By Richard Norton Taylor

hatever the outcome of the intense diplomatic manoeuvres at the UN, whatever cover the UN might give to an American attack on Iraq, they cannot hide a fundamental truth. It has profound implications for future relations between states.

Henry Kissinger, archpriest of realpolitik, has called it "revolutionary". Tony Blair appears to have embraced it, though we cannot be sure.

A new doctrine of war has been laid down by the Bush administration that casts aside all the traditional tenets of international law as well as the UN and Nato charters. It abandons the concept of deterrence, considered the bedrock of stability throughout the cold war and cited by successive British governments as justification for their nuclear arsenal.

Ever since September 11 last year, it has been reflected in speeches, notably by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It was spelt out most clearly by Bush himself in June. The US, he said, would no longer rely on "deterrence" and "containment"; it had to be "ready for pre-emptive action".

He added: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilising arms races of other eras pointless."

The new doctrine includes the right of the US to use its unsurpassed, indeed unsurpassable, military power, to overthrow governments by force if, in Washington's view, they attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction - vice-president Dick Cheney has suggested this includes no fewer than 60 states - or harbour terrorists.

At least Kissinger, a historian by profession, appreciated the significance of the new doctrine. Regime change as an aim of military intervention is a direct challenge to the international system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, he recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times. That treaty established the principle of "state sovereignty": that war is justified only by aggression across a national border. Though he argued that Saddam Hussein presented such a danger as to make pre-emptive action "an imperative", he warned: "It is not in the American national interest to establish pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation."

Bush and his advisers have made no such qualification in their quest for a new, aggressive, Pax Americana, something they had wanted from the start but for which they were confident of attracting sufficient US domestic support only after the September 11 attacks.

Bush, who, judging by American opinion polls, desperately needs Britain to join any military action against Iraq, was persuaded by Blair, among others, to follow the UN route, if only for presentational purposes.

"Any action that we in the United Kingdom take will be strictly in accordance with our obligations in international law and under the United Nations charter," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted last week. "Under the charter," he explained, "individual countries can act against others without a security council resolution, for example in the case of self-defence."

His choice of language was deeply misleading. In international law, as in the UN and Nato charters, nations can attack others only in "self-defence". As Kissinger suggests, this has always meant defence against an actual attack by another state, though more recently international lawyers have said it could also cover an imminent attack. As the government's law officers have advised, it certainly does not allow for war for regime change.

Bush, who says his aim is to topple Saddam, has been persuaded by Blair among others to use the UN as a figleaf. It is now incumbent on Blair to say whether, as he colludes with Bush, he accepts the new American doctrine of military intervention. Blair must also explain why he believes Saddam cannot be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction (as he was during the 1991 Gulf war).

The prime minister, as well as his foreign and defence secretaries, must say what they really mean. Do they really believe the concept of deterrence, and the established principles of international law, can be abandoned - with the huge risks that implies - and are they prepared to argue their case with the British public?

Richard Norton Taylor is the UK's leading daily, Guardian's Security Affairs Editor.

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© 2002 Richard Norton Taylor

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