The world was outraged by Israel's raid on June 7 1981. "Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified. It represents a grave breach of international law," Margaret Thatcher thundered. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US ambassador to the UN and as stern a lecturer as Britain's then prime minister, described it as "shocking" and compared it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. American newspapers were as fulsome. "Israel's sneak attack... was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression," said the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times called it "state-sponsored terrorism".
The greatest anger erupted at the UN. Israel claimed Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons and it was acting in self-defence, which is legal under Article 51 of the UN charter. Other countries did not agree. They saw no evidence that Iraq's nuclear energy programme, then in its infancy and certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as peaceful, could be described as military, aggressive or directed against a particular country. In any case, pre-emptive action by one country against another country which offers no imminent threat is illegal.
The UN security council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Israeli raid. The US usually vetoes UN attempts to censure Israel but this time Washington joined in. The Reagan administration even blocked deliveries of new F-16s to its close ally. There was an element of hypocrisy in the condemnation of Israel, at least in the US. Reagan sent the F-16s a few months later. But policymakers and ordinary people around the world clearly sensed that Israel's pre-emptive strike took us all to the top of a slippery slope. If pre-emption was accepted as legal, the fragile structure of international peace would be undermined. Any state could attack any other under the pretext that it detected a threat, however distant.
Since then we have begun to slip down the slope. Along with pre-emption, retaliation is also forbidden by international law. States can reply to hostile actions by other states but they may not take reprisals or other punitive military steps unless the hostile action to which they are responding is manifestly part of a military campaign which is intended to continue. A one-off attack is not sufficient justification. So if, after the destruction of Osirak, Saddam Hussein had sent MiGs to bomb Israel's own nuclear reactor, that would also have been illegal.
States have often tried to mingle retaliation and pre-emption and cover their real motives with the justification of self-defence. After a suspected (now proven) Libyan government agent planted a bomb in a Berlin disco which killed an American serviceman in 1986, Reagan ordered US aircraft to bomb Libya. He called his action "pre-emptive" on the grounds there was already a pattern of Libyan terrorist actions. In 1998 after bomb attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. He argued that it was making chemical and biological weapons for Osama bin Laden, who was assumed (now proven) to be behind the embassy bombings. Clinton said there was "compelling evidence" that the Bin Laden network was planning to mount further attacks against Americans, and he was thereafter entitled to act.
But, apart from a few western governments which approved or kept quiet, most states condemned the Reagan and Clinton air strikes. They did not accept them as legitimate self-defence under the UN charter.
After the September 11 attacks in New York and Wash ington last year we slipped further down the slope. The UN security council gave the US approval to take military action against the assumed perpetrators under Article 51. The council still did not accept a right of retaliation but it argued that the September 11 attacks were so massive that they could be perceived as a declaration of intent by the perpetrators to strike again. Washington was therefore entitled to strike back in self-defence. The argument is controversial, but unless it is challenged by a substantial number of states it will stand as a legitimate new interpretation of international law.
Now we have the latest move downhill. In a speech last weekend in the midst of World Cup fever and the Kashmir crisis, President Bush launched his new concept of pre-emption. His speech can claim to be the most chilling statement of his presidency so far. In effect, he retroactively approved the Israeli strike on Osirak and said the US has the right to strike, pre-emptively, at any nation which it decides is developing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorism. It is carte blanche for a war on the world.
Bush Sr once talked about the need for "the vision thing". His son's West Point speech is "the doctrine thing". US officials say it will be fleshed out in a national security strategy document this summer. In this column yesterday Hugo Young highlighted the British defence secretary's recent statement that Britain will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. This was Nato policy during the cold war against a potential advance by conventionally armed Warsaw Pact troops. Nato would, if necessary, cross the nuclear threshold first. Now Geoff Hoon talks of using nuclear weapons against the threat of a chemical and biological attack, but he limited himself to the case where British troops are in a war zone and need protection from imminent danger.
The Bush doctrine is more sweeping. Even without an imminent threat, US troops in the area or hostilities under way, he claims the right to launch military strikes. "Our security will require transforming the military you will lead," he told cadets at West Point. "The military must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price."
Many nations have exploited the "war on terrorism", either to gain favour with Washington or clamp down on dissent. The Bush doctrine goes further. The US president is hijacking the anti-terrorist agenda and crashing it into the most sacred skyscraper in New York: the headquarters of the UN. If his doctrine is not rapidly rejected by other states, preferably those which call themselves Washington's allies, Article 51 of the UN charter will have suffered a mortal blow.