This trend to the pre-emptive use of military force was strengthened by the atrocities of 11 September. In a Special Address to a Joint Session of Congress on 20 September, Bush attributed culpability for the attacks to al-Qaeda and warned the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to deliver all the al-Qaeda leaders present there to the USA or ‘share in their fate’. Bush served notice on the American people that the USA was waging a ‘war on terror’ that would end only when ‘every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated’. The message to the rest of the world was uncompromising: ‘either you are with us or you are with the terrorist … [and] regarded by the United States as a hostile regime’. The European response to the events of 11 September was prompt and perhaps best articulated by the Le Monde headline: ‘Nous Sommes Tous Americains’.
NATO invoked Article V of the Washington Treaty treating the attacks as an attack against them all and pledging support for the USA in ‘such action as it deems necessary’. The EU High Representative for the CFSP declared
‘the European Union stands fi rmly and fully behind the United States’. Such offers of multilateral support and assistance were received warmly by the Bush Administration but were barely called upon in the subsequent war in Afghanistan. It was ‘very much the case of the dog that did not bark, or at least was not allowed to bark by the United States’ (Cox, 2003, p. 527).
This exclusion may be attributed to the exigencies of the situation and the
‘novelty of both the theatre and the type of warfare contemplated’ (Makins, 2003, p. 10) but it was clear that the USA wanted the fl uidity of ‘coalitions of the willing’, not the potential straitjacket of multilateralism.
The war in Afghanistan – or, more accurately, its initial phase – was quickly expedited. Military action began on 7 October with Kabul falling within a week. Within another month al-Qaeda fi ghters within the Tora Bora caves had escaped into bordering Pakistan and in due course an interim government under Hamid Karzai was established. While this opening engagement in the ‘war on terror’ was satisfactorily undertaken, the wider war remained. In his State of the Union Address of 2002, President Bush noted the ‘axis of evil’ of regimes allegedly sponsoring terror, specifi cally North Korea, Iran and Iraq, and linked their activities with WMD proliferation. It was Iraq that commanded the Administration’s attention and energies. Regime change in Iraq was necessary not only for US strategic security interests but for ‘the interest of the world’. In September 2002, the National Security Strategy or ‘Bush Doctrine’ was published. It claimed that America’s ‘enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination’ and pledged pre-emptive action ‘against such emerging threats before they are fully formed’. While espousing a commitment to multilateral institutions, the doctrine held that ‘we will not hesitate to act alone if necessary’ as such unilateral pre-emption was nothing less than
‘a matter of common sense’. The prospects for war with Iraq grew fi rmer throughout the spring of 2003. By August, Vice President Cheney declared that Iraq constituted a ‘mortal threat’ to the USA and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), comprising policy makers and political advisers, was set up to frame the issue of Iraq for public consumption. In early September, the Sunday New York Times quoted anonymous offi cials of the Iraqi nuclear programme: ‘the fi rst sign of a “smoking gun” may be a mushroom cloud’.
The link between Iraq, WMD and international terrorism was explicitly enhanced: ‘Disarming Iraq and the war on terror are not merely related.
Disarming Iraq … is a crucial part of winning the war on terror’ (Deputy Secretary of Defence Wolfowitz, taken from Gellman and Pincus, 2003, p. A9). Such language and insistence were used by the Administration to secure support from the American public and Congress and from the wider world. The Administration made it clear that while domestic support was
essential, international support was desirable but ultimately unnecessary:
‘We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.’ The UN Security Council and some of the European allies proved resistant to the veracity of American
‘evidence’ and reluctant to sanction a pre-emptive strike on a sovereign state. The UNSC did unanimously pass Resolution 1441 in November 2002 condemning the Iraqi regime’s failure to comply with previous Resolutions and reinstating the UN weapons inspectors. The failure of the inspectors to discover any substantive weaponry was interpreted by the US Administration not as evidence of Iraq having disarmed and desisted from its nuclear programme, but of the inspectors’ gullibility in the face of Iraqi deceit and, ultimately, of the weakness of the UN. While Blair’s Britain pledged to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the USA, disquiet and dissent characterized the responses of the majority of EU member and accession states. The UN became convulsed by what has been termed
‘a political disaster which pitted the US against France, Germany and Russia, a number of the “new” states in Europe against a few of the “old”
ones, and European opinion against … “Bush’s War” ’ (Cox, 2003, p. 528).
There had been acquiescence to the passing of UNSC Resolution 1441
‘because the other members of the Security Council were convinced that the US would go to war alone if they didn’t pass it’ (Allin, 2004, p. 653), but many believed that it alone was insuffi cient to provide a legal basis for war.
UNSC Resolution 1441 offered Iraq ‘a fi nal opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations’ and threatened ‘serious consequences’ if it failed to do so. In the case of continued non-compliance, however, it facilitated a recovening ‘to consider the situation’. Opponents to the war argued that UNSCR 1441 was insuffi cient to mandate military action, and thus another resolution was needed. British attempts to break the deadlock by drafting a second resolution were abandoned in the face of implacable resistance, especially from France. France, Russia and China all stated their intention to reject any second resolution that should come before the UNSC. The divisions led to a paralysis of the ESDP, leaving its architecture and the Political and Security Committee ‘entirely at arms length from what was probably the most signifi cant foreign and security policy issue of the entire fi ve year period since Saint Malo’ (Howorth, 2003, p. 180). Once again, Europe failed to speak with a common voice on foreign policy.
In this rancorous environment, the US-led coalition of American, British, Australian and Polish forces went to war against Iraq in March 2003. At the start of May, Bush declared that `Operation Allied Freedom’ was complete in that the allied forces had prevailed albeit ‘diffi cult work’ remained to be done.