2002 and the new parliament would not permit
ground forces through its territory and was
alarmed that a war with Iraq would lead to
Kurdish independence. For significant military
support the US could only count on Blair who
faced a deep split in the Labour Party if he failed
to secure a second resolution. In Britain the
majority of the public was opposed to war
without UN approval. Diplomatic support, how-
ever, came from NATO’s new central European
partners and, alone among the major powers,
Spain. In Spain too public opinion was over-
whelmingly against war but Prime Minister José
Maria Aznar defied the mood at home. He did
not intend to stand for re-election in 2004. On
10 March 2003 the prospects of UN support
on the Security Council for a second resolution
evaporated when President Chirac took the lead
declaring that he would veto a second resolution
authorising hostilities ‘no matter what the cir-
cumstances’. Powell’s attempt to win over the
Security Council had failed, the evidence he
placed before the Council of proof that Saddam
was hiding weapons of mass destruction was not
convincing. Bush had gone along the UN route
to the end. Perhaps if the weapons inspectors had
been allowed more time as France, Germany and
Russia argued, and found illicit weapons, the
Security Council would have authorised the
forcible disarmament of Saddam, but as there
were none Saddam would have remained in
power provided he had also fully disclosed his
plans. Bush and Blair in any case were not willing
to wait – there were too many ‘ifs’; the troops
could not be kept for weeks on end in the desert.
Blair secured a legal opinion at home that war was
justified on the basis of past UN resolutions; with
the help of the Conservatives he gained in parlia-
ment a decisive majority despite the opposition of
a substantial section of his own Labour Party and
of the Liberal Democrats. The case he made in
a dossier, parts of which were subsequently
found to be dubious, supported by intelligence
reports including a claim that missiles and weap-
ons of mass destruction could be readied in ‘45
minutes’, secured a majority in parliament with
Conservative support as Labour was split and
Liberal Democrats voted against. The ‘45-minute
claim’ was not well supported; the real trouble
was that it connected in the public mind with a
threat to the British Isles, not to the region or the
British bases in Cyprus. Actually Saddam had no
missiles that could reach Cyprus let alone Britain
and few left to counter an invasion. The dossier
thus came to be misinterpreted. The intelligence
report that Saddam could ready chemical and bio-
logical weapons in Iraq was not questioned by
Blair. Convinced that Saddam Hussein was an
immediate danger, he put the case more force-
fully to parliament and the country than a dis-
passionate assessment of the evidence would have
justified. When, after the war was over, Britain’s
scientific advisor on weapons of mass destruction
briefed the media secretly of his doubts, and then,
after he was exposed to investigation, committed
suicide, the subsequent Hutton enquiry exoner-
ated Blair of blame but revealed the degree of
‘spin’ that heightened initially more sober assess-
ments. In the US, Bush had already obtained
congressional backing after his victory in the
mid-term November elections. But suspicions
were not allayed in the West about America’s
reasons for being willing to go to war.
Was the fear of weapons of mass destruction
falling into wrong hands the true reason for
attacking Iraq or did the US aim to gain control
of the oil? Looked at short term oil was not the
issue. Iraq’s oil supplies were not crucial to the
West, war might well lead to Saddam setting fire
to the wells and anyway it would take many mil-
lions to repair them and the infrastructure before
substantial supplies of oil could be restored. Long-
term oil was a crucial issue, not the oil of Iraq
alone but the oil of the Middle East on which
Western economies depended. If Saddam domin-
ated the Middle East he could hold Western econ-
omies hostage. Iraq under Saddam threatened to
destabilise the whole Middle East. He could
increase tensions between Palestinians and Israel
to the point of doomsday conflagration. That was
the nightmare scenario. More immediate, was a
genuine fear that Saddam could not be left to
develop his weapons. In Blair’s words, ‘we knew
the threat, saw it coming and did nothing’.
Bush’s motives were multi-faceted. He con-
curred with Blair but was also determined to bring932 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY