Week 4: The War on Terror

The 'War on Terror' label was originally applied to US and British operations in Afghanistan (from 2001) and Iraq (from 2003). The counter-terrorist justification for the invasion of Iraq was always weak; all it really amounted to was an additional reason why Saddam Hussein should not be permitted to develop weapons of mass destruction, i.e. in case they became even more dangerous by falling into the hands of terrorists. When the US/British invasion had established that Saddam Hussein's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons had indeed been destroyed (confirming the UN inspection team's reports), it was argued instead that the invasion gave Britain the opportunity to defeat jihadists in Iraq instead of waiting for them to come to Britain. Whether the people of Iraq would think this was a good trade-off is another question. The invasion certainly hasn't brought a just and enduring peace to Iraq. According to UN figures from 2014, "7,818 civilians and 1,050 security forces died in violent attacks across Iraq in 2013 - making last year the bloodiest in Iraq since 2008".

The rationale for invading Afghanistan was a lot more straightforward: the Taliban were in power and they were harbouring Osama bin Laden, so the only way to get bin Laden was to overthrow the Taliban and set up a new, more legitimate government instead. There was no possibility of negotiating with the Taliban - say, for example, getting them to hand bin Laden over - because this would mean, well, negotiating with the Taliban. It's certainly true that leaving the Taliban in power would have had very bad results, and that the degree of democracy and political freedom the Afghan people currently enjoy is a big improvement on the situation in 2001. Whether the democratic and egalitarian reforms brought about by the occupying forces are permanent - whether the Taliban's exclusion from power is permanent, even - is another question. A decade-long war which has killed 3,000 US and allied troops and somewhere around 20,000 Afghan civilians may turn out not to have been the best way to flush out bin Laden or to encourage reform in the Afghan government.

It may also turn out to have been illegal. In international law, it is almost impossible to justify an aggressive war, particularly one which - like the invasion of Iraq - was explicitly embarked on to achieve political goals (the disarmament and/or removal from power of Saddam Hussein). There are provisions in international law for a legal invasion: the "Caroline" argument justifying anticipatory self-defence dates back to 1837. More recently, it has been argued that the UN Security Council should approve of invasions carried out to prevent large-scale loss of life, under the "responsibility to protect" doctrine (formulated in 2005) - although the decision in R2P cases rests with the UN Security Council.

It is not impossible to make arguments like these cover Afghanistan or Iraq, but it is very difficult. There were UN resolutions calling on Iraq to disarm; however, most people did not see those resolutions as justifying war, let alone a war carried out by a self-selected alliance of nations without the approval of the UN Security Council. The legality of the two wars - in terms of whether it was legal to declare war (ius ad bellum) - is highly suspect. And, as we know, the legality of the wars in terms of how they have been conducted (ius in bello) is also very questionable; at best, the wars have been scarred by numerous war crimes, from Abu Ghraib to the most recent drone strikes. At worst, the aggressor nations have been guilty of state crimes.

Although the development of the R2P doctrine might seem to make future interventions easier to initiate, in practice the international community is not likely to support anything on the scale of the Iraq war. The corruption and disorder of post-Taliban Afghanistan is bad enough; the chaos of Iraq, and the rise of Islamic State, attests that destroying a state - even a repressive state - is not the best way to build peace and tolerance. Meanwhile the experience of Libya - where a UN peacekeeping mission metamorphosed into a regime change operation, with disastrous consequences for the people of Libya - has amply demonstrated the dangers of armed interventions, even carried out with the best of intentions. The West's lack of appetite for any intervention in Syria - articulated most powerfully and effectively by Ed Miliband - attests to this new mood. The new battleground of the War on Terror is the mountainous Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where lurking jihadis are surgically picked off, one by one, by remotely-operated drones. Whether this is a lawful way to fight any kind of war is another question - although not one that is widely being asked.