Un Intervention Processes in Iraq: A Discursive Approach to International Relations by Kerstin Eppert

Author:Kerstin Eppert [Eppert, Kerstin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Diplomacy, General, Iraq, Political Science, Middle East, History, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9780429785245
Google: 7kOEDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 45135721
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Preparing the stage? UN contingency planning …

On February 13, 2003, subsequently to a closed meeting of Deputy SG Louise Fréchette and the Security Council, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Under-Secretary General Kenzo Oshima, held a press briefing in which he gave information about the UN’s contingency planning for humanitarian preparedness in case of “a potential conflict” in Iraq (UN OCHA, February 13, 2003).61 The information provided was also documented in a press release. As genre and practice, press briefings and press releases allow the institution to communicate information on a specific item to a broad and, in this case, international public. In view of the ongoing struggle within the Council to reinforce support for the continuation of the inspections—a struggle that carried on over several subsequent sessions—and of the wider international political and civil society demonstrations against US-led intervention in Iraq, the communication of organizational preparedness in case of war was very ambivalent. On the one hand, Oshima emphasized the SG’s continuing belief that “inspections can work” (ibid.) and outlined the devastating consequences of military intervention in terms of displacement, the aggravation of the—already unmanageable—humanitarian situation and the contingency of unforeseeable consequences. This representation of a post-intervention Iraq drew on the negative consequences of a war for the country’s population and the ensuing humanitarian disaster that would require a response by the international community. Implicitly, it thus supported non-intervention in Iraq. On the other hand, if deconstructed with a view to its relevance for the reproduction of UN intervention discourses and practices on Iraq, the contingency planning laid out the organization’s positioning in the case of an intervention. Not only did it invoke preparations for the failure of inspections, it communicated the nature of the organization’s engagement during and after a potential intervention, with very concrete indications of actions to be taken and estimations of populations at risk, supplies needed, funds required, etc. The speakers, that is, Oshima as a primary speaker, and Fréchette as a reference speaker to whom Oshima referred, were aware of the ambivalence of their communication and, therefore, attempted to diffuse the impression of supporting the preparations for war, first by reiterating the belief that a peaceful settlement of the disarmament issue in Iraq was still possible and that inspections might still work and, second, by justifying the planning on humanitarian grounds. Yet these discursive links to non-intervention were destabilized and discredited by the actual practice of presenting contingency plans in the case of intervention. Through the briefing, the organization actualized its claimed unique legitimacy and competence to deal with the problem of Iraq on behalf of the international community and actualized its relevance in the evolving political context both within and outside the Council.

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