Artículo de "The Economist" del 27-2-03

As to one, Mr Hussein shows no sign of blinking yet. In a television interview this week, he said he would prefer death to exile and repeated his claim to have no weapons of mass destruction. He may change his tune when he is sure the alternative is destruction in an American-led invasion, but the new outbreak of disunity in the Security Council can only have made him feel that he has more time to play with.

The French defence

What, then, about the third thing that might keep Saddam in power: the war-averting compromise put to the Security Council in a French memorandum and supported by Germany, Russia and China? This argues that the inspectors have only just started their work, are already making progress, and might still disarm Iraq peacefully if they have the time and resources. France says it accepts that the inspections must not go on indefinitely. But whereas the Americans have said that Iraq has "weeks rather than months" the French envisage at least four more months. And in the meantime they see no reason why they should support the new resolution from America, Britain and Spain, which by stating the obvious—Iraq is in breach of 1441—is plainly intended to pave the way for war.

It is no wonder that the French approach has broad appeal. Iraq's peaceful disarmament is the outcome everybody, including the Americans and British, says they want. But the idea that this can be achieved simply by increasing the time and resources for inspections is surely an illusion. Time and resources can make a difference to the outcome of the inspections only if you assume (a) that Saddam aims to hold on to his forbidden weapons and (b) that in spite of this, the inspectors will eventually be able to find them anyway.

If Saddam did not intend to hold on to any of his weapons, he could simply have given the UN the full and accurate declaration of what he had, as Resolution 1441 required. Instead, as Hans Blix, the chief inspector, has testified, he submitted a declaration full of unanswered questions. As to (b), if Iraq does not tell the inspectors where its weapons are, how can any number of inspectors know where to find them? Even if they found some, how would they know when they had found the lot? In its own memorandum, France acknowledges the need for the "full and active" co-operation Iraq has so far withheld. But handing the inspectors the odd "misplaced" biological bomb or batch of papers, as Iraq did this week, is a pretence of co-operation that could drag on for years.

How to make everyone a loser

You might think that only the credulous (or an inspector) would put as much faith as France's President Jacques Chirac now says he does in further inspections. But then only the credulous take the fight over the inspectors at face value. In fact this has become a proxy for two other arguments. One is whether a war would be justified even if it became absolutely clear that Saddam had no intention of disarming peacefully. The other stretches beyond the question of Iraq and has to do with how the rest of world plans to accommodate itself to post-cold-war, post-September 11th American power. On both issues, Mr Chirac can be forgiven for thinking that he is on a winning streak. On both he is probably riding for a fall.

On whether a war might be justified at some stage, Mr Chirac has so far been able to enjoy having it both ways. He is the toast of the peaceniks for having proposed a way to avoid a war many of them will oppose in any circumstances. But as the leader of one of Europe's martial nations, he has not ruled out French participation in a war if it should become plain that Saddam will not submit in any other way. This is fine work, while it lasts. But then? If the moment comes for France to throw in its lot with the war party, Mr Chirac will need a jolly good argument to explain his reversal to those who see him simply as the defender of the peace.

As to American power, Mr Chirac has won glowing reviews as the man who is doing a fair job of taking the superpower down a peg or two. France would not be France if its president did not occasionally try to puncture the grandiosity of an America accused as ever of taking the acquiescence of smaller nations for granted. But what if, now that he has picked this particular fight, Mr Chirac proceeds to lose it?

This could now happen in very short order. America and Britain have given themselves only a couple of weeks to pass their new resolution. Should they fail—either because they cannot muster a majority or because another of the permanent five casts a veto—Mr Bush will almost certainly feel compelled to fulfil his promise to go to war anyway. If the war goes badly, bringing disaster all round, Mr Chirac will be able to claim a barren sort of vindication. But if it goes even half-way towards achieving Mr Bush's vision of a democratic future for the Middle East (see article), France will have absented itself from a history-changing intervention in a part of the world where it has long claimed a special influence. It will also have demonstrated the impotence of the Security Council, the very institution from which the French (and British) derive so much standing by virtue of being veto-wielding members.

Some will say that Mr Chirac is right to run this risk to defend the integrity of the Security Council against the bullying of the Americans. But if this was his aim, Iraq was precisely the wrong fight for him to pick. Having defied the Security Council for a dozen years, Iraq's dictator has just failed to comply with a unanimous resolution threatening him with "serious consequences". The integrity of the Security Council now depends on it allowing America to use its power to enforce the council's will, not on changing its mind in order to make the Americans resort to a "coalition of the willing" outside its authority. There is still time for Mr Chirac to reconsider. In both the world's interest and France's own, he should do so.