ABSTRACT
The two cases of the Gulf Crisis and the Iraq Crisis provide us with a study of contrasts with respect to US standing as a leader of international society. Whilst the first case demonstrated widespread followership among a broad spectrum of states, the second was marked by a revolt against US leadership aspirations by foes and friends alike. In the Iraq Crisis, the US showed a very belated commitment to lead the community to disarm Iraq in September 2002, after many months in which a unilateral right to act was asserted in both domestic and international forums. When it did seek the support of the international community, it was able to obtain only partial support for its vision for the solution to the Iraq problem. Consensus in the Security Council was achieved in relation to the goal sought – that is, the goal of ensuring that Iraq was disarmed of any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons capabilities (weapons of mass destruction or ‘WMD’) it may have retained after 1991, or re-established after 1998. However, the US vision on the means to be used to secure Iraqi disarmament was decisively rejected, with the US being unable to convince a majority of states in the Council that the Iraqi threat was so grave as to require the abandonment of the inspections process in favour of the use of force. Whilst the US was able to convince a small number of states to join in the forceful removal of the Hussein regime, the depth of this coalition was exposed by the paucity of real burdensharing in all respects in both waging war and reconstructing Iraq. As such, the Iraq Crisis provides us with a valuable case study of both the assertion of hegemonic leadership by the US, and the failure to recognise this role by the majority of the international community. In this chapter we focus on the question of whether normative beliefs about legitimate behaviour guided decisions by states to reject US leadership. Here we are again seeking to test the explanatory value of a conceptualisation of hegemony as a socially constituted and regulated leadership role within international society. In the following chapter we will test the veracity of the competing conceptualisation of hegemony as a dominance relationship, by looking for material motivations for followership or the rejection of US leadership. Our overarching goal is to assess which approach offers the most persuasive explanation of the Iraq Crisis. This chapter will look for evidence of hegemony as a relation of leadership by investigating whether there is a substantial link between the normative beliefs
of states and the rejection of US leadership in the Iraq Crisis. We hypothesise that a majority of states rejected the US vision for the resolution of the Iraq problem because of their normative commitments to the core prohibition on the use of force and to the peaceful settlement of disputes reflected in the UN Charter. We also hypothesise that US leadership was rejected in this case because the US’s behaviour did not conform to the expectations of proper behaviour associated with the role of hegemonic leadership. Essential to this role of leadership is the expectation that a hegemon seeks leadership primarily to achieve the common interest of all states, rather than to achieve its own parochial interests. To find evidence of normative beliefs, attention is again given to the arguments put forward by members of the Security Council and the broader UN membership to justify the important decisions made by the Council throughout the crisis. Because motives for action are notoriously mixed, our standard for success here is whether an explanation of the Iraq Crisis is substantially deficient without taking account of the normative beliefs of states with regard to legitimate conduct in international relations. The following chapter will be divided into two sections representing the important decision-points during the crisis as dealt with by the Security Council. First, we will examine the lead up to the unanimous decision to pass Resolution 1441. Here the contested issue was whether the situation should be framed as one that threatened international peace and security, an issue that necessarily involved a normative assessment of Iraqi behaviour. Second, we will examine the debates over what means would be used to disarm Iraq. Focus is given to the meetings of the Council convened after presentation of the first and second reports of the inspectors of the IAEA and UNMOVIC. The issue of contention here was whether to escalate the means used to enforce Iraqi disarmament from a robust inspections process to the threat and use of force. The chapter will conclude that there is strong evidence to suggest that US leadership was rejected on normative grounds. Whilst the US was able to gain support for the view that potential Iraqi re-armament posed a threat to international peace and security, it was unable to gain support for its choice of means to achieve disarmament. Here internationally accepted norms about the legitimate use of force and the peaceful settlement of disputes guided a majority of states to reject the US position. The unilateralist approach taken by the US to resolve the Iraq problem also undermined the persuasiveness of its vision, by fuelling distrust of its motives in seeking leadership. States ultimately declined to recognise US assertions of leadership of the international community because they had little confidence that leadership was sought for the right reasons, i.e. to achieve the common good. Subordinate states did not subsequently feel obligated to assist the US in its goal of disarming Iraq through forcible regime change.
