The Whackiest Little Constitutional Monarchy in the West

Wednesday, 5 February 2003

(Part 2 of my "just war" series. Part 1 is here).

Before I start on the issue of proper authority in this personal inquiry into whether a war on Iraq would be a just war it's important to state an important reservation about this criterion. It can be best expressed by posing the question, do the people of Iraq have the "proper authority" to engage in a civil war to overthrow Saddam Hussein? This is quite separate from the question of whether they have just cause (to which the answer is an unqualified yes): the question is concerned very specifically with the conduct of politics (in this case by revolutionary means) and who is entitled to make the decision to take a nation, or group of nations, to war. In the case of a civil war or insurrection, there is an obvious problem if we define "proper authority" so narrowly as to rule out revolution when it is the only means to get rid of an oppressive government. We cannot avoid the difficulties this presents by making an arbitrary distinction between the hypothetical Iraqi revolution and a declaration of war between states: if proper authority is an issue in the first case, it remains in issue in the second.

So it's tempting to dispense with considering whether a war on Iraq is "properly authorised" or at least put it into the too hard basket to be considered at some indeterminate future date. This temptation is especially strong now that Parliament is sitting and there has been some opportunity for the issues to be debated there: any question of "proper authority" in the Australian context appears to be moot in the current circumstances. But here I'm getting ahead of myself. First we need to be clear on what questions we'll be addressing under the head of proper authority.

There are only two: one is the question of whether the US and its allies can be considered to be acting with proper authority if they act without UN sanction, the other is whether the Australian government can be considered to have acted with proper authority in its actions in support of the US so far. On the first question, 76% of the Australian public says no, but to rely on the opinion polling is to make a lazy argument or not to make an argument at all. At issue is where the proper authority resides if it does not reside in the UN. And does it reside in the UN in the first place?

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