by Kevin O'Neill, LLB, MSc

Preface

Although the current war against Saddam Hussein appears to be progressing well, it is suggested that the argument in this article on Socialist condemnation of UN sanctions remains relevant because of the underlying political position which it exposes. This position will undoubtedly continue to manifest itself in the remainder and aftermath of the war.

Abstract

Were the United States and Britain able to turn back the clock and undo the UN regime of sanctions against Iraq, would they also be able to avert the relentless and unforgiving attacks of their Socialist opponents? Indeed would the latter have given Washington and Whitehall their blessing and support in any attempt to remove Saddam Hussein's brutal regime by less severe means? An answer to these questions is offered here by supplying an alternative history of government action and Left-wing response.

The Problem of Absent Data

In his investigation into the causes of why people form, and persist in, questionable beliefs, Thomas Gilovich notes the particular problem of absent data as a determining factor of such beliefs. Of relevance to our discussion here of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy, Gilovich notes, “A fundamental difficulty with effective policy evaluation is that we rarely get to observe what would have happened if the policy had not been put into effect. Policies are not implemented as controlled experiments”¹.

The different outcome we would like to determine here is the Socialist response to an alternative sanctions policy from the British and American governments. What we want to discover is, how would the Socialists have perceived “the West” (for the sake of brevity) had the latter taken a more lenient approach towards Saddam?

Sources

The Oxford-based magazine, New Internationalist, is recommended by The Guardian's education site as “radical but balanced”, and providing “an essential counterpoint for those looking at global political...issues”. This magazine will be our principal source for the Left-wing perspective on sanctions as a foreign policy tool, which we will supplement with the views of two individual observers. All three sources used were randomly selected during the author's readings on the subject of the effectiveness of government-imposed economic sanctions.

What Has Happened

In the September 1999 issue of New Internationalist, Nikki van der Gaag writes, “The sanctions [against Saddam Hussein's Iraq] are the most draconian ever imposed by the United Nations”². She further asserts that they are, “the only sanctions this century imposed as a complete embargo on all trade (with a few exceptions) rather than just an embargo on particular goods or areas”.

That the situation in Iraq is a grave one is corroborated in his A History of Iraq by political studies lecturer, Charles Tripp: “[T]he living conditions and health problems inside Iraq...were causing real concern at the UN and elsewhere about the morality of economic sanctions”. As a result of this, Tripp says, the “dominant powers at the UN” instituted an 'oil for food' programme³.

What Could Have Happened, and the Potential Socialist Response

To supply the control for our experiment, we will take an example from a decade earlier (the 1980s) - a situation in which “the West” showed great concern to avoid the kind of grave consequences just outlined. For the sake of proper comparison, we will substitute “Iraqi” for the people actually involved in that case.

Scenario A – No Sanctions

Our first 'exhibit' is a quote attributed to the British prime minister:

“I find nothing moral about people sitting in comfortable circumstances...with good salaries, inflation-proof pensions, good jobs, saying that we, as a matter of morality, will put x hundred thousand Iraqi people out of work, knowing that this could lead to starvation, poverty and unemployment, and even greater violence”⁴. This view was maintained by the prime minister in spite of opposition from “[m]ost of the UN”, who were, “thirsting for...a tough regime of economic sanctions”⁵.

For a “balanced” view of this argument, let us turn to The Guardian's political columnist, Hugo Young, from whose biography of the then prime minister this quote is taken. As he saw it, “Opposing UN demands was a respectable way of aligning oneself with latent racialism at home”⁶.

Now, I know what you are thinking - did we miss a step here? What happened to the Christian presumption of innocence? Young expands his point: “[The prime minister] had found, in his perversity, the elixir of political recovery”, since his views on the UN were “probably felt by a majority of the electorate”⁷. That is, Hugo Young, who has taken the witness's statement of reluctance to impose sanctions and deduced racism therefrom, subsequently uses that fallacy to describe the prime minister's “perversity”.

That is not reasoning - that is just calumny. Were Young, however, to be consistent in his false thinking, one could only conclude from it that if Mr. Blair had avoided “draconian” sanctions against Iraq, or if he had abandoned them out of moral concern for “the living conditions and health problems inside [the country]”, he too would have risked being condemned by at least one Left-wing columnist as a “racist”. Yet the fact that he has not abandoned them provokes this reaction from Young: “Sanctions remain, but the policy is bankrupt. In eight years, sanctions have achieved none of the objectives that were supposed to be accomplished in a few months”⁸.

Scenario B – Limited Sanctions

Perhaps, though, there is a middle ground between ludicrous slurs and righteous condemnation: perhaps limited sanctions are the answer. Presenting historical exhibit 'B', from the Republican president of the United States:

“Yes, we in America, because of what we are and what we stand for, have influence to do good. We also have immense potential to make things worse. Before taking fateful steps, we must ponder the key question: Are we helping to change the system? Or are we punishing the Iraqi people whom we seek to help? American policy through several administrations has been to use our influence and our leverage against Saddam Hussein, not against innocent people who are the victims of Saddam Hussein”⁹.

This wise counsel (and it surely is wise, given the present circumstances described by the New Internationalist and alluded to above by Hugo Young?) accompanied the president's announcement of a limited sanctions regime against the target nation. A direct response to this counsel was given in the same newspaper source by a Nobel Peace Prize winner, New Internationalist reader and Anglican archbishop of the target nation itself. Managing to tear himself away from his primary task of explaining to the world the efficacy of God's grace in redeeming mankind from the slavery of sin, the archbishop made the following cautious judgment on the state of the president's conscience: “I think I should say now he is a racist pure and simple”¹⁰.

There is that word again! These are not even ad hominem attacks on the British and American leaders. An ad hominem attack is where a true but irrelevant part of an opponent's history or character is brought up in a fallacious attempt to refute the actual point at issue. With all due respect to his grace, he is just making this up. As an award-winning man of peace, however, can he not envisage a less harmful foreign policy solution than “tough sanctions”? Apparently not: “Get rid of constructive engagement, apply to South Africa the policies you apply to Nicaragua, and voila, apartheid will end”. So since President Bush has done just that with Saddam Hussein, what does the archbishop do? He signs a full-page advert in the International Herald Tribune, complete with picture of little girl, headed: “No more economic sanctions. The Iraqi people have suffered enough!”¹¹.

Let us take a moment here. When his prize-winning grace wanted sanctions what did he say of the president's limited embargo? “I'm not impressed.... The [target nation's] government is laughing all the way to the bank. They know it's not even a flea bite”¹². (This only one year after receiving his Nobel laureate.) And when the US and Britain, through the UN, impose tougher sanctions, what does he do? Does he use constructive language, something of the order of, “Look, I thought what you did in Nicaragua was right, but it is not working now?” No. He signs an angry document stating that “Iraqis need jobs and living wages”. That sounds like the sort of argument Hugo Young would denounce as “racist”.

Returning to 1999, we read Nikki van der Gaag's detailed description of the desperate plight of one Iraqi family under the UN embargo: “Dina, aged 7, is keen to show me her drawings, which are detailed and imaginative. Many are the princesses and mermaids, mummies, daddies and school friends that you would expect from someone her age. But then I come across one of a soldier. He is standing on the right of the page and seemed to be shooting something on the left. ‘What is this?’ I ask her. She whispered something shyly. Her parents are clearly embarrassed. ‘She says this is an American soldier and he is shooting the flowers.’ ‘But why?’ ‘She says Americans don’t like flowers’.”

Preliminary Conclusion

It seems that, when it comes to economic sanctions, the American and British governments are damned as “racists” if they don't, and damned as “flower-killers” if they do. Our experiment has reached a preliminary conclusion. Even after controlling for alternative government policies, we find an unbreakable relationship between American and British action and the Socialist response: what is “wrong” is whatever the liberal democracies of “the West” do; what is “right” is whatever the Socialist “technocrats” want.

Readers probably guessed very quickly that the target nation of the sanctions debate described above was South Africa's apartheid regime (in spite of my attempt to throw them off the scent by hiding the then British prime minister behind the male personal pronoun, and disguising the Commonwealth as the UN). But how did the New Internationalist show its concern for the South African people when sanctions were planned by almost every country except “the West”?

Does it Hurt when we “Oppress” Here? - Questioning the Reliability of Sources

In the May 1986 issue, New Internationalist readers were told that “black South Africans...are clear that we must step up the pressure for economic sanctions by our governments”¹³. Oko Mabasa, an English literacy teacher, was quoted as assuring Western campaigners, “Although I agree that blacks will suffer most in the event of sanctions, you have to be aware that blacks are suffering now. And adding this little suffering to their present plight will almost certainly alleviate things. Only those with full bellies can find justification in the argument against sanctions.... The readiness with which America has applied sanctions to Libya, alongside its reluctance to enforce them against South Africa, is a clear example of the West's hypocrisy”.

So can we take it that the American government has Socialist backing for its sanctions policies against Libya and Nicaragua? And with what confidence did New Internationalist assert that Oko Mabasa was a representative sample of “Black South Africa”¹⁴? Presumably the same confidence with which Hugo Young claims, in scoffing at Mrs. Thatcher's concerns about sanctions - “as if the demand for sanctions did not come as strongly from the overcrowded slums of Soweto as from the well-padded salons of Hampstead or Georgetown”¹⁵.

Writing in the Journal of International Affairs, Bronwen Manby states, on the other hand, “It was a crime to advocate sanctions against South Africa, and therefore polls of black opinion on this point are very unrealistic”¹⁶ (my emphasis). The important point here is that if polls were unrealistic, they were unrealistic from both points of view – for and against sanctions. The absence of reliable statistical data does not make guesses either way any more valid.

Interpreting Results - The Difference between Prudence and Sanctimony

For Hugo Young a distinction must be made between those sanctions which worked, “as in South Africa”, and the failure of sanctions against Iraq owing to “the appalling acts by the Anglo-American military which...have accompanied them”¹⁷. On the example of South Africa, Hufbauer et al. comment that “although some progress has been made, so far [that is, after five years – not “a few months”, Mr. Young] sanctions have not significantly altered the hard reality of apartheid”¹⁸. In his 1999 article, Sanctions on South Africa: What did they do?, Philip I. Levy concludes, “the best one can do is argue that it is implausible that trade sanctions played a significant and positive role. This paper has attempted to do so by offering an alternative interpretation that seems to fit the events more closely and that offers no role for governmentally imposed sanctions”¹⁹.

It is probable that Hugo Young would like to be able to persist in his unreasoned claim that Mrs. Thatcher was a “racist”. This in spite of the fact that she expressed to him personally her concerns in terms which he would apparently have agreed with in the following decade. If he does so persist, with no genuine, non-circular evidence to back up his allegation, then it can only be out of plain wickedness.

The Problem as Analysed by the Socialists

Why, in the space of just over a decade, did the New Internationalist (and individuals such as Hugo Young and Desmond Tutu) feel entitled to put British and American foreign policy between a rock and a hard place? This, a magazine which in its May 1986 edition included contact details for “the main groups” campaigning against P.W. Botha's regime, some of which it blithely advertised as being involved in support for “armed struggle” (helpfully depicted by an icon of a grenade – presumably for use in blowing up a little Afrikaner girl's flowers).

A hint of a possible distinction between the situation in '90s Iraq and that which existed in '80s South Africa is offered by another quotation presented by the magazine as speaking on behalf of “Black South Africa”: “The argument that blacks would be hurt by sanctions is all idle talk.... [A] little suffering added to our burden won't make much difference. [T]his argument...comes from those who have – either directly or indirectly – a stake in the scheme of things. When the system of capitalism, which is the real enemy, is finally crushed, these people will definitely lose something”²⁰ (my emphasis).

In her book, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid, journalist Patti Waldmeir observes that there was a widespread suspicion within all ranks of the ANC that “capitalism” was a handmaiden to apartheid. “This was ironic,” she notes, “given that the National Party was itself a late convert to capitalism: it ran a heavily interventionist economic policy, including nationalization, until the end of the 1980s. Still, capitalism and apartheid were equated in the popular mind”²¹.

So, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's concerns for the people of “capitalist” South Africa were just “idle talk”, the people of Saddam's Socialist Iraq – regardless of the regime's universally acknowledged oppressiveness - “need jobs and living wages”.

Alternative Analysis – Socialism IS the Problem

Waldmeir also provides material for Philip Levy's “alternative interpretation” of the end of apartheid (supra): “The demise of [the Soviet Union]...made South Africa safe for black rule in the eyes of Afrikaners. It removed the last remaining obstacle to talks with the African National Congress, whose commitment to socialism had never been complete in any case but was now seriously eroded by the demise of its ideological mentor”²². In an ironic twist, then, we find Socialism to be the barrier to peace whose removal allowed for Waldmeir's “miracle”.

Mention has been made in this article of the failure of Socialists to apply the presumption of innocence in interpreting the motives of British and American leaders. The reader may, however, remain doubtful as to the motives for, or even the existence of, such unjust treatment. This in itself may be a charitable application of the same presumption of innocence, this time in favour of the Socialist commentators whose opinions are criticised here. It must be remembered, however, that innocence is only a presumption, and presumptions can be rebutted by contradictory evidence, which I have adduced in the form of the commentators' own words. The cumulative groundless assertions, however, of persons such as Hugo Young and Desmond Tutu, that Western leaders are bad people (in the examples here, that they are “racist”) do not amount to evidence of that allegation. Slander multiplied many times over is still slander.

Although proof of motive is not a necessary requirement to obtain a conviction under our law, the reader may still express scepticism regarding my criticisms of the Socialists because they simply cannot believe that there is smoke without fire – that anyone would make an allegation without having supporting evidence. This can be responded to as follows: Firstly, the Socialist is asking you to believe bad things of Western leaders; but if the latter can be bad, why not the former? Why not trust the evidence which you have against the Socialist, instead of ignoring that and trusting the Socialist's circular (and therefore fallacious) accusations against the Western leader? To do the latter is to apply not a presumption, but a whitewash of innocence in favour of those human beings who choose to be Socialists, and an insurmountable cynicism towards other human beings who choose to be Western leaders. This is difficult to justify based on experience of the common nature of human beings in general, and it is not in accordance with the Christian charity which created our legal presumption of innocence in the first place.

To disregard the evidence of one's own eyes is, however, entirely in keeping with the confident Marxist philosophy at the heart of Socialism known as “dialectical materialism". Very briefly, Karl Marx asserted that the Socialist revolution was an historical inevitability arising from his “universal law” of conflict or contradiction. On the one hand you had the bourgeoisie, on the other the proletariat - no room for membership of common humanity here! - and the “inevitable conflict” between these two sides will produce the destruction of the former and the Socialist rule of the latter.

If you wish to make sense of the wilful irrationality displayed by the Socialists in the present analysis, it is surely reasonable to apply this philosophy which lies at the root of the kind of world they would like to see created. So we can present “the West” on the one side, with its legal system incorporating the presumption of innocence, and the Socialists on the other. The “inevitable” conflict between them – inevitable only in the eyes of the Socialist – leaves no room for charitable interpretation of the motives of “the West”. The West must be destroyed as a matter of “scientific” materialism, materialism meaning here denial of the existence of the human soul.

If you think this is all nonsense which could not be further from British political reality, take a look at this page on the British Communist Party Web site, which explains the Marxist “law” of contradiction very openly. As you read it, remember that BCP executive committee member Andrew Murray is the chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, and that, on February 15^th this year, the Coalition managed to organise Britain's largest ever political demonstration.

Here also is a nice example of the Socialist lust for power from the self-deified organisers of the forthcoming London May Day “protest”:

“The rich will not lie down & the powerful will not disappear, neither will they surrender their privilege willingly. In order to create a future worth building we must, collectively, together, as one, destroy that which enslaves, suppresses & hinders us. Mayday is simply a glimpse of that possibility. Our energy is awe-inspiring, extraordinary, limitless. This is still our day”.

Conclusion – This is not a Game

In his “Autobiographical Memoir”, German political philosopher Eric Voegelin flatly states that “[Karl] Marx was consciously an intellectual swindler for the purpose of maintaining an ideology that would permit him to support violent action against human beings with a show of moral indignation”²³.

The irrationalities of the presumption of guilt applied to Western leaders exemplified in this article are, I would submit, the result of a similarly conscious process. No attempt is made to constructively consider the American/British positions in relation either to South Africa or Iraq, even though they, and the consequences to the target nation, are depicted as having shifted from one end of the sanctions spectrum to the other. Such intransigent hostility is a breeding ground for the very conflict it professes to seek an end to (though, as we have seen, conflict is in fact desired by the Marxist as a means to an end) and can only be perceived as the product of sheer hatred.

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