Usually when I think about the debacle of the White House warning the world of Iraq’s massive stockpiles of WMD, I consider the political consequences here in the U.S.
The Washington Post ran a terrific front-page article this morning, however, which raised a more important point: The Bush administration’s inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — after public statements declaring an imminent threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — has begun to harm the credibility abroad of the United States and of American intelligence, according to foreign policy experts in both parties.
It’s only common sense. The more Bush has warned us of threats that don’t really exist, the less likely it is for our friends (and enemies) around the world to take Bush’s word seriously in the future.
Republicans in the U.S. may be generously forgiving when it comes to Bush’s deceptions in the buildup towards our invasion, but the same cannot be said of international observers and foreign governments.
[A] range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the war, said the long-term consequences of the administration’s rhetoric could be severe overseas — especially because the war was waged without the backing of the United Nations and was opposed by large majorities, even in countries run by leaders that supported the invasion.
“The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious,” said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between the administration’s rhetoric and the postwar findings threaten Bush’s doctrine of “preemption,” which envisions attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat.
The doctrine “rests not just on solid intelligence,” Adelman said, but “also on the credibility that the intelligence is solid.”
Already, in the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, China has rejected U.S. intelligence that North Korea has a secret program to enrich uranium for use in weapons. China is a key player in resolving the North Korean standoff, but its refusal to embrace the U.S. intelligence has disappointed U.S. officials and could complicate negotiations to eliminate North Korea’s weapons programs.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the same problem could occur if the United States presses for action against alleged weapons programs in Iran and Syria. The solution, he said, is to let international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency take the lead in making the case, as has happened thus far in Iran, and also to be willing to share more of the intelligence with other countries.
The inability to find suspected weapons “has to make it more difficult on some future occasion if the United States argues the intelligence warrants something controversial, like a preventive attack,” said Haass, a Republican who was head of policy planning for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell when the war started. “The result is we’ve made the bar higher for ourselves and we have to expect greater skepticism in the future.”