The following is a Postscript (March 2004) to the report (September 2002) of a detailed exercise I undertook to apply the preemptive counter-proliferation guidelines developed by Dr. Barry R. Schneider, director of the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, to the case of Iraq.
The 2003 Iraq War can be described as a preventive counter-proliferation war. Schneider’s guidelines are for a preemptive war. A preventive war is several steps closer to a war of aggression than a preemptive war — it is almost certain that any nation that is the target of a preventive war will view it as a war of aggression. If the Kremlin were inclined to use this terminology, it would call its present war in Ukraine preventive, while Ukraine certainly understands it to be a war of aggression. Therefore, we should expect the guidelines for a preventive war to be more stringent than those for a preemptive war.
I completed and published the exercise findings in September 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq.
~ Charles Knight, 19 March 2023
Postscript, March 2004
I came across Barry Schneider’s guidelines for preemptive counter-proliferation attacks while researching preemption and preventive war issues in 2002. He makes it clear from the beginning that he is in favor of the U.S. having the capability and the policy option to pursue preemptive military counter-proliferation actions against what he calls “radical states.” But he also recognizes the inherent dangers in preemptive counter-proliferation actions: he developed his set of guidelines to help minimize the chances of bad policy decisions and adverse outcomes. Therefore his guidelines offered an ideal tool with which to assess the military action that the Bush administration appeared intent on pursuing against Iraq.
Once I decided to apply Schneider’s guidelines to the case of Iraq I thought it important to bring all the objectivity I could muster to the task. Therefore I sought out views and evidence which cut multiple ways to answering particular guideline questions. I also encouraged readers to make their own summary assessments.
A retrospective reading of the report will reveal that its pre-war assessment of the situation is quite close to what was revealed by post-war arms searches and assessments (see WMD in Iraq: evidence and implications for a January 2004 review of evidence.) The one error that stands out was in estimating that “probably yes” Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. The assessment said this:
Probably Yes. Chemical and biological weapons are generally thought to have less strategic importance than nuclear weapons. Iraq has had chemical and biological capabilities for many years and in all its confrontations with the U.S. has refrained from using them. U.N. inspectors working from 1991 to 1998 found and destroyed essentially all Iraqi chemical and biological weapon production facilities and a very substantial portion of the weapons (the exact portion remains controversial and unknowable until on-the-ground inspections resume and operate for six months or more).
This “yes” has been proven wrong, but the qualifiers are essentially correct.
What stands out from this exercise is that my straightforward analysis of open source material applied according to a reasonable set of guidelines arrives at conclusions that have been proven correct by subsequent events, while officials in Washington with access to a plentitude of secret intelligence data and the skills of seasoned policy analysts proceeded in demonstrable error.
This constitutes rather strong evidence that the problems in Washington were not due to officials led astray by faulty intelligence, but rather due to officials blinded by the ideological fervor they brought to policymaking. It also appears that they were so enthused to use their superior force of arms against Iraq that they did not pause to apply any principled set of guidelines to their decision-making. I can’t know the latter for a fact; perhaps Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney sat down some evening in 2002 to do their own version of a preventive war guidelines exercise. But, if they had, I doubt we would be where we are today.
Finally, it is worth revisiting the last paragraph of my report:
Dr. Schneider’s guidelines are carefully constructed for preemptive war and are not meant to apply to preventive war. No one, to my knowledge, has yet attempted to create a coherent set of guidelines for preventive war that meets, even minimally, the criteria of safety, consistency, effectiveness, legality, and morality that are offered in Barry Schneider’s preemptive war guidelines. It is a matter of grave concern that the Bush administration advocates preventive war without applying any such guidelines in their decision making.
To this day, the Bush administration appears to be simply not interested in applying principled and carefully considered guidelines to its security policies. We should recall Schneider’s admonition to undertake preemptive counter-proliferation only as “the very last resort… To do otherwise,” he says, “would be immoral, set a very dangerous precedent, undermine international law, and could ruin the good reputation of the United States.”
By this sober standard, the Bush administration must be judged reckless in the extreme.