1 00:00:01,560 --> 00:00:08,790 Mix of sort of speakers tonight to address the topic of Iraqi sanctions or sanctions on Iraq. 2 00:00:09,690 --> 00:00:18,120 As you'll know from the up the flyer. Our guest is Joy Gordon, who's written I'm going to hold up the book so you can see it, 3 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:22,800 the book called Invisible War the United States in the Iraq Sanctions, 4 00:00:23,790 --> 00:00:27,240 which is a Harvard University press volume that's come out, 5 00:00:28,410 --> 00:00:38,610 which takes an interesting look at the impact of the sanctions and also engages with legal and moral questions around sanctions themselves. 6 00:00:39,690 --> 00:00:45,870 Joy comes at this from sort of a mixture of disciplines in that she's a professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, 7 00:00:47,160 --> 00:00:55,680 but she also has a J.D. from Boston University's School of Law and is a member of the bar of the state of Connecticut. 8 00:00:56,790 --> 00:01:05,610 But she's primarily trained as a philosopher. She teaches courses in political philosophy, human rights, international law, philosophy of law. 9 00:01:06,390 --> 00:01:11,010 And you may have seen her articles in The Nation and in Harper's, 10 00:01:11,010 --> 00:01:18,540 as well as academic publications like Ethics and International Affairs, Middle East Report, Arab Studies Quarterly. 11 00:01:19,230 --> 00:01:24,150 So she's published widely on different questions related to human rights and sanctions. 12 00:01:24,780 --> 00:01:28,170 She also, in relation to what she's speaking about today, 13 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:37,200 testified before the House Committee on Energy and Common Commerce regarding the oil for food program in Iraq. 14 00:01:37,200 --> 00:01:41,010 So you may even want to discuss some elements of that. 15 00:01:41,700 --> 00:01:49,080 And we've asked just to sort of kick off the discussion with the larger group, Professor David Miller, who's known to many of you. 16 00:01:50,340 --> 00:01:58,320 He's one of ours in Oxford who teaches political theory, who's got wide interest in political theory. 17 00:01:58,700 --> 00:02:08,730 I know David's work in terms of his writings on nationalism and global justice recently, his book on national responsibility and Global Justice. 18 00:02:09,300 --> 00:02:15,360 But I thought of him today because he he wrote a very interesting for today, because he wrote a very interesting article, I guess, 19 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:20,669 about about eight or nine years ago in the Journal of Political Philosophy on distributing 20 00:02:20,670 --> 00:02:25,410 responsibilities and the idea of how we allocate international responsibilities. 21 00:02:25,650 --> 00:02:32,400 And it started off with a discussion of sanctions in Iraq and Iraqi civilians. 22 00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:35,520 And it made me think that it would be a really useful person. 23 00:02:35,580 --> 00:02:41,940 Therefore, to start off the discussion, particularly since we are talking about legal and moral issues around sanctions. 24 00:02:42,570 --> 00:02:49,860 So I'm going to hand it over to Joi first. She said she's going to probably talk for about 3 minutes and then I'll give the floor to David and 25 00:02:49,860 --> 00:02:56,160 then I will pass it over to you for any questions that you have that you want to ask of the speakers. 26 00:02:57,540 --> 00:03:00,660 Welcome. Well, thank you very much for having me. 27 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:12,270 It's a pleasure to be here. I came here sort of via an issue whose work on the UN economic rights was very influential on me. 28 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:21,940 And this is a I started working on Iraq because I had started more broadly working on the ethics of economic sanctions. 29 00:03:22,620 --> 00:03:28,410 And when I was doing a book on that with what was supposed to be a one chapter, a little case study on Iraq, 30 00:03:28,860 --> 00:03:34,260 and then that sort of grew hydra like so with each new line, it developed more lines. 31 00:03:34,710 --> 00:03:39,990 And then as I was working on that, because it was a massively complicated bureaucracy, 32 00:03:40,170 --> 00:03:43,950 much different than any other sort of sanctions, instance of which the documentation. 33 00:03:44,910 --> 00:03:51,360 And so that I was reading whatever documents or websites I could and then I had questions. 34 00:03:51,810 --> 00:03:54,000 I was not clear about what was going on in the website. 35 00:03:54,510 --> 00:04:00,270 And so I just started calling U.N. officials and calling diplomats and saying, can I come interview you about this moment? 36 00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:07,140 Mostly from my own background. But then what they say is, here's what you need to know. 37 00:04:08,460 --> 00:04:14,040 You need to know about the holes. And it's not clear from the websites what that is. 38 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:21,989 And they said the U.S. is strangling Iraq in a way that goes well beyond what anyone else on the council is doing or 39 00:04:21,990 --> 00:04:28,600 wants to do in ways that goes well beyond what the resolutions indicate and well beyond what the charter permits. 40 00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:32,760 And then I would say, well, so who where would I find a document of this? 41 00:04:32,820 --> 00:04:37,890 And they would say, Well, everyone knows. And I'm thinking, that's not really a good footnote. 42 00:04:37,950 --> 00:04:42,179 Everyone knows. And so I'm thinking, well, this, this won't go that well. 43 00:04:42,180 --> 00:04:45,389 And then I just keep talking to people and talking to people. 44 00:04:45,390 --> 00:04:49,590 And then finally I start finding the U.N. guy who produces a certain kind of document. 45 00:04:50,280 --> 00:04:54,410 And I say, and the cult status lists, I said, Could I have a copy? 46 00:04:54,470 --> 00:04:57,870 They said, Well, no, I can't give that to you because I'd be fired. 47 00:04:58,320 --> 00:05:00,590 I say, okay, well, so who did you. Prepare it for. 48 00:05:00,590 --> 00:05:07,360 And he'd say, this committee is this committee of the Security Council that meets behind closed doors. 49 00:05:08,620 --> 00:05:14,080 It's for the first several years, it did not even distribute its agenda to its own members. 50 00:05:14,530 --> 00:05:19,480 It never distributed its minutes to all of its own members and only distributed to the P5. 51 00:05:21,940 --> 00:05:30,100 Its. And so that as I'm talking to people, I realise there's this completely secretive kind of entity. 52 00:05:30,790 --> 00:05:36,250 And so then I start going to each of the people who's on this committee and I say, Is this what's going on? 53 00:05:36,490 --> 00:05:39,670 And Do you have status lists and sector reports? 54 00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:44,100 And they say, Oh, oh, that stuff that I get that I dump in that box over there. 55 00:05:44,110 --> 00:05:54,070 Oh, sure. Go dig through that and help yourself. And then it turns out there's these there's very profound tension and antagonism. 56 00:05:54,550 --> 00:06:03,070 These meetings often degenerated into screaming matches. They were it was not always among the P5. 57 00:06:03,310 --> 00:06:07,330 The ones who were the most aggressive and the strongest about raising the moral 58 00:06:07,330 --> 00:06:11,680 issues were typically the elected members and of those the developing countries. 59 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:19,180 And they had a great deal at stake. The U.S. had been very vindictive toward Yemen when it had not gone along with one of the early votes, 60 00:06:20,620 --> 00:06:28,420 pulled a massive aid program, and Saudi Arabia expelled all Yemenis guest workers with a big hit to the economy. 61 00:06:28,870 --> 00:06:36,880 So in the face of that kind of vindictiveness, in this context for all of these countries, Ecuador, Namibia, on and on and on, 62 00:06:37,270 --> 00:06:46,150 to be challenging the U.S. very strongly and to read these minutes, it's just stunning to see how strongly they're raising these as moral issues. 63 00:06:46,270 --> 00:06:50,410 They have nothing to gain. The Arab countries presumably have something to gain. 64 00:06:51,100 --> 00:06:59,440 Russia and China and France, too. But everyone everyone is raising this very, very vocally as a serious moral issue. 65 00:06:59,650 --> 00:07:04,630 Why are you doing? There is no rational reason for the things that you people are doing. 66 00:07:05,500 --> 00:07:12,459 There would be there was one incident that you get from these minutes where the U.S. was had just locked up over time, 67 00:07:12,460 --> 00:07:18,100 a series of everything related to glue, glue for wood, glue for paper, glue for bookbinding, 68 00:07:18,100 --> 00:07:24,909 glue for shoe leather, every kind of glue, because it was basically blocking everything related to industry, 69 00:07:24,910 --> 00:07:29,200 everything that could be contribute, that could generate a productive process at all. 70 00:07:29,890 --> 00:07:33,670 And one country says, what is your concern with the glue? 71 00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:38,110 Are you afraid the Iraqis will glued together weapons of mass destruction? 72 00:07:39,010 --> 00:07:44,499 And the U.S. delegate, you know, the old adage of I don't know if this is sort of literally true. 73 00:07:44,500 --> 00:07:49,090 I suppose it is that old horses, when they die, they go to the glue factory. 74 00:07:49,780 --> 00:07:54,130 So the U.S. delegate says we're blocking the glue because we care about the horses. 75 00:07:55,750 --> 00:08:03,700 So it's hard to know what to make of that kind of flippant, contemptuous remark. 76 00:08:04,090 --> 00:08:10,810 Presumably it's not something that he would have said in a public setting or if he thought the minutes would become public. 77 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:23,140 So you end up with, among other things, minutes that the document this this tension and this conflict very, very, very precisely. 78 00:08:23,530 --> 00:08:30,490 But where I think no one was ever expecting that anyone would see the minutes they didn't read them when they have them, 79 00:08:30,500 --> 00:08:36,490 they didn't they barely knew they existed. So you end up with documentation of people being very candid. 80 00:08:38,420 --> 00:08:49,090 So so it ended up really being, I think, indicating a kind of a smoking gun, a smoking gun of a very complicated, 81 00:08:49,090 --> 00:08:58,420 bureaucratised sort, but a situation where there there is a kind of deliberate, systematic, gratuitous damage that's done over time. 82 00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:01,540 Reform attempts are rebuffed time and time again. 83 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:07,900 Information that documents the human damage is discredited for political reasons over and over again. 84 00:09:08,620 --> 00:09:12,970 And and so that's that's how I come to this story. 85 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:22,390 So what I'd like to talk about today is the role of the United States and the damage that was done by the UN sanctions on Iraq from 1990 to 2003, 86 00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:29,950 while the UK was, in many regards, in lockstep with the U.S. in some respects, the U.S. had no support from anyone, not even Britain. 87 00:09:30,670 --> 00:09:38,200 I believe it's critical to understand the process within the U.N. Security Council in which the damage was done and from which to this day, 88 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:39,550 Iraq has not recovered. 89 00:09:40,270 --> 00:09:47,230 Starting in August 1990, the United States was instrumental in imposing the cruellest sanctions in the history of international governance. 90 00:09:47,890 --> 00:09:52,480 While the U.N. Security Council was mandated to respond to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, 91 00:09:52,990 --> 00:09:59,590 the sanctions regime it imposed in conjunction with the massive bombing campaign of 1991 destroyed nearly. 92 00:09:59,620 --> 00:10:07,060 All of Iraq's infrastructure, industrial capacity, agriculture, telecommunications and critical public services, 93 00:10:07,390 --> 00:10:11,500 particularly electricity and water treatment for the next 12 years. 94 00:10:11,500 --> 00:10:18,760 The sanctions would prevent Iraq from restoring any of these to the level it had achieved in the 1980s and would devastate the health, 95 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:23,170 education and basic well-being of almost the entire Iraqi population. 96 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:27,700 The situation was worsened by the corruption in the Iraqi government, 97 00:10:28,090 --> 00:10:33,400 and the Iraqi government was not particularly effective in mitigating the harm done by the UN measures. 98 00:10:33,790 --> 00:10:38,079 But it was the extraordinary harshness of the sanctions coming on top of the 99 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:43,390 1991 bombing that was primarily responsible for the collapse of Iraq's economy. 100 00:10:44,110 --> 00:10:54,790 It was the consistent policy of all three U.S. administrations from 1990 to 2003 to inflict the most extreme economic damage possible on Iraq. 101 00:10:55,480 --> 00:11:00,760 This was true even though each administration insisted that it was committed to the well-being of the Iraqi people. 102 00:11:01,270 --> 00:11:07,810 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said, I care more about the children of Iraq than Saddam Hussein does. 103 00:11:08,380 --> 00:11:15,010 But the truth was that in implementing the policy on sanctions, the human damage was never a factor in U.S. policy. 104 00:11:15,610 --> 00:11:21,010 The overwhelming concern of the U.S. government through strategies that were overly broad and extreme, 105 00:11:21,400 --> 00:11:27,760 was to prevent Iraq from rebuilding its military. The first strategy was simply to bankrupt the nation as a whole. 106 00:11:28,330 --> 00:11:37,240 The second was disarmament, which included a prohibition on dual use goods interpreted in the broadest possible sense, invoking dual use. 107 00:11:37,720 --> 00:11:44,140 The United States unilaterally blocked child vaccines, water tankers during a period of drought cloth. 108 00:11:44,650 --> 00:11:49,300 The generator needed to run a sewage treatment plant. Radios for ambulances. 109 00:11:50,290 --> 00:11:55,270 Any goods that could even conceivably be used by the military for any possible purpose. 110 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:04,300 The problem, of course, is that there is precious little that is used by a civilian population that is not also used by the military. 111 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,870 Window glass. Brake fluid. Telephones. 112 00:12:07,870 --> 00:12:11,740 Light switches. The list is absolutely without end. 113 00:12:12,490 --> 00:12:15,310 Regardless of the US government's public posturing. 114 00:12:15,700 --> 00:12:22,810 The officials who formulated and implemented the policy literally gave no weight to the humanitarian costs of their actions. 115 00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:31,390 Quote, It was not part of our skillset. One State Department official said, prior to the Persian Gulf War of 1991, 116 00:12:31,780 --> 00:12:35,560 the Iraqi government had invested heavily in social and economic development. 117 00:12:36,100 --> 00:12:40,030 Iraq had made impressive strides in health, education and infrastructure. 118 00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:47,140 In 1980, the Iraqi government initiated a program to increase the survival rates of infants and young children. 119 00:12:47,620 --> 00:12:51,250 The result was a rapid and steady decline in childhood mortality. 120 00:12:51,790 --> 00:12:55,030 Prior to the Gulf War, there was good vaccination coverage. 121 00:12:55,390 --> 00:12:59,560 The majority of women were attended by trained health professionals during childbirth. 122 00:13:00,010 --> 00:13:06,130 The majority of the adult population was literate, and there was nearly universal access to primary school education. 123 00:13:06,640 --> 00:13:10,780 The vast majority of households had access to safe water and to electricity. 124 00:13:11,410 --> 00:13:16,360 Iraq won an award from UNESCO's for its campaign to eliminate illiteracy among women. 125 00:13:17,110 --> 00:13:18,220 In 1988, 126 00:13:18,700 --> 00:13:27,370 the Food and Agriculture Organisation found that undernourishment was no longer a public health problem and that 7% of Iraqi children were obese. 127 00:13:28,180 --> 00:13:34,660 Prior to the embargo, 93% of primary school age children attended school prior to the embargo. 128 00:13:34,930 --> 00:13:38,290 Over 90% of the population had access to health care. 129 00:13:38,590 --> 00:13:41,320 And it was a highly sophisticated health care system. 130 00:13:41,890 --> 00:13:47,620 The majority of Iraqi physicians were trained in Europe or the U.S. and one quarter were board certified. 131 00:13:48,460 --> 00:13:52,900 But the massive bombing campaign of the 1991 Gulf War changed all of that. 132 00:13:54,970 --> 00:13:58,060 It systematically targeted all of Iraq's infrastructure. 133 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:06,100 In 1991, an envoy of the UN secretary general described in some detail the collapse that resulted from the bombing, 134 00:14:06,580 --> 00:14:12,700 including water purification and sewage treatment. Agricultural production and food supplies and distribution. 135 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:17,110 The destruction of the telephone system. And all modern means of communication. 136 00:14:17,920 --> 00:14:20,770 He identified the particular urgency of energy needs. 137 00:14:21,220 --> 00:14:26,950 Without the production of electricity, he noted, food that is imported cannot be preserved and distributed. 138 00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:31,540 Water cannot be purified. Sewage cannot be pumped away and cleansed. 139 00:14:31,810 --> 00:14:36,220 Crops cannot be irrigated. Medicines cannot be conveyed where they are needed. 140 00:14:36,910 --> 00:14:40,960 Among other things, this resulted in cholera and typhoid epidemics. 141 00:14:41,350 --> 00:14:47,230 In 1990, the incidence of typhoid in Iraq was 11 per 100,000 people. 142 00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:51,820 By 1994 it was 142 per 100,000. 143 00:14:52,450 --> 00:14:57,310 In 1989, there were zero cases of cholera per 100,000 people. 144 00:14:57,760 --> 00:15:03,160 By 1994, the. Per 1344 per 100,000 people. 145 00:15:04,180 --> 00:15:07,900 With the sanctions in place. These epidemics then became permanent. 146 00:15:08,770 --> 00:15:13,690 The collapse of infrastructure meant the medical equipment could no longer function for lack of electricity. 147 00:15:14,230 --> 00:15:17,560 Food cannot be distributed because roads and bridges were destroyed. 148 00:15:17,980 --> 00:15:22,900 The water was not fit for human consumption because sewage treatment plants had been destroyed. 149 00:15:23,530 --> 00:15:28,180 All of this was reflected in the excess mortality rate of children under the age of five. 150 00:15:28,600 --> 00:15:31,990 That is the number of young children who died during sanctions. 151 00:15:32,260 --> 00:15:33,940 Who would not have died without them. 152 00:15:34,540 --> 00:15:41,050 Although the data available from Iraq have not always been reliable, and this figure has been the subject of much debate, 153 00:15:41,350 --> 00:15:51,340 the majority of the studies over the course of the sanctions regime suggest that for the period from 1990 to 2003, that figure is at least 500,000. 154 00:15:51,850 --> 00:15:59,320 So it's 500,000 children under five, and then some uncounted or unmeasurable number of persons over the age of five, 155 00:15:59,500 --> 00:16:06,910 including the sick and the elderly. As the humanitarian impact of sanctions became more visible in the 1990s, 156 00:16:07,330 --> 00:16:11,740 a number of political scientists and ethicists proposed criteria for their ethical use, 157 00:16:12,220 --> 00:16:17,050 including humanitarian exemptions, to protect the most vulnerable members of the population. 158 00:16:17,710 --> 00:16:21,610 They argued that there must be some provision to allow in humanitarian goods. 159 00:16:22,150 --> 00:16:25,690 These exemptions were ostensibly provided when the 66 one committee, 160 00:16:26,170 --> 00:16:33,490 the committee of the Security Council charged with overseeing the sanctions, took on the task of reviewing requests for humanitarian imports. 161 00:16:34,210 --> 00:16:39,970 But while this protection existed in principle, it was compromised in many ways, mainly by holes. 162 00:16:40,450 --> 00:16:46,120 Any member of the Security Council could veto any item for any reason and put it on hold. 163 00:16:46,750 --> 00:16:53,120 The holes were a stark illustration of the level of detail and the degree of effort that went into crippling Iraq. 164 00:16:53,140 --> 00:16:59,230 One item at a time, they make evident how deliberate and consistent the US practices were. 165 00:16:59,860 --> 00:17:09,159 It required constant attention and political manoeuvring. On a daily or weekly basis regarding each item and request of which there were thousands 166 00:17:09,160 --> 00:17:15,130 annually in order to deny each in turn in the face of constant and vocal scepticism. 167 00:17:16,120 --> 00:17:22,059 The use of holes also speaks to one of the fundamental issues for sanctions imposed by the U.N. when there 168 00:17:22,060 --> 00:17:27,910 is a conflict between the UN's commitment to humanitarian principles and its commitment to security. 169 00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:31,900 Which one trumps the UN Charter simply doesn't tell us. 170 00:17:32,440 --> 00:17:38,860 In the case of the holes, the answer was that any security risk, however speculative or slight, 171 00:17:39,310 --> 00:17:44,020 was given absolute credence and overrode any humanitarian concern. 172 00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:51,250 However extensive uncertain. On one occasion, the United States blocked cloth as an input to industry. 173 00:17:51,760 --> 00:17:54,880 The reasoning was that cloth is an input to industry. 174 00:17:55,210 --> 00:18:01,030 If Iraq is allowed to rebuild its industrial capacity, it could then rebuild its military capacity. 175 00:18:01,630 --> 00:18:05,260 On this reasoning, the United States blocked materials to make shoes, 176 00:18:05,680 --> 00:18:11,860 glue for manufacturing cigarettes, sewing thread materials to produce plastic bottles for juice. 177 00:18:12,310 --> 00:18:18,190 Raw cotton for the production of medical gauze. All on the grounds that they supported Iraqi industry. 178 00:18:20,080 --> 00:18:27,580 And the quantity of these holes never went down. On the contrary, in the face of Iraq's crisis, they grew astronomically. 179 00:18:28,090 --> 00:18:37,900 As of November 1988, 1998, holes on humanitarian contracts came to about $150 million by May 22. 180 00:18:38,140 --> 00:18:43,420 They reached over $5 billion. So many of Iraq's humanitarian imports were blocked. 181 00:18:43,690 --> 00:18:46,480 But over the seven year course of the Oil for Food Program, 182 00:18:46,870 --> 00:18:54,520 the total humanitarian goods actually delivered to Iraq came to $204 per person per year for everything, 183 00:18:54,910 --> 00:18:58,810 including food, medicine and the reconstruction of the infrastructure, 184 00:18:59,920 --> 00:19:05,560 or about one half the per capita income of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 185 00:19:06,310 --> 00:19:13,180 Were it not for unilateral U.S. holds, the amount of critical humanitarian goods in Iraq would have increased by one quarter, 186 00:19:13,420 --> 00:19:15,670 and that would have saved a great many lives. 187 00:19:17,020 --> 00:19:24,879 On one occasion, the head of UNICEF identified 18 high priority contracts that were on hold for 300 water treatment plants, 188 00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:31,420 affecting one and a half million people. Water tankers, which were particularly urgent during the drought that was taking place. 189 00:19:31,750 --> 00:19:40,210 And water purification chemicals which were indispensable. Of these 18 contracts, 17 were on hold by the United States. 190 00:19:40,510 --> 00:19:45,010 One was on hold by Britain. No one else on the Security Council blocked any of them. 191 00:19:45,790 --> 00:19:53,470 On another occasion, the World Health Organisation described in detail the drastic shortages of essential drugs and medical supplies. 192 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:58,180 One consequence of this was the inability to treat patients who needed surgery. 193 00:19:58,660 --> 00:20:06,240 In 19. 89, the number of major surgeries performed came to about 15,000 per month by 1992. 194 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:12,150 This number had dropped to about 5000 per month, one third, and remained there for the rest of the decade. 195 00:20:12,870 --> 00:20:20,040 But while the need for medical supplies was obviously urgent, World Health Organisation reported that blood bank refrigerators had been blocked, 196 00:20:20,370 --> 00:20:24,450 as well as materials to run medical tests and to produce pharmaceuticals. 197 00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:32,580 In March 2002, there were 182 contracts in the health sector on hold. 198 00:20:33,270 --> 00:20:36,630 178 of these were being blocked by the U.S. 199 00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:43,320 The other four were blocked by the UK. Again, no one else on the council blocked any contracts for medical supplies. 200 00:20:44,370 --> 00:20:50,250 These practices undermined all the humanitarian efforts in Iraq, whether by the government or by INGOs. 201 00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:55,200 For example, to increase food production in the face of massive malnutrition, 202 00:20:55,830 --> 00:21:01,020 the Iraqi government worked with U.N. personnel to import vaccines for entero toxin MIA, 203 00:21:01,350 --> 00:21:06,330 a disease found in small ruminants such as sheep and goats that is endemic in Iraq. 204 00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:10,740 These animals were critical for producing meat, cheese and milk. 205 00:21:11,610 --> 00:21:16,740 The U.N. staff found that at least 6 million doses were necessary for the next vaccination campaign. 206 00:21:17,550 --> 00:21:24,210 The United States blocked all of these on the grounds that sheep and goat vaccines could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. 207 00:21:26,010 --> 00:21:31,590 The United States invoked dual use and WMD to block every imaginable type of vehicle. 208 00:21:32,070 --> 00:21:38,730 This crippled not only food distribution throughout the country, but every other kind of function critical for a modern society. 209 00:21:39,300 --> 00:21:42,900 The U.S. bought tractors on the grounds that they might be used by the military. 210 00:21:43,570 --> 00:21:52,890 Contract for a thousand water tankers as block on the grounds that they were lined with stainless steel and therefore were, quote, WMD dual use. 211 00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:57,750 But it wasn't possible to provide potable water in remote areas without these. 212 00:21:58,380 --> 00:22:03,180 The U.S. blocked firefighting trucks because the tanks, which had foam to put out fires, 213 00:22:03,420 --> 00:22:11,250 were corrosion resistant and therefore might be able to carry chemicals, which in turn could conceivably be used to produce chemical weapons. 214 00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:16,620 On this reasoning about what constitutes potential weapons of mass destruction, 215 00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:24,630 the United States blocked olive oil plants, furniture, dental equipment, fireman suits and yoghurt making equipment. 216 00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:29,070 And there were other rationales that were even more attenuated than those. 217 00:22:29,970 --> 00:22:37,170 For example, atropine is a drug that is necessary in any surgery where the patient is put under a general anaesthetic. 218 00:22:37,710 --> 00:22:41,160 Without atropine, it's not possible to perform an appendectomy. 219 00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:45,390 To operate on a cancerous tumour. To surgically repair hernia. 220 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:54,150 And on and on. But the U.S. objected to Iraq's import of atropine on the grounds that it can also be used as an antidote to nerve gas. 221 00:22:54,750 --> 00:23:01,560 The reasoning was it might be used by Iraqi soldiers if they became affected while deploying nerve gas on enemies. 222 00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:08,820 So if we block Iraq from getting atropine, this would make it more difficult for Iraq to use nerve gas in warfare. 223 00:23:09,330 --> 00:23:12,960 But this involved a level of speculation that was patently ludicrous. 224 00:23:13,470 --> 00:23:15,450 Once a soldier inhales nerve gas, 225 00:23:15,750 --> 00:23:24,150 he would have about 2 minutes to self inject the atropine correctly in the middle of battle before dying of respiratory paralysis. 226 00:23:24,660 --> 00:23:32,340 Meanwhile, U.N. staff pointed out that the Iraqi military, should they want to deploy nerve gas, had no need for atropine, 227 00:23:32,610 --> 00:23:38,850 since they had already provided soldiers with gas masks, which were far more effective than self injecting atropine. 228 00:23:39,900 --> 00:23:44,820 On the same reasoning, the United States objected as well to a number of antibiotics. 229 00:23:45,300 --> 00:23:49,440 The U.S. did not claim that the drugs themselves could be used as biological weapons. 230 00:23:49,950 --> 00:23:56,580 The rationale was rather, that they could be used as an antidote to anthrax, if taken immediately and in large doses. 231 00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:05,160 Consequently, the argument went Allowing Iraq to import these antibiotics could indirectly facilitate the use of anthrax. 232 00:24:05,370 --> 00:24:09,330 So the U.S. opposed them throughout the sanctions regime. 233 00:24:09,360 --> 00:24:17,760 These U.S. practices went well beyond the mandate of the Security Council's resolutions and well beyond the will of the rest of the council members. 234 00:24:18,330 --> 00:24:23,490 The Security Council resolutions required the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. 235 00:24:24,150 --> 00:24:29,880 But the goal of the United States was the elimination of Iraq's capacity to produce WMD. 236 00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:35,760 While the production of nuclear weapons requires a large and sophisticated production facility, 237 00:24:36,300 --> 00:24:40,590 the production of biological and chemical weapons, or at least some of their components, 238 00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:46,860 can take place in nothing more than a college chemistry lab or a manufacturing facility for things like 239 00:24:46,860 --> 00:24:53,730 fertilisers and pesticides to eliminate a nation's capacity to produce biological and chemical weapons. 240 00:24:54,210 --> 00:24:58,700 Means eliminating all science education above the secondary school level. 241 00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:04,649 Eliminating the capacity to produce yoghurt and cheese, or as one biochemist for the army, 242 00:25:04,650 --> 00:25:11,250 would have it eliminating eggs because egg yolks could be used as a medium in which to grow viruses, 243 00:25:11,460 --> 00:25:22,620 which in turn could be used for biological weapons. Any industrialised nation relies continually on manufacturing processes that could 244 00:25:22,620 --> 00:25:27,510 possibly be converted to produce some aspect of a biological or chemical weapon. 245 00:25:28,170 --> 00:25:31,980 To eliminate this capacity as opposed to the weapons themselves, 246 00:25:32,250 --> 00:25:40,770 would literally require reducing a nation to the most primitive possible condition and keeping it in those circumstances in perpetuity. 247 00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:48,960 That was not at all the policy adopted by the Security Council, which required only that Iraq be subject to partial disarmament and monitoring. 248 00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:57,720 But it was the policy of the United States. Many have suggested that the sanctions imposed on Iraq violated international law. 249 00:25:58,140 --> 00:26:05,520 Does Halliday, the former U.N. humanitarian coordinator, as in Iraq, as well as legal scholars, have called it genocide. 250 00:26:06,030 --> 00:26:11,940 Others have also maintained that the sanctions constituted war crimes in violation of the Geneva Convention, 251 00:26:12,270 --> 00:26:19,350 as well as the peremptory norms of use kogan's the fundamental principles of international law that are unwritten or customary. 252 00:26:20,610 --> 00:26:25,649 But neither the International Court of Justice nor the International Criminal Court could have 253 00:26:25,650 --> 00:26:31,350 jurisdiction over this kind of situation for both the parties to the treaties or states. 254 00:26:31,860 --> 00:26:38,820 There is no means by which a state or an individual could bring an action against the Security Council before the ICJ. 255 00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:46,020 The ICJ could provide an advisory opinion to the Security Council if it's requested by the Security Council itself. 256 00:26:46,620 --> 00:26:53,370 But neither the ICJ nor the ICC could prosecute the Security Council or issue a judgement against it. 257 00:26:54,150 --> 00:27:02,880 So it seems that no one could be prosecuted and no state could be found liable for the sanctions regime or for the U.S. role in its implementation. 258 00:27:03,870 --> 00:27:11,940 But even if there were a venue with jurisdiction, it does not seem that international law has the capacity to address this kind of atrocity. 259 00:27:13,110 --> 00:27:16,830 For genocide or extermination as a crime against humanity. 260 00:27:17,250 --> 00:27:22,860 The answer must have the specific intent to destroy the group because of its race or ethnicity. 261 00:27:23,610 --> 00:27:31,620 Those responsible for this policy would have to have intended to destroy the Iraqis because and only because they were Iraqis. 262 00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:37,860 It is not sufficient even to destroy the group in its entirety if it is for some other motive. 263 00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,640 I think that we cannot infer the required intent here. 264 00:27:42,270 --> 00:27:47,460 While the scale of human damage was enormous and the damage was conducted systematically, 265 00:27:48,060 --> 00:27:53,520 the context suggests a wilful blindness and a shockingly high tolerance for collateral damage. 266 00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:59,490 But these are not quite the same as the specific intent to destroy the Iraqi population. 267 00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:07,830 I don't want to suggest that U.S. policymakers were benign in any regard within the U.S. policymaking process. 268 00:28:08,100 --> 00:28:14,700 There is certainly no evidence of concern about Iraqi children or any other aspect of the suffering in Iraq. 269 00:28:15,180 --> 00:28:21,120 The singular preoccupation of U.S. officials was the possibility that Iraq might rebuild its military. 270 00:28:22,140 --> 00:28:27,900 It is true that U.S. officials found evidence of this when it seems that no rational person would 271 00:28:27,900 --> 00:28:33,480 have and that they gave no way at all to the humanitarian consequences of their decisions. 272 00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:39,120 But that is not quite the same as calculating the destruction of Iraqi civilians. 273 00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:44,490 Nor is it the same as the intent to annihilate Iraqis because they are Iraqis. 274 00:28:45,540 --> 00:28:52,410 A similar question arose in the 1970s, when there was a great deal written by philosophers in response to the Vietnam War. 275 00:28:53,010 --> 00:28:57,570 Jean-Paul Sartre argued that the U.S. tactics such as blanket bombing, 276 00:28:57,780 --> 00:29:03,150 the use of napalm and the and the systematic burning of villages amounted to genocide. 277 00:29:03,810 --> 00:29:08,460 Hugo Vidal was sympathetic to the accusation, but in the end refuted it. 278 00:29:09,060 --> 00:29:15,990 He argued that however appalling the U.S. policies were, however deliberately and knowingly, the atrocities were committed. 279 00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:22,080 It could not be shown that this meant the specific intent requirement under the Genocide Convention. 280 00:29:22,530 --> 00:29:26,490 He concluded, with the Scottish verdict not proven, not quite. 281 00:29:27,330 --> 00:29:34,290 It seems that that is the case here as well. And for that, we have good reason to be deeply disappointed in international law. 282 00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:40,230 There may not be a crime that could be prosecuted for a lack of a venue with jurisdiction 283 00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,580 and because of the institutional context that authorised the sanctions overall. 284 00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:50,580 Yet it seems absolutely clear that the extreme way in which the sanctions were implemented 285 00:29:50,970 --> 00:29:55,290 violates the fundamental norms and principles of international human rights law. 286 00:29:55,980 --> 00:29:59,190 Well, international law gives us a framework to judge those. 287 00:29:59,260 --> 00:30:02,980 Acts driven by racial hatred on the model of the Holocaust. 288 00:30:03,490 --> 00:30:12,100 It is not adequate to address atrocities that are deliberately implemented by indifferent officials for political or economic purposes. 289 00:30:12,820 --> 00:30:17,830 I don't mean to use the term atrocity in a legal sense as referring to the acts that meet the 290 00:30:17,830 --> 00:30:23,650 legal requirements for international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity. 291 00:30:24,100 --> 00:30:30,490 But I would use atrocity in the ordinary sense of the term as evoking simply the shock and awe and horror 292 00:30:30,820 --> 00:30:37,360 that most would feel in the face of enormous and gratuitous human damage in the face of such damage. 293 00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:46,360 When we hear rationales such as we believe that if Saddam had equipment to make cheese, he would use it to produce weapons of mass destruction. 294 00:30:46,900 --> 00:30:52,360 We are hard pressed not to disparage the justifications as disingenuous and shameful. 295 00:30:52,960 --> 00:31:00,430 It is not that the U.S. government is innocent, but rather that international law fails to account for this kind of culpability. 296 00:31:01,630 --> 00:31:07,240 International governance has failed us as well in that it has been possible for an atrocity to be 297 00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:13,870 committed by the very body of international authority intended to intervene in the face of atrocities. 298 00:31:14,350 --> 00:31:17,110 It is a terrible lack and a terrible risk. 299 00:31:17,770 --> 00:31:24,940 When the existing framework of international law does not envision the possibility that the very institutions that are 300 00:31:24,940 --> 00:31:32,110 charged with responding to these violations could themselves commit them when it does not envision the possibility, 301 00:31:32,530 --> 00:31:36,010 then, in the name of preventing aggression and threats to the peace, 302 00:31:36,550 --> 00:31:45,820 the Security Council could implement a policy that would kill more people than all uses of weapons of mass destruction in the 20th century combined. 303 00:31:46,090 --> 00:31:52,090 As was the case here, international governance has also failed us in the way that this occurred, 304 00:31:52,660 --> 00:32:00,610 that the structure of the U.N. and the Security Council permitted a single nation to determine its decisions and in some cases, 305 00:32:00,610 --> 00:32:05,890 to override the will of nearly every other member of the Council for years on end. 306 00:32:06,550 --> 00:32:11,170 The United States succeeded in using the Security Council first to impose its own 307 00:32:11,170 --> 00:32:16,270 agenda in violation of the Council's resolutions and arguably the UN Charter, 308 00:32:17,410 --> 00:32:20,140 and then to unilaterally impose its own standard, 309 00:32:20,530 --> 00:32:27,880 compromising the basic means to sustain life in an industrialised population for an entire civilian population. 310 00:32:28,870 --> 00:32:32,170 As Hannah Arendt spoke about the bureaucratisation of evil. 311 00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,010 The Iraq sanctions. Tell us about the legalisation of atrocity. 312 00:32:36,580 --> 00:32:42,670 It may be that in the end there is a particular risk posed to humanity by international 313 00:32:42,670 --> 00:32:48,640 governance as institutions of international governance extend their reach and legitimacy. 314 00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:57,190 They also entail the risk of a new form of global violence, not from terrorism or cruelty or racial or ethnic hatred, 315 00:32:57,670 --> 00:33:04,180 but rather from the possibility of a single nation hijacking an institution of global governance and 316 00:33:04,180 --> 00:33:09,700 substituting its own agenda in the place of the interests and will of the international community. 317 00:33:10,810 --> 00:33:16,750 U.S. officials did not act with the deliberate cruelty that's envisioned by international human rights law. 318 00:33:17,290 --> 00:33:21,460 It was not a hatred of Iraqis that led U.S. officials to act as they did. 319 00:33:21,970 --> 00:33:26,440 It was the decision that the Iraqis would bear the cost of the United States. 320 00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:32,680 Intractable political dilemma. This particular catastrophe did not require actual hatred. 321 00:33:33,250 --> 00:33:40,870 It required only the capacity of U.S. officials to believe their own rationales, however implausible they might have been, 322 00:33:41,380 --> 00:33:47,290 and that there be no venue in which to challenge the reasoning as casual stick and disingenuous. 323 00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:55,540 Madeleine Albright's memorable gaffe, in which she said that the deaths of 500,000 children were worth the price, 324 00:33:56,050 --> 00:34:00,640 which she regretted for years was always an only a public relations error. 325 00:34:01,090 --> 00:34:04,870 It made no difference that she and other State Department officials from that 326 00:34:04,870 --> 00:34:09,310 point on vigorously insisted that they cared deeply about Iraqi children. 327 00:34:09,820 --> 00:34:14,890 The more accurate answer, regardless of the public rhetoric, was of course it was worth it. 328 00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:22,660 Lock and glue, water pipes, water tankers, thermos flasks, ambulance radios, refrigerators. 329 00:34:23,140 --> 00:34:28,959 All of this was worth it because the negligible imaginary possibility that these could be 330 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:34,480 turned to nefarious purposes always outweighed the collapse of the Iraqi health system, 331 00:34:34,870 --> 00:34:41,980 outweighed Iraq's frantic efforts to increase agricultural production, outweigh the disappearance of Iraq's middle class, 332 00:34:42,430 --> 00:34:48,430 outweighed the hundreds of thousands of tons of untreated sewage that went daily into Iraq's rivers. 333 00:34:49,270 --> 00:34:54,070 Those who formulated the U.S. policies were not shallow or ill educated or coerced, 334 00:34:54,550 --> 00:34:59,140 nor driven by hatred or any impulse that they or we would identify as genocide. 335 00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:06,999 Simon still, every act implementing this policy was knowing and deliver it and the consequences were known 336 00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:12,040 and recognised even when they were contained with an elaborate denials of responsibility. 337 00:35:12,850 --> 00:35:19,480 In 1946, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote In regard to the victors of World War Two, 338 00:35:20,590 --> 00:35:24,010 we see the feelings of moral superiority and we are frightened. 339 00:35:24,580 --> 00:35:29,740 He, who feels absolutely safe from danger, is already on the way to fall victim to it. 340 00:35:30,370 --> 00:35:36,310 The German fate could provide all others with experience, if only they would understand this experience. 341 00:35:36,670 --> 00:35:41,260 We are no inferior race everywhere. People have similar qualities. 342 00:35:41,620 --> 00:35:44,860 We may well worry over the victors self certainty. 343 00:35:45,790 --> 00:35:50,480 Jaspers was right to be worried about moral self certainty above all. 344 00:35:50,860 --> 00:35:58,030 This study tells us much about the capacity of anyone, including those acting in the name of human rights and international law, 345 00:35:58,510 --> 00:36:05,800 to suspend both rational judgement and the capacity to recognise obvious moral truths when called upon to do so. 346 00:36:05,980 --> 00:36:25,790 Thank you. Lots of interesting issues raised there around the effects of punishment in this case that we might want to come back in the discussion. 347 00:36:25,790 --> 00:36:30,890 But I'm going to hand it over to David first. David, to kick us off the podium. 348 00:36:30,950 --> 00:36:34,910 No, no, it's. I can speak from here. Sure. Thank you. 349 00:36:34,940 --> 00:36:38,770 Well, thank you very much for this. 350 00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:46,930 I mean, I think we have said this qualifies as a savage indictment of the the sanctions policy. 351 00:36:46,970 --> 00:36:54,530 It seems not to leave very much space for that, for reflection. 352 00:36:54,710 --> 00:37:02,690 This is a problem that I'm not here as an expert on sanctions or indeed as an expert on Iraq, 353 00:37:03,900 --> 00:37:10,640 as somebody who has an interest in the the ethics in the broad sense of these kinds of questions. 354 00:37:11,370 --> 00:37:14,850 After reading, I read I haven't read compared to a whole book. 355 00:37:14,870 --> 00:37:27,590 I read the concluding chapter. My first thought was, go to Michael Waltz's discussion of Dirty Hands, a rather old article. 356 00:37:28,190 --> 00:37:35,510 And through that, to Max Weber's famous essay on politics as a vacation is this. 357 00:37:35,780 --> 00:37:45,439 These are two writers who are essentially interested in the question about the relation between the kind of ethics that we 358 00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:54,799 might use to judge everyday life and the kind of ethics that applies to politicians or people with political responsibility, 359 00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:58,670 people who have to make political decisions. And the thought is that. 360 00:38:01,550 --> 00:38:11,180 Why should I be so quick as to judge political action by the kinds of ethical standards that you might think apply in everyday life? 361 00:38:11,210 --> 00:38:19,550 This is coming very well. This takes the form of his famous distinction between the ethics of absolute ends and the ethics of responsibility. 362 00:38:20,750 --> 00:38:28,250 And of course, Labour argues that this primarily politicians have to be guided by the ethics responsibility, which. 363 00:38:28,670 --> 00:38:34,069 And what that means is they have to be prepared to do things that the ethics of 364 00:38:34,070 --> 00:38:41,840 Amsterdam would condemn because of the goals that they feel they have to pursue. 365 00:38:42,950 --> 00:38:46,189 So babies must read over the babies. And you read a bit of. Yes, 366 00:38:46,190 --> 00:38:53,540 but we can sort of exchange a German philosopher who seeks the salvation of the 367 00:38:53,540 --> 00:39:00,050 soul of his own and of others should not seek it along the avenue of politics. 368 00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:04,550 For the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. 369 00:39:05,240 --> 00:39:15,770 The genius or demon of politics lies in an inner tension with the God of love and the tension kind of any time between irreconcilable conflict. 370 00:39:17,090 --> 00:39:25,940 No, I think all this is just to say that I mean, your because your your aim is not only, I think, 371 00:39:25,940 --> 00:39:37,549 to bring out very forcibly the evil that sanctions created, but also to judge those who are responsible for the policy. 372 00:39:37,550 --> 00:39:42,500 And the question is, by what standards should we judge their actions? 373 00:39:43,980 --> 00:39:52,830 I think we can't really do that unless we also ask the question and this is not a question by any, I suppose, use of sanctions. 374 00:39:52,830 --> 00:39:56,420 So be very interesting to hear what you think about sanctions in general. In general. 375 00:39:57,180 --> 00:40:04,219 I mean, when when is it justifiable to use sanctions that are actually going to hurt ordinary people, 376 00:40:04,220 --> 00:40:08,270 use them as a political weapon to achieve some end? 377 00:40:09,260 --> 00:40:14,930 I mean, in general, I suppose sanctions are going to hurt the people that they're meant to help. 378 00:40:14,930 --> 00:40:19,100 So there's really a paradox here that has to be addressed. 379 00:40:20,930 --> 00:40:25,700 Now, what are sanctions supposed to be doing? I think here, if you think about Iraq, 380 00:40:26,780 --> 00:40:37,309 there is a real confusion about the use of the arms because and I suppose you might say it's one possible defect of existing 381 00:40:37,310 --> 00:40:47,090 international law that it limits rather narrowly the range of reasons for which certain kinds of action can be undertaken. 382 00:40:47,090 --> 00:40:55,010 So it allows us to take action against certain kinds of aggression, unjust wars and so forth. 383 00:40:56,540 --> 00:41:08,750 But it doesn't directly allow us to take action of forcible kind against humanitarian disasters. 384 00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:17,480 So the systematic violation of human rights is not yet in international law constitute a reason for intervention. 385 00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:32,120 So the fact that the Saddam Hussein regime is not only arguably possibly posing an external threat, but possession of weapons of mass destruction. 386 00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:35,620 That was the sort of public argument that was given. 387 00:41:35,630 --> 00:41:45,740 It was also, of course, in a way, much more serious, indirectly posing an internal threat to the members of Iraq itself, to the Kurds in the north, 388 00:41:45,740 --> 00:41:54,410 to the marsh, Arabs in the south, its own actions, but at least prospectively, I suppose, genocidal against these groups. 389 00:41:55,010 --> 00:41:58,310 So I don't know, perhaps you know better than I do. 390 00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:06,799 What was really at the back of the minds of these U.N., these United States officials who were endorsing the sanctions policy, 391 00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,040 but at least we must at least contemplate the possibility, 392 00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:16,340 say the aim of sanctions was not simply just the discovery of elimination, the western province of mass destruction, 393 00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:27,320 but it was the change of a regime which was potentially going to violate massively the human rights of other Iraqis. 394 00:42:29,270 --> 00:42:42,590 I think then the question we need to ask is, did the sanctions were imposed stand a reasonable chance of bringing about that outcome? 395 00:42:44,330 --> 00:42:46,670 And also we must ask the question, 396 00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:55,280 how does how do the sanctions policy compare with other policies that might have been taken in order to achieve that end? 397 00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:57,090 So what were the alternatives to sanctions? 398 00:42:57,110 --> 00:43:07,879 I mean, that you can't, I think, judge just one policy unless you also consider what the other alternatives might have been to that regime. 399 00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:14,200 So again, I'd like to ask you to say a bit more about what you think should have been done in place of this sanctions policy. 400 00:43:14,210 --> 00:43:18,890 You think it's so indefensible? 401 00:43:19,620 --> 00:43:29,209 Of course, the openness here is that we know with hindsight that the sanctions didn't have the effect that they might have had, 402 00:43:29,210 --> 00:43:35,060 might have been intended to have, because in the end, you know, the regime didn't collapse. 403 00:43:35,540 --> 00:43:42,379 And what brought the whole episode to an end was military intervention, because question is whether that could have been known ahead of time. 404 00:43:42,380 --> 00:43:51,560 Hindsight is great, you know, people know and say confidently things perhaps they couldn't have said in advance. 405 00:43:53,330 --> 00:44:01,190 So I think that in any way diminishing the force of the indictment that you've given. 406 00:44:02,150 --> 00:44:09,830 I think we have to ask these other kinds of questions which are really about the political morality, not not the sort of fundamental ethics, 407 00:44:09,830 --> 00:44:17,090 but the political morality of embarking on a course of action, knowing that it's going to impose significant costs on people. 408 00:44:17,590 --> 00:44:25,250 But doing it on the basis that the final outcome in your judgement, is going to be worth the costs that are involved. 409 00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:31,940 I think that's the sort of perspective, at least it's a kind of different perspective maybe than the one that you've very powerfully presented to us. 410 00:44:36,710 --> 00:44:41,060 Joy, do you want to respond to some of that now or do you want to take more questions? 411 00:44:42,330 --> 00:44:50,690 Why don't I take a couple of those things? You know, the thing is, I. 412 00:44:54,450 --> 00:45:03,150 And the question is how you judge. And I do think the judgement is warranted because there is too much knowledge, too much deliberateness, too much. 413 00:45:03,900 --> 00:45:08,610 Too many people knew exactly what the consequences of these policies would be. 414 00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:18,719 Too many people were involved in deliberately formulating this. But I think the thing that's most striking to me about this is literally that, I mean, 415 00:45:18,720 --> 00:45:26,370 I except for this army biochemist who thought that X should be blocked from Iraq, 416 00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:35,850 I could not put my finger on a particular person involved in the process who was blameworthy in any political or moral sense. 417 00:45:36,510 --> 00:45:47,430 There was something about the structure that diffused responsibility so finely that you literally cannot identify who made the decision. 418 00:45:48,150 --> 00:45:52,350 So my question, when you say the U.S., who is making this decision? 419 00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:58,370 Yeah, well, it was really difficult. I mean, it really took forever to sort of figure out what that structure was. 420 00:45:58,380 --> 00:46:03,330 And I kept saying, as I was doing all this, who is who was saying the yes or the no? 421 00:46:04,050 --> 00:46:09,150 And the answer is something like, first, all of these things went to technical experts, 422 00:46:09,900 --> 00:46:14,130 and then they really say, can this item be used for an improper purpose? 423 00:46:14,580 --> 00:46:18,960 They're not saying whether you should like it or not, but they're answering a technical question. 424 00:46:19,380 --> 00:46:23,730 And so they make their finding as to whether it could be used for such a purpose. 425 00:46:24,720 --> 00:46:30,630 And then it goes next to roughly it ends up in the in the desk of the political people. 426 00:46:31,110 --> 00:46:38,880 So the political people look at, you know, some degree of stainless steel, non corrosive ness of the tank, 427 00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:45,750 and they're not in a position to second guess the recommendations of the technical people. 428 00:46:46,410 --> 00:46:56,280 And so they end up sort of deferring in each case, even though they're making the decision, they're not really making the technical judgement. 429 00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:02,160 They're sort of accepting that. And then there's a kind of a careerism that I think occurs at each point. 430 00:47:02,580 --> 00:47:12,210 You don't want to be the guy who lets the one thing in that ends up being used in some terrible, destructive way. 431 00:47:12,930 --> 00:47:19,680 So it's maybe it's not likely that it will, but if it happens, that personal cost, you are enormous. 432 00:47:20,370 --> 00:47:24,120 And on the other hand, there's no cost to you at all for blocking things, 433 00:47:25,020 --> 00:47:28,950 because in addition to this bureaucratic structure, there really was this culture, 434 00:47:28,950 --> 00:47:31,559 as far as I can see within this process, 435 00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:42,090 within the non-proliferation unit of the State Department and the Mideast part and the political office and the office and the Defence Department and, 436 00:47:42,510 --> 00:47:48,540 you know, all of these agencies that were participating, the way these meetings have been described to me, 437 00:47:48,540 --> 00:47:59,060 where there would be in a meeting of 30 people, you know, 26 or 28 were non-proliferation experts, and maybe two of them would be political people. 438 00:47:59,070 --> 00:48:05,190 So the tenor of the meeting is, let's see what could go wrong with this item. 439 00:48:06,270 --> 00:48:12,780 And then you didn't. And there and the language described that was described to me as a people would 440 00:48:12,780 --> 00:48:18,570 say things like no one was going to shed a lot of tears over denying Saddam X. 441 00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:24,000 And that was typically the discourse within this culture of this this unit. 442 00:48:25,290 --> 00:48:32,040 No one was going to shed any tears over denying Saddam. So there's this conflation of Saddam with the population as a whole. 443 00:48:32,550 --> 00:48:36,330 And then once that happens, then, of course, you know, 444 00:48:36,330 --> 00:48:45,180 you don't want to give stainless steel tanks to Saddam because he has such a a a cleanly monstrous kind of profile. 445 00:48:46,620 --> 00:48:56,340 So so I think it's about the culture and then this diffusion of responsibility within the bureaucracy that has to be sorted out ethically. 446 00:48:58,110 --> 00:49:05,190 I mean, as I was talking to various people from ambassador level down to data entry person, 447 00:49:05,550 --> 00:49:09,780 the person who managed this database, I mean, none of them were bad. 448 00:49:09,990 --> 00:49:14,940 I mean, none of them meant ill for the Iraqis or for anyone else. 449 00:49:16,110 --> 00:49:22,349 And in and in their description of themselves, they would say, well, you know, we you know, 450 00:49:22,350 --> 00:49:27,510 we did our best to try to make sure that, you know, the people had what they needed. 451 00:49:28,350 --> 00:49:31,350 And that's how they described themselves and their and their mindset. 452 00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:35,130 It's just really that when you look at it from an external perspective, 453 00:49:35,580 --> 00:49:41,400 that that sounds when you look at this business with the atropine and the yoghurt makers and so on, 454 00:49:42,090 --> 00:49:49,290 you know, as someone said, you know, three pots of yoghurt in the basement is going to produce a weapon of mass destruction. 455 00:49:49,620 --> 00:49:53,400 That that kind of analysis seems bizarre. 456 00:49:53,820 --> 00:49:59,360 Seems insane in some way. So, so, 457 00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:05,780 so I'm not quite sure what the ethical standard is that we use to judge a process or an institutional 458 00:50:05,780 --> 00:50:11,780 structure or something where there's lots of acts of clear decision making and willing deliberateness, 459 00:50:13,490 --> 00:50:18,050 but in a way where you really can't identify exactly the locus of responsibility. 460 00:50:20,900 --> 00:50:31,310 On sanctions in general, I mean, I, I mean, I think that sanctions are virtually always a failure and a disaster in every possible way. 461 00:50:31,850 --> 00:50:39,080 The South African sanctions are often touted as as prototypical, but they're not they're really very that's it was really very anomalous. 462 00:50:40,250 --> 00:50:47,990 I mean, for the most part, in every other instance that I know of, sanctions are imposed against the will of the persons who are most affected. 463 00:50:48,410 --> 00:50:58,399 In the case of South Africa, the leadership of the black South Africans was initiating their own democracy movement and in that context was 464 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:07,100 inviting the global community to do harm to them for the sake of indirectly causing causing cost to their regime. 465 00:51:07,970 --> 00:51:11,530 But that's quite extraordinary if you look at any other instance I know of. 466 00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:22,490 So, for example, in Cuba, the most hostile dissidents to the state, the most critical dissidents in Cuba opposed the sanctions on Cuba. 467 00:51:22,970 --> 00:51:28,580 The only Cubans or Cuban-Americans who support them are those who don't live in the country, 468 00:51:28,580 --> 00:51:31,730 who live in Miami and are not themselves the subject of them. 469 00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,630 And so I think I mean, there's other reasons. 470 00:51:36,470 --> 00:51:45,620 There's also a track record of sanctions and a terrible track record of the language used is of the sender nation getting the target nation to comply. 471 00:51:45,890 --> 00:51:49,100 That's just the success rate of that is low. 472 00:51:49,790 --> 00:51:56,840 And so then you have this certainty, really a certainty of doing harm to those who are least responsible for the policy. 473 00:51:57,470 --> 00:52:03,170 You have a low likelihood of it bringing about the the the goal that you say you want. 474 00:52:04,430 --> 00:52:10,669 And and I and I have to take issue with you. I don't I think I'm entitled to make that argument. 475 00:52:10,670 --> 00:52:14,900 I think I can legitimately make that argument without offering a substitute. 476 00:52:15,780 --> 00:52:26,720 And and it may be that there aren't other good alternatives, but but what I can say for certain about this is it's unlikely to succeed. 477 00:52:27,140 --> 00:52:29,420 It's very likely to harm the wrong people. 478 00:52:29,750 --> 00:52:37,940 And I think that that claim can stand on its own, even if it leaves a terrible gap and the other kinds of tools that are available. 479 00:52:41,250 --> 00:52:43,110 So can I just say, 480 00:52:43,110 --> 00:52:53,850 do you think that the threat that the Saddam Hussein regime posed to human rights was sufficient to make a call for regime change justifiable? 481 00:52:56,910 --> 00:52:59,880 Well, I guess I take kind of a strong position on regime change. 482 00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:09,060 I think that Article two of the charter says that it's not permissible and not it is not legal questions is an ethical question. 483 00:53:09,850 --> 00:53:12,630 But that's maybe a defect in international law. 484 00:53:14,060 --> 00:53:23,670 What I think you have to place the question, you know, what kind of threat Saddam Hussein posed not only to the people who are supporting him, 485 00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:29,070 but the other groups in Iraq who feel he already inflicted this terrible injury. 486 00:53:30,450 --> 00:53:39,240 Well, so we don't start with that. I mean, the whole is no longer an interesting ethical question unless you think there's a real the issue here. 487 00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:43,649 Well, let me muddy the question a little bit, and I will, 488 00:53:43,650 --> 00:53:51,660 and I'll grant you that the as a theoretical proposition it has, it kind of stands on its own and demands an answer. 489 00:53:52,230 --> 00:54:02,130 But however badly Saddam Hussein treated the Kurds and his political enemies prior to 1994, 490 00:54:02,460 --> 00:54:06,960 the majority of the Iraqi population was quite well-off by every standard. 491 00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:14,040 It had the highest standard of living in the Arab world of it. 492 00:54:15,150 --> 00:54:17,100 And even under the sanctions, 493 00:54:18,090 --> 00:54:26,740 there were significant efforts by the Iraqi government to to manage as best as possible in a way that clearly tied to the 494 00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:34,410 people's welfare to urgently increase agricultural production and to to rebuild infrastructure as much as possible and so on. 495 00:54:36,060 --> 00:54:40,080 So so I think it's and I don't want to defend Saddam Hussein. 496 00:54:40,090 --> 00:54:46,350 I mean, I would not have wanted to be a Kurd or place when I made or after 1991, a marsh Arab in the south. 497 00:54:48,210 --> 00:54:53,640 But I think it's just his track record is more complicated than that. 498 00:54:54,120 --> 00:55:03,430 And I think it's worth noting mortality increases after 2003, excess mortality increases after 2003. 499 00:55:03,900 --> 00:55:11,219 So Iraqis under Saddam Hussein during sanctions were better off than they were under 500 00:55:11,220 --> 00:55:17,040 U.S. occupation or U.S. led occupation in the 14 months after 2000 after removal three. 501 00:55:17,820 --> 00:55:21,570 And I haven't looked at the numbers in the last couple of years, 502 00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:28,530 but I'm guessing by any measure that the measurements of life expectancy and quality of life, 503 00:55:29,490 --> 00:55:37,050 you know, there's been no no striking improvement of in human welfare. 504 00:55:37,170 --> 00:55:47,370 It's the news reports, at least, that we get are of just a terrible sort of backward spin in every kind of regard of there's new 505 00:55:47,370 --> 00:55:51,420 sorts now having to do with the amount of violence on the streets and the options for women. 506 00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:57,810 So so just to marry the question of should Saddam Hussein? 507 00:55:59,250 --> 00:56:11,220 I think it's not clear that the Iraqis are or were have been so much better off without him as to justify a regime change in that instance. 508 00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:23,020 And I'm and I'm not sure there is an instance where it's so clear that there's that that that someone is is abusive. 509 00:56:23,590 --> 00:56:29,050 Absolutely. That we know for certain that if they are removed, things will be better. 510 00:56:30,710 --> 00:56:38,330 I mean, I don't know who who's lense is objective than that whose perspective is truly reliable in that. 511 00:56:38,420 --> 00:56:47,090 I mean, I know if we look at many, many instances and claims of this around the world, it often goes very, very badly. 512 00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:55,220 Once was, there's been a forced regime change or pressure or regime change under pressure from outside. 513 00:56:55,820 --> 00:57:01,399 And it's I don't know of instances where you can cleanly say it was clear from the 514 00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:05,270 beginning that the population would have been better off without this person. 515 00:57:05,660 --> 00:57:13,640 And once they were forcibly removed, they were clearly better in an enduring way afterwards as well. 516 00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:20,430 Let me let me take some other other questions. It's an interesting exchange.