Russian Opposition To The War In Iraq

Introduction

The events of September 11 2001 were major events in the world. The United States ruled by George W. Bush decided to take revenge and launched what would be known as the war on terror. Russia has also declared the struggle against international terrorism as one of its top foreign policy priorities. Just one month after the collapse of the twin towers, the United States attacks Afghanistan to remove al-Qaeda forces and oust the Taliban regime. In a TV broadcast to the Russian people on 24 September 2001, Putin described the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the US as "barbaric" (Kendall 2001: 161), and said 'Russia would provide all the information at its disposal about terrorist bases, and its secret services would co-operate fully with the west' (Sakwa 2004: 216). Also, Russia agreed to allow the US a presence in Central Asia (Donaldson and Nogee 2005: 360). The forms of US-Russia co-operation on Afghanistan were varied, including: pressure to force the Taliban, the country’s de facto government, to change its policies on terrorism and narcotics; UN sanctions; and a bilateral working group with a focus on terrorist threats coming from Afghanistan (Stepanova 2001). The main reason that led Russia to support the war in Afghanistan was that it hoped to increase its influence in Afghanistan and be in a better position to reduce the terrorist threat to Russia itself (Bowker 2007). However, when the United States decided to attack Iraq, Russia opposed the war. Putin made this choice for several reasons, and I will highlight the more important ones in this essay.

Russia and Iraq

Moscow's relations with Iraq were particularly close and complex (Bowker 2007). Baghdad had been a close ally of th e USSR since 1958, formalizing an ever closer relationship in 1972 when the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation was signed. Economic and military ties remained close through the period even though diplomatic relations soured in the late 1970s as a result of the Ba’ath party's brutal repression of Iraqi communists. Moreover, during the Gulf War, when Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, Moscow was deeply divided over how to deal with the crisis when it first broke (Bowker 2007: 39), but Moscow believed that Iraq had violated international law. Consequently, Moscow supported all the UN Security Council resolutions relating to the crisis (ibid: 1: 47). However, Iraq's relations with the West deteriorated once again in December 1998. This followed Iraq's failure to comply fully with the requirements of UN weapons inspectors, and the United States and the United Kingdom had launched missile strikes against Iraqi targets. President Yeltsin complained that both the UK and the USA had "crudely violated the UN Charter". The Russian government then withdrew its ambassadors from London and Washington (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 73). The Kremlin continued to speak out against the use of force against the Saddam regime in the early years of the new century, unless such action had been taken with the authorization of the Security Council (ibid:2: 73).

One month before the war, a joint Franco-German-Russian statement opposed the use of force so as long as the weapons inspectors were continuing their work (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 73). Two weeks later, when meeting the German Chancellor in Moscow, Putin made it clear that Russia would refuse to support a new UN resolution that opened the way to the automatic use of force (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 73). When the war started, Moscow condemned Washington and the Kremlin was sharply critical. The Duma described the war as an act of "aggression" (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 73).

Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction

The official US justification for war on Iraq was Saddam Hussein's alleged development of WMDs. In fact, Saddam had sought to have WMDs and he had tried to develop these kinds of weapons in the 1980s. Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, although it is among the states that are known to have developed nuclear weapons (Baylis and Smith: 2001: 86). Furthermore, following the Persian Gulf War of 1991, it was discovered that Iraq had developed a large-scale clandestine nuclear weapons programme, which had not been declared to the IAEA (Baylis and Smith: 2001: 426). By the late 1990s, problems had emerged over access to particular sites in Iraq. This led to the withdrawal of United Nations Special Committee inspectors. In December 1998, the United Kingdom and United States took military enforcement action against Iraq to force it to comply with UN Resolutions (ibid: 2: 426). Until late 2002, Saddam had not complied fully with the requirements of UN weapons inspectors, however, in September 2002, at the very time when war seemed to be approaching, he allowed the UN inspectors to return to Iraq without conditions. He also provided the UN with a detailed dossier in which he claimed that Iraq had fully complied with UNSCR 687 and had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons.

Moscow doubted that Saddam had WMDs that could threaten the stability of the region; Putin said that Russia had no reliable evidence that Iraq had WMDs and he doubted that Saddam had the capability to rapidly produce nuclear weapons (ITAR-TASS 11 October 2002).

Russian Position in the World

Russia knew it would not suffer any adverse consequences from its opposition to the war, and that such opposition would help it to maintain its position in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Most Muslims, around the globe, oppose the war; many believe that the US war on Iraq was for power and for economic reasons. Although most of them do not like the Ba’ath regime, and Saddam in particular, they sympathize with the people of Iraq, and consider the war unjust. In general, rulers of Muslim countries were indecisive about the war. Officially, Saudi Arabia wished to see Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime go, but feared the aftermath (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 153). Syria opposed the war and refused to submit to Washington's demand for co-operation (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 129). Syria's UN ambassador, Makhail Wehbe, said he believed that the evidence presented by the United States to the Security Council on Iraq's weapons had been fabricated. Syrian commentators explained that none of Iraq's neighbours felt it was a threat, and that weapons of mass destruction were a mere pretext for a war motivated by the interests of Israel and the US companies that hoped to profit from post-war reconstruction contracts (Fawn and Hinnebusch 2006: 131). Moreover, the Jordanian government publicly opposed the war against Iraq. The King stressed to the United