P.O. Box 2205
TOMERONG NSW 2540
7 September 2003
The Hon
Alexander Downer MP
Minister for
Foreign Affairs and Trade
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT
2600
Dear Alexander
Some time ago I
heard you remark in the course of a radio interview that you did not know what
those people who had opposed war with Iraq now thought about it.
I have been
remiss in not writing sooner to let you know.
I
wrote to the Prime Minister in February
I
said in a speech in Nowra on Palm Sunday
I
have found no reason to alter that judgment.
Around
20 years ago, when the present Israeli Prime Minister was Defence Minister, he
was opposed, as is his nature, to negotiation, and especially was then opposed
to negotiating with Arafat, who was then in a weak position and wanted to
negotiate. So Israel invaded Lebanon. Getting into Lebanon was a piece of cake,
as was getting into Iraq more recently, more or less. Back then, ONA’s
representative came to the Foreign Affairs division heads meeting and told us
that Israel’s neat aims were these and those and Israel would be out of
Lebanon in such and such brief time. “No,” I said, “they will
be stuck in Lebanon for a very long time, and they will import into Israel all
the problems of Lebanon.” I have seen no reason since to alter that
judgment either.
I
have become increasingly of the view since that it is in the nature of modern
war that it tends, more than anything else - certainly it does not tend to
‘victory’ - to import into the righteous invading countries the
problems you seek to eliminate by invading.
You
will of course be able to say: “See, I told you terrorism was rising and
we had to act.” But at some point you will have to acknowledge some
responsibility for that: validating the use of violence to pursue personally
defined righteous objectives, then steering the focus of foreign policy to a
singularity of security mind-set such as we had in the 1950s.
In
asserting a right to invade Iraq, you asserted a doctrine of old-fashioned
exclusive state powers. But we live in a world much changed, the role of the
state and individual altered by processes of globalisation. Your assertion
of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate
the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly
by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest,
in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security
issue but a large ethical dimension. The security mantra you impose will have
a pervasive and persistent effect comparable to that of McCarthyism through
the 1950s and beyond.
I am
also still of the view that since September 2001 we have been watching events
and strategic responses unfolding as at the outbreak of war in 1914:
•
Delusions of moral rectitude.
•
Defence of imperial status quo.
•
Nothing but narrow military options.
•
Resort to alliances, hostility to thought.
•
Vilification of the enemy, climate of fear and promotion of paranoia.
•
Simplistic notions of victory, expectations of speedy end.
•
Failure to address real wider issues.
•
Enveloping sea of violence.
John Kennedy
asked his National Security Council members to read Barbara Tuchman’s
history of the onset of the First World War - to consider the problems arising
when policy options are largely military. Such wisdom contributed to war
avoidance when the Cuban Missile Crisis arose.
Tuchman, later,
in the Viet Nam period, wrote a book called The March of Folly regarding the tendency of states to
pursue deliberately courses of action contrary to national interest. This is
manifestly a time when your government, and the United States Government, is acting
in such a manner.
For the most
part, all our lives, and all our foreign policy and national identity, are the
sum of small decisions. There are rare moments when leaders have the
opportunity to shift and shape the way nations think about life and the world.
This is one of those moments. Your contribution will be measured by history. It
lacks vision.
Yours sincerely
Dennis Argall