I recently received this email from Mike Watkins, who teaches negotations at HBS:
I am in complete agreement with the approach recommended by former Secretary of State James Baker in his op-ed piece below.
I strongly believe that the administration has to lay out the options and make "the case" clear to the American public. Key questions to be answered include:
* What exactly is the threat posed by Iraq in the short and medium term?
* How critical is it to act now and what are the options?
* Why doesn't it make sense to work through the UN?
* How will a unilateral US (or US/Britain) attack on Iraq likely to impact the broader war on terrorism and the situation in the Middle East?
* How will it impact the stability of Pakistan (with its nuclear weapons) and Saudi Arabia (with its oil)
* Critically, will an attack make it more or less likely that weapons of mass destruction will be used or fall into the hands of the wrong people (e.g. through a breakdown of control over them in Iraq).
* Critically, will an attack make it more or less likely that another major terrorist attack will occur in the US?
If the case can't be made publicly, then we have a big problem. It's simply not acceptable to hide behind the "we have the intelligence but can't show it to you" gambit. If the case can be made, I will be the first one to vote for war.
If you agree, please pass this e-mail along to others. The stakes are very high.
You can read James Baker's piece at the NYT here. Update: another email from Prof. Watkins:
As is probably obvious, I'm very concerned that the administration is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy concerning the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq or their transfer to terrorists.
As we approach a tipping point, events could easily take on a life of their own. Suppose Hussein decides that an attack is inevitable (or just that he's ready to go out with a bang), what might he do? He might give a very small amount of anthrax or nerve gas to Palestinian terrorists so they can distribute it somewhere in Israel and cause a panic, and be linked, perhaps intentionally, back to the Iraqis. What happens then?
The situation reminds me of the lead-up to WWI where concerns about preemptive attack created a failure of deterence. All it took was a flashpoint event in the Balkans to create an unstoppable escalation dynamic toward war.
But then maybe I'm just a pessimist.
| Iraq | War |
