Why I Had to
Leave the Cabinet
By
Robin Cook
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental
principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe
in an international community based on binding rules and institutions,
we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient
to us.
I cannot defend a war with
neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the
determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure
a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure,
we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has
been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However,
it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany
is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we
signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We
delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military
action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that
Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of
the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato.
Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic
isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part
of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than
I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished
at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration
of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower.
Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral
agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international
partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is
divided. The security council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties
of war without a single shot yet being fired.
The threshold for war should
always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in
the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing
campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties
will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's military
strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf
war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak
that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are
so weak, so demoralized and so badly equipped that the war will be over
in days.
We cannot base our military
strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify
pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a serious threat. Iraq probably
has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense
of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered
against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological
toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since
the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British
government built his chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that
we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has
been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it
necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition to complete
his weapons program is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that
Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience
is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242 called on
Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
We do not express the same
impatience with the persis tent refusal of Israel to comply. What has
come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the
hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been
elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to action
in Iraq.
I believe the prevailing
mood of the British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam Hussein
is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear and present
danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be given a chance. And
they are suspicious that they are being pushed hurriedly into conflict
by a US administration with an agenda of its own. Above all, they are
uneasy at Britain taking part in a military adventure without a broader
international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional
allies. It has been a favorite theme of commentators that the House
of Commons has lost its central role in British politics. Nothing could
better demonstrate that they are wrong than for parliament to stop the
commitment of British troops to a war that has neither international
authority nor domestic support.
March 18, 2003
Robin Cook was, the leader
of the House of Commons