THE scientific invasion of Iraq has begun. The UN inspectors who arrived in Baghdad last week are the latest and most ambitious an embodiment of an idea born of the nuclear era: that conflict can be curbed by limiting certain weapons technologies, and that those limits can be policed by inspection and monitoring.
Weapons inspection is not a precise science but it does rely on scientific principles and techniques. In Iraq, the aim is to explore the minutiae of the country鈥檚 industries, imports, diseases, radioactivity and a dozen other things to try to make sure it has not been covertly making weapons of mass destruction. What is beginning this week in Baghdad is nothing less than an effort to try science instead of war.
The outcome of this exercise could have a profound impact on future arms control. Success will reinforce the notion that inspection can make disarmament agreements work. Failure could undermine the credibility of verification, and any agreement to limit arms. And failure is a real possibility.
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Every statement by senior US officials shows they expect Iraq not to cooperate with the inspectors. If Iraq is blatantly obstructive, it knows what to expect. But the suspicion is that even the slightest sign of obfuscation from Baghdad 鈥� starting with the declaration next week of its 鈥渄ual-use鈥� technology 鈥� will give the hawks in Washington the excuse to launch an invasion.
Such a move is likely to be interpreted by the US administration as proof that verification is utopian nonsense. 鈥淲e gave cooperation and inspection a chance,鈥� they will say. 鈥淎nd they don鈥檛 work.鈥�
This would be a disaster for the future of disarmament, especially given growing evidence that the US administration distrusts all inspection. This year鈥檚 deal between the US and Russia to cut the numbers of nuclear missiles excludes verification. US delegates to the Biological Weapons Convention this month refused to even hear of it. Congress has passed a law that allows the administration to refuse inspections under the Chemical Weapons Convention. And the administration denies that a ban on nuclear tests is verifiable even though American scientists say it is.
Yet there is ample evidence that inspections do work, even in Iraq. UNSCOM, the army of inspectors sent to Iraq in the 1990s, destroyed more weapons than smart bombs and cruise missiles ever did. Elsewhere, some form of coercive monitoring system seems the only way to deal with the more serious nuclear threat emerging in North Korea 鈥� unless we want to go to war. The scientific invasion force in Baghdad will need all the luck it can get in the coming weeks. But whatever the outcome, weapons inspection 鈥� whether tied to voluntary arms agreements or UN resolutions 鈥� is an idea too valuable to lose.