Blix, Hans, Disarming Iraq, Pantheon, 2004
President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair justified their invasion of Iraq based upon the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction. They quoted United Nations weapons inspections in the 1990s which found a vast program to build chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. When inspectors returned to Iraq in 2002 however their work was largely criticized by the U.S. and UK because they didn’t support those countries’ claims against Saddam. Hans Blix was a chief inspector during both regimes and wrote Disarming Iraq to express his perspective on what happened. His book is an argument for the work of the United Nations inspectors and against the actions of both Iraq and the United States.
Blix starts by asserting that the original inspection regime was largely successful but then threatened by the U.S. and UK. Blix headed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the time and by 1992 they had destroyed most of Iraq’s nuclear program. The WMD inspectors however were compromised by two events. First, they took a confrontational approach conducting operations like military ones which made Iraq not want to cooperate. They also allowed U.S. and UK intelligence agencies to infiltrate them and discredit their work. The CIA for examples used the inspectors to tap into Iraq’s communications network and follow Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. Blix was very mad that foreign intelligence agencies felt like they could do this because it not only hurt the inspectors but the United Nations overall. It also meant that the Americans and British were more interested in their own interests than disarming Iraq.
When inspectors returned in 2002 Blix didn’t think Saddam understood the situation he was in. Because Iraq had conducted an extensive deception campaign against inspectors in the 1990s and ended up kicking them out few believed Baghdad would cooperate this time around. Blix felt that it was up to Iraq to convince the world that it no longer had WMD by providing documents and people to the inspectors that would provide concrete evidence. Iraq didn’t allow inspectors in until the end of 2002 and constantly complained about their work. None of this gave Iraq’s enemies like the U.S. the confidence that they were serious about inspections. Blix thought this was a strategic mistake by Saddam which cost him his government.
The book argues that the U.S. was caught in a circular self-sustaining loop about Iraq’s WMD which was impossible to disprove. The U.S. believed that Iraq had WMD and a nuclear program and would only be convinced Iraq was working with inspectors until they confessed to everything the U.S. accused them of. When Iraq did things like deny they had drones to deliver WMD it was proof to Washington that Iraq was not cooperating. When inspectors went to every suspected site the Americans provided and nothing was found it didn’t make the U.S. question their claims but instead led them to think the inspections were ineffective and couldn’t uncover Baghdad’s deception campaign. Blix was shocked because the Americans were 100% certain that Iraq had WMD and yet had 0% intel on where they were. The U.S. suffered from group think when it came to Iraq which led to the largest intelligence failure in the country’s history.
The Bush administration ended up undermining the inspections when they didn’t support its claims. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 2003 address to the United Nations was the most famous example where he played tapes of Iraqis allegedly talking about hiding WMD and drawings of mobile WMD labs. The implied message was that the inspections had failed to uncover all of this material. Blix wrote that he thought the inspectors could’ve stopped the war and that the White House supported them but many others have noted the repeated statements by the administration that bringing back the U.N. was simply a way to justify the war. Iraq would either admit it had WMD paving the way for an invasion or deny it had anything which would show it was lying and therefore only force could disarm it. The latter is what the Americans argued.
Blix’s conclusion was to refute the United States and stand up for the United Nations. He believed that Iraq proved that weapons inspectors, sanctions and containment worked. Iraq got rid of its WMD in 1991 because of the United Nations and the inspectors dismantled its nuclear weapons program the next year by destroying all of its infrastructure. The later was known and yet rejected by the U.S. while the former was announced by Iraq several times but not believed because it had tried to deceive the weapons inspectors in the 90s. Washington didn’t think an international organization like the U.N. could deal with a rogue state like Iraq but it did. The Bush administration ended up making one of the worst foreign policy decisions because of its skepticism and hubris that only it could resolve the problem of Saddam Hussein.
Disarming Iraq is a very interesting read going through the ins and outs of the two inspection regimes in Iraq and the politics surrounding them. The inspectors proved far more efficient than anyone suspected and was the only group trying to take an objective view of Iraq. The United States on the other hand acted against the U.N.’s work in the 1990s and 2000s because as a superpower it thought it knew best. Blix’s book is an argument for a multilateral approach to resolving international issues. He provides many good points as the U.S. proved to be so wrong about Iraq.
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