"These are frightening times," Anne-Marie Slaughter '80, dean of the Wilson School, told an overcapacity audience at Dodds Auditorium yesterday. "Whether you think it's worth it or not, whether you think it's justified or not, no one can actually want war."
Slaughter and three other panelists tried to make sense of the war's potential consequences for Iraq, the role of the United Nations and the world economy at a forum sponsored by the Wilson School.
Moderated by associate dean of the Wilson School James Trussell, the panel featured Slaughter, Near Eastern studies professor Michael Doran, economics professor Paul Krugman and Wilson School professor Deborah Yashar. The panelists spoke briefly before fielding questions from the audience.
Doran argued that war is justified and inevitable because of the U.S.'s strategic interests in the Middle East and has a moral imperative to act.
Since World War II, Doran said, "Every president has seen it as vital that no potentially hostile power gained control of resources of the Gulf."
Krugman spoke next, examining the war's economic implications in the context of a "troubled world economy with demand-side problems."
Krugman said military spending, which might total $80 billion the first year and several hundred billion overall, will provide some degree of stimulus, but the rise in oil prices before the war will hurt the economy.
The consequences of a disruption in Iraqi oil will be minimal unless the conflict spreads to other Muslim countries, he added.
Slaughter, an expert in international law, explained that the war, though illegal because it was not authorized by the Security Council, has the potential to be legitimate.
"In the end, if you think the aims may be right, I cannot oppose it simply because the rest of the world does not agree," she said.
To legitimize the war, Slaughter said, the United States must minimize civilian casualties, uncover and present evidence of weapons of mass destruction and reconcile with the U.N. after the war.
Yashar, who studies the process of democratization, questioned the viability of a democratic government in Iraq. She said that Iraq has a poor chance of sustaining democracy because it has not reached a proper level of modernization and economic development, lacks people to implement democracy from within and is divided by ethnic and cultural cleavages.
"I fear that this war will generate more terrorism, not less, in the short term, and that this will lead to more stability rather than greater stability and democracy," Yashar said.
But Doran argued that even if democracy fails, postwar Iraq will still almost certainly be better than the current state. "The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein is one of the ugliest of the modern era," he said.
Despite their differences, the panelists agreed that the United States will have to work to repair relations with the rest of the world.
"Even if our intentions are the purest, the perceptions abroad don't always see it that way," Yashar said.
"Our first priority after the war must be to restore some of our credibility," Krugman added.
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