading some parents -- like the woman who fled with a suitcase -- to believe they are doing nothing wrong.

''It's a very confusing area, because on the one hand the child will be welcomed to all schools, but in fact he's jeopardizing his immigration status,'' said Michael Bander, an immigration attorney. ``These are very difficult choices that families have to make.''

Lorena Landa, whose family landed in Weston with relatives over Christmas, was ready to enroll her sons in Indian Trace Elementary when her sister made a precautionary call to an immigration attorney.

ENROLLMENT ILLEGAL

''He told me if I am not a resident of Weston, I cannot put them in a public school,'' she said. The attorney told her that putting the boys in a private school was also illegal, but he would have a better case before the INS because she was paying for educational services.

''I don't want to do anything out of the law,'' she said. Instead, she takes her 10-year-old son to the library to keep him learning.

Among the Venezuelan children enrolled in schools this month alone: roughly 130 children in Miami-Dade County public schools, more than 220 in Broward County public schools, and more than 120 in private schools -- primarily Jewish day schools.

''All we're asking is that they let Venezuelan children finish the school year,'' said Maria Alejandra Leone, a Weston activist. ``We've invested a lot of money here over the years and we find the United State's treatment of us unfair.''

Calls from Caracas began pouring in to the Tauber School in Aventura on Dec. 20 -- averaging 50 a day along with local calls from newly arrived Venezuelans.

''I had to have a translator for a while,'' said Alix Harper-Rosenberg, the director of admissions for the private Jewish day school. More than 250 families have toured the school, and 26 new Venezuelan students had enrolled by last week.

Every Monday, about 50 new families line up in the admissions office of the Eugenia B. Thomas school in Doral, where more than 80 Venezuelan parents attended a Parent Teachers Association meeting Thursday for new families.

''They're here, but mentally they're not here,'' principal Lucille Verson said. ``They have no idea what's going to happen. My priority is to provide a stable environment for the children.''

Many private schools are ensuring that enrolling students have legal immigration status, and others are enrolling students on tourist visas because they feel an obligation to help families from countries in crisis, several administrators said.

10 PLACES SET

The Country Day School in Miami Shores created 10 places for Venezuelans but had admitted only one as of late last week.

''We do not want to jeopardize the school's position,'' one administrator said. ``Unless they can get the appropriate visa, we cannot enroll them in school.''

Venezuelans are required to obtain tourist visas before traveling to the United States, a task made harder when the U.S. Embassy in Caracas closed Jan. 20. Some families are traveling to Mexico and other countries to apply for work or student visas, while others are entering on tourist visas and hoping for the best.

An INS official who asked not to be named said the U.S. government could decrease the number of tourist visas given to Venezuelans as a result of the recent influx.

For the Doral mother, the hardest part is hearing her 8-year-old daughter explain why the family cannot return to Caracas: ``Not until the shooting stops.''

The mother's eyes filled with tears.

Behind her, a parade of cars bearing Venezuelan flags passed by, picking up children from the school.

``It makes me cry, it's so terrible to hear.''

frontpagemag.com By Robert Locke FrontPageMagazine.com | January 27, 2003

A Dialogue Concerning War With Iraq

Following is the transcript – minimally adapted for intelligibility – of an e-mail dialogue I recently had with an editor at a conservative publication that opposes the contemplated war with Iraq. I am publishing it because I think it makes clear the logic of this dispute among conservatives and because it shows that the anti-war position, though not totally devoid of rational arguments, is still mistaken.

Anti-War Editor: If we do not aggressively threaten Saddam, there is no reason for him to attack us. His past record shows he is deterrable.

Robert Locke:

1. Saddam's past record provides only probabilistic evidence of his likely future behavior. It does not provide a guarantee. No-one on our side is saying there is proof he will attack America or our allies, only that there is an unacceptable risk that he will.

2. If we delay, he can build up his forces in secret until it is too late. His neighbors will conclude they can't rely on us and had better surrender while there is still a good price available for doing so.

3. May I remind you that if we don't disarm SH and he gets the war he says he really wants, Israel may just nuke him? If we don't keep things in order in the region, someone else may, and it may be a very ugly picture.

4. His repeatedly stated designs to destroy Israel, which follow no realpolitik logic, prove he is not vicious-but-logical as you say.

Anti-War Editor: But the past is the best indicator we have to go on, and from it we can infer a very high probability that he is deterrable. What makes you think SH has changed his character? Your side has produced no evidence that the risk has become "unacceptable." That is certainly not the opinion of the CIA. For them, the risk only becomes unacceptable if we first attack SH.

Robert Locke: I do not assign high credibility to the CIA after its string of failures. The objective risk remains as long as the objective WMD capability remains and the regime remains a tyranny.

Anti-War Editor: If you do not trust the CIA, what reliable source are you getting your information from (Ahmad Chalabi?) or is it all just speculation? For this concrete situation, you have provided zero evidence. It is all just a priori deductive reasoning from disputable premises.

Robert Locke: The question at hand does not turn on specific details. My premises may be disputable, but all this means is, as I said, that we confront a probabilistic threat and not a certain one. "Deductive" is not a valid pejorative without a demonstration of a flaw in the logic. My reasoning is based on 2,500 years of history concerning the behavior of tyrants, and is therefore not a priori.

Anti-War Editor: Think also of the unintended consequences throughout the Arab & Muslim worlds, both in terms of numbers of new al-Qaeda recruits and friendly secular governments that could fall.

Robert Locke: On the contrary: these people respect force, and an ideology of holy war like Nazism or jihad is only attractive as long as people think they are on the winning side.

Anti-War Editor: Our deterrent threat remains credible. If Saddam had attacked us / supported an attack on us / clearly planned to attack us, there would be unanimity of opinion on the question of whether to strike him. And we would. He knows this.

Robert Locke: Deterrence only works if the threat is credible. If SH sees our current attempt to discipline him subverted by the American far Left and far Right, we can no longer credibly threaten him.

Anti-War Editor: As it is, what are we disciplining him for? He had no role in 9/11, has never given weapons to terrorists, and shows no signs of doing so or of using them himself on us unless we first provoke him to the extreme.

Robert Locke: We are disciplining him for being a tyrant with WMD, and to set an example that will prevent others from trying.

Anti-War Editor: Why is he even a concern when there are so many obviously greater threats in the world? Is it precisely because he is weaker than they are?

Robert Locke: I am well aware that the rogue-state WMD disaster we all fear may not come from Iraq and it may not come in 5 years or 10. It may come in 30 years and the perpetrator may be an Islamist Tanzania or a Marxist Venezuela. But if rogue states are not systematically disarmed, it will come one day and

5,000,000 - 50,000,000 people will die. The sooner a rigorous program of forcible disarmament is established, the sooner they all get the message and give it up.

Anti-War Editor: Starting from your premise, we would be forcing them together by our belligerence toward Saddam Hussein. We would have made ourselves that common enemy. Rather than create a self-fulfilling prophesy, is it not better to stop threatening Iraq, which otherwise would have no reason to attack us or join up with al-Qaeda?

Robert Locke: Made ourselves their common enemy? We already are.

Anti-War Editor: By your thinking, Saddam should have given al-Qaeda weapons of mass destruction during the 1990’s. There are good reasons why Saddam wouldn't give al-Qaeda his worst weapons even if they did ally for pragmatic reasons.

Robert Locke: The argument that SH would never arm al-Q. & Co. because they hate each other is historical puppysh*t. All it takes to get people who hate each other to cooperate is a common enemy. Observe the US-USSR alliance in WWII and many others.

Anti-War Editor: You assume that Saddam is a would-be aggressor seeking to dominate the region, but the historical evidence does not bear this out, and you have not explained why you think he has changed. Even the Kuwaiti & Iranian invasions were not mindless aggression but were the fruit of realpolitik considerations.

Robert Locke: The fact that he may try to take over the Middle East in a rigorously logical way does not make this OK. You are making him out to be Bismarck, which is ridiculous.

Anti-War Editor: He has never started an open war with Israel, which he knows he would lose. That is evidence of rational calculation. He launched Scuds during the Gulf War in the hope of encouraging a response and breaking the coalition against him. This also shows realistic thinking.

I do not doubt the neocons perceive an Iraqi threat to Israel, and SH has expressed a desire to destroy her, but Israeli & American deterrence has contained that threat. That is realism. In the rational / irrational equation, having the desire to destroy Israel is not as significant as his failure to act on it.

Robert Locke: Then why do certain elements constantly say and imply that Jewish neocons are trying to drag us into a war for the benefit of Israel, if this war is of no benefit to her because aimed at an enemy she has well in hand?

Anti-War Editor: This is just a canard. When people say neocons, they mean neocons, not Jews. Of course Israel would benefit from an American victory over Iraq. I do not dispute Israel's nervousness about Iraq and that she would feel more comfortable without this enemy there (deterrence is naturally tense and never foolproof), especially if we did the fighting. Life was easier for us after the Soviet Union went down, even though we had deterred each other.

Now look – North Korea has already beaten us at the game you want to play: forcible disarming of rogue states. How do you propose to disarm her? Whatever we do with Iraq, North Korea will always provide a counter-example to small rogue states. Our double standard between Iraq, which is weak, and North Korea, which is strong, is obvious. Others will do as she did, not disarm themselves out of fear, but on the contrary: ramp up production and perhaps even ally with others so as to provide a deterrent to an American attack.

Robert Locke: Let's debate North Korean policy some other time. We’ve essentially handed it over to South Korea because South Korea is a reputable democratic country now and if they have a certain way they want to do it, we may think it unwise but it’s their problem. Their "sunshine policy" of appeasement is stupid but if Koreans want to toy with the fate of their nation and possibly get nuked by appeasing a mad Marxist dictator, it’s their nation to toy with. They’re either going to be very lucky or learn a very hard lesson.

Anti-War Editor: By your criterion, we also need to disarm China, another tyranny with WMD, and Pakistan.

Robert Locke: As I explained in my article Conservative Doubts About Star Wars – which came out before 9/11 by the way – China is susceptible to classic Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence in a way Iraq is not. If Pakistan ever turns against the US, I would favor her forcible disarmament should circumstances permit. I believe plans are already in place.

Anti-War Editor: Rogue states do respect force, but not in the way you suggest. At best, rogue states will take away from our differing treatment of Iraq and North Korea the message that America only disarms very weak states while letting stronger ones get away with it. What do you think they will do in consequence? We can't disarm everyone at once.

Robert Locke: This undercuts your own deterrence argument. If we leave them alone, they arm because we do nothing. If we pressure them, they arm to escape our pressure. Therefore deterrence won't work, because it is always either too strong or too weak. From this it follows the only policy we can use is forcible disarmament.

Anti-War Editor: Even if one accepts that rogue states will arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction just as quickly absent pressure from America, my deterrence argument is not undercut. Strictly speaking, deterrence applies to use, not possession.

Robert Locke: What on earth do they want to "possess" them for, other than to use them? If they possess them, it’s a threat, which as I said creates a risk, which we cannot accept. It’s still all about risk.

Anti-War Editor: If we corner Saddam Hussein by invading Iraq, he would have nothing to lose by going out with a bang and unleashing biological or other weapons on us: either against our forces in Iraq or against the US domestically.

Robert Locke: If your thesis is true, then the United States, and indeed all great powers, have no choice but to tolerate any threatening nation prepared to mouth the magic words:

"If you bring us down, we will unleash biological weapons."

This would prevent us from taking any measures to forestall adversaries before they become powerful enough to impose their will on us. It is a license for permanent international chaos that will only get worse as more thugs figure out how to play the game. It means we’ve already lost and might as well just give them whatever they want. This is precisely why we must pre-empt these capabilities.

End of e-mail exchange.

The fundamental problem with the conservative case against the war is that deterrence, while not a completely empty concept, is not enough when dealing with an iterative threat. It would be one thing to reduce the threat of an attack by Iraq to trivially-low levels by means of deterrence, but Iraq isn’t the only case affected by what we do to Iraq. If we let Iraq pass, this means failing to establish the ironclad precedent that the United States will not allow rogue states to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This means that they will do so, over and over again into the future. And if the dice are rolled an indefinite number of times, sooner or later they will come up snake-eyes and 5,000,000 people will die in an afternoon.

Robert Locke is an associate editor of www.frontpagemag.com. He can be contacted at robertlocke@cspc.org.

By Robert Locke FrontPageMagazine.com | January 27, 2003

A Dialogue Concerning War With Iraq

Following is the transcript – minimally adapted for intelligibility – of an e-mail dialogue I recently had with an editor at a conservative publication that opposes the contemplated war with Iraq. I am publishing it because I think it makes clear the logic of this dispute among conservatives and because it shows that the anti-war position, though not totally devoid of rational arguments, is still mistaken.

Anti-War Editor: If we do not aggressively threaten Saddam, there is no reason for him to attack us. His past record shows he is deterrable.

Robert Locke:

1. Saddam's past record provides only probabilistic evidence of his likely future behavior. It does not provide a guarantee. No-one on our side is saying there is proof he will attack America or our allies, only that there is an unacceptable risk that he will.

2. If we delay, he can build up his forces in secret until it is too late. His neighbors will conclude they can't rely on us and had better surrender while there is still a good price available for doing so.

3. May I remind you that if we don't disarm SH and he gets the war he says he really wants, Israel may just nuke him? If we don't keep things in order in the region, someone else may, and it may be a very ugly picture.

4. His repeatedly stated designs to destroy Israel, which follow no realpolitik logic, prove he is not vicious-but-logical as you say.

Anti-War Editor: But the past is the best indicator we have to go on, and from it we can infer a very high probability that he is deterrable. What makes you think SH has changed his character? Your side has produced no evidence that the risk has become "unacceptable." That is certainly not the opinion of the CIA. For them, the risk only becomes unacceptable if we first attack SH.

Robert Locke: I do not assign high credibility to the CIA after its string of failures. The objective risk remains as long as the objective WMD capability remains and the regime remains a tyranny.

Anti-War Editor: If you do not trust the CIA, what reliable source are you getting your information from (Ahmad Chalabi?) or is it all just speculation? For this concrete situation, you have provided zero evidence. It is all just a priori deductive reasoning from disputable premises.

Robert Locke: The question at hand does not turn on specific details. My premises may be disputable, but all this means is, as I said, that we confront a probabilistic threat and not a certain one. "Deductive" is not a valid pejorative without a demonstration of a flaw in the logic. My reasoning is based on 2,500 years of history concerning the behavior of tyrants, and is therefore not a priori.

Anti-War Editor: Think also of the unintended consequences throughout the Arab & Muslim worlds, both in terms of numbers of new al-Qaeda recruits and friendly secular governments that could fall.

Robert Locke: On the contrary: these people respect force, and an ideology of holy war like Nazism or jihad is only attractive as long as people think they are on the winning side.

Anti-War Editor: Our deterrent threat remains credible. If Saddam had attacked us / supported an attack on us / clearly planned to attack us, there would be unanimity of opinion on the question of whether to strike him. And we would. He knows this.

Robert Locke: Deterrence only works if the threat is credible. If SH sees our current attempt to discipline him subverted by the American far Left and far Right, we can no longer credibly threaten him.

Anti-War Editor: As it is, what are we disciplining him for? He had no role in 9/11, has never given weapons to terrorists, and shows no signs of doing so or of using them himself on us unless we first provoke him to the extreme.

Robert Locke: We are disciplining him for being a tyrant with WMD, and to set an example that will prevent others from trying.

Anti-War Editor: Why is he even a concern when there are so many obviously greater threats in the world? Is it precisely because he is weaker than they are?

Robert Locke: I am well aware that the rogue-state WMD disaster we all fear may not come from Iraq and it may not come in 5 years or 10. It may come in 30 years and the perpetrator may be an Islamist Tanzania or a Marxist Venezuela. But if rogue states are not systematically disarmed, it will come one day and

5,000,000 - 50,000,000 people will die. The sooner a rigorous program of forcible disarmament is established, the sooner they all get the message and give it up.

Anti-War Editor: Starting from your premise, we would be forcing them together by our belligerence toward Saddam Hussein. We would have made ourselves that common enemy. Rather than create a self-fulfilling prophesy, is it not better to stop threatening Iraq, which otherwise would have no reason to attack us or join up with al-Qaeda?

Robert Locke: Made ourselves their common enemy? We already are.

Anti-War Editor: By your thinking, Saddam should have given al-Qaeda weapons of mass destruction during the 1990’s. There are good reasons why Saddam wouldn't give al-Qaeda his worst weapons even if they did ally for pragmatic reasons.

Robert Locke: The argument that SH would never arm al-Q. & Co. because they hate each other is historical puppysh*t. All it takes to get people who hate each other to cooperate is a common enemy. Observe the US-USSR alliance in WWII and many others.

Anti-War Editor: You assume that Saddam is a would-be aggressor seeking to dominate the region, but the historical evidence does not bear this out, and you have not explained why you think he has changed. Even the Kuwaiti & Iranian invasions were not mindless aggression but were the fruit of realpolitik considerations.

Robert Locke: The fact that he may try to take over the Middle East in a rigorously logical way does not make this OK. You are making him out to be Bismarck, which is ridiculous.

Anti-War Editor: He has never started an open war with Israel, which he knows he would lose. That is evidence of rational calculation. He launched Scuds during the Gulf War in the hope of encouraging a response and breaking the coalition against him. This also shows realistic thinking.

I do not doubt the neocons perceive an Iraqi threat to Israel, and SH has expressed a desire to destroy her, but Israeli & American deterrence has contained that threat. That is realism. In the rational / irrational equation, having the desire to destroy Israel is not as significant as his failure to act on it.

Robert Locke: Then why do certain elements constantly say and imply that Jewish neocons are trying to drag us into a war for the benefit of Israel, if this war is of no benefit to her because aimed at an enemy she has well in hand?

Anti-War Editor: This is just a canard. When people say neocons, they mean neocons, not Jews. Of course Israel would benefit from an American victory over Iraq. I do not dispute Israel's nervousness about Iraq and that she would feel more comfortable without this enemy there (deterrence is naturally tense and never foolproof), especially if we did the fighting. Life was easier for us after the Soviet Union went down, even though we had deterred each other.

Now look – North Korea has already beaten us at the game you want to play: forcible disarming of rogue states. How do you propose to disarm her? Whatever we do with Iraq, North Korea will always provide a counter-example to small rogue states. Our double standard between Iraq, which is weak, and North Korea, which is strong, is obvious. Others will do as she did, not disarm themselves out of fear, but on the contrary: ramp up production and perhaps even ally with others so as to provide a deterrent to an American attack.

Robert Locke: Let's debate North Korean policy some other time. We’ve essentially handed it over to South Korea because South Korea is a reputable democratic country now and if they have a certain way they want to do it, we may think it unwise but it’s their problem. Their "sunshine policy" of appeasement is stupid but if Koreans want to toy with the fate of their nation and possibly get nuked by appeasing a mad Marxist dictator, it’s their nation to toy with. They’re either going to be very lucky or learn a very hard lesson.

Anti-War Editor: By your criterion, we also need to disarm China, another tyranny with WMD, and Pakistan.

Robert Locke: As I explained in my article Conservative Doubts About Star Wars – which came out before 9/11 by the way – China is susceptible to classic Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence in a way Iraq is not. If Pakistan ever turns against the US, I would favor her forcible disarmament should circumstances permit. I believe plans are already in place.

Anti-War Editor: Rogue states do respect force, but not in the way you suggest. At best, rogue states will take away from our differing treatment of Iraq and North Korea the message that America only disarms very weak states while letting stronger ones get away with it. What do you think they will do in consequence? We can't disarm everyone at once.

Robert Locke: This undercuts your own deterrence argument. If we leave them alone, they arm because we do nothing. If we pressure them, they arm to escape our pressure. Therefore deterrence won't work, because it is always either too strong or too weak. From this it follows the only policy we can use is forcible disarmament.

Anti-War Editor: Even if one accepts that rogue states will arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction just as quickly absent pressure from America, my deterrence argument is not undercut. Strictly speaking, deterrence applies to use, not possession.

Robert Locke: What on earth do they want to "possess" them for, other than to use them? If they possess them, it’s a threat, which as I said creates a risk, which we cannot accept. It’s still all about risk.

Anti-War Editor: If we corner Saddam Hussein by invading Iraq, he would have nothing to lose by going out with a bang and unleashing biological or other weapons on us: either against our forces in Iraq or against the US domestically.

Robert Locke: If your thesis is true, then the United States, and indeed all great powers, have no choice but to tolerate any threatening nation prepared to mouth the magic words:

"If you bring us down, we will unleash biological weapons."

This would prevent us from taking any measures to forestall adversaries before they become powerful enough to impose their will on us. It is a license for permanent international chaos that will only get worse as more thugs figure out how to play the game. It means we’ve already lost and might as well just give them whatever they want. This is precisely why we must pre-empt these capabilities.

End of e-mail exchange.

The fundamental problem with the conservative case against the war is that deterrence, while not a completely empty concept, is not enough when dealing with an iterative threat. It would be one thing to reduce the threat of an attack by Iraq to trivially-low levels by means of deterrence, but Iraq isn’t the only case affected by what we do to Iraq. If we let Iraq pass, this means failing to establish the ironclad precedent that the United States will not allow rogue states to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This means that they will do so, over and over again into the future. And if the dice are rolled an indefinite number of times, sooner or later they will come up snake-eyes and 5,000,000 people will die in an afternoon.

Robert Locke is an associate editor of www.frontpagemag.com. He can be contacted at robertlocke@cspc.org.