?Starting a war is an immensely grave decision?, writes a former permanent under-secretary at the Ministry of Defence in London. The reasons advanced for doing so against Iraq do not stand up, in his opinion. He looks at the other options.

THE Iraq saga has a distance to run, but it is timely to take stock. We cannot go back to quiescence. We may think that containment was doing well enough and that further action need not have been pushed to the fore; but that is academic. To back away now would be an intolerable success for Saddam Hussein.

We need to be clear about why the status quo is unacceptable. There is much speculation that the Bush Administration is influenced by ulterior motives ? reducing dependence upon Saudi oil; launching the democratic transformation of the Middle East; finishing the business that the President?s father began, or further punishing the 1993 plot to assassinate him; aiding Israel; purging paranoia left by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001; distracting the mid-term American electorate from failure to catch Osama bin Laden, or from economic problems or corporate wrongdoing. Such speculation is mostly beside the point. In any large human enterprise assorted impulsions are to be found; it is entirely possible to do the right thing from wrong motives (or vice versa). We should focus upon direct justifying reasons.

Saddam is a malign tyrant who brutally oppresses his people and has attacked neighbours. He has kept biological and chemical weapons and missiles of prohibited range, and aspires to nuclear weapons, in breach of treaty promises and UN Security Council resolutions. His regime is abhorrent, and the world would be better without it. But nothing in international law or practice makes that a legitimate ground for intervention. There is no humanitarian catastrophe that has to be dealt with, as in Rwanda or Kosovo. Any justification must be sought elsewhere.

The option for action most canvassed has been an invasion that would change the Iraqi regime. The implications of such a step provide a point of reference. Starting a war is always an immensely grave decision, not least (though not only) because we cannot foresee all the consequences. But we can try to identify uncertainty and risk.

American military power could certainly prevail and remove Saddam ? a massive benefit. After a heavy initial bombardment, invading forces might encounter a collapsing regime and a welcoming population; but Saddam has been brainwashing his people for decades, and the whole leadership in the government and armed forces is complicit in his misdeeds. His soldiers might fight the West to defend their homeland as they did not in 1991 to keep a conquest, and the invaders might face battle through the streets of Baghdad and a desperate recourse to biological and chemical weapons, possibly used also to provoke Israeli involvement. There are no indigenous forces to help, as the Northern Alliance did in Afghanistan. Fighters on both sides would be killed; so would civilians, and Iraqi society, already ravaged, would suffer further. The scale of all this, and the budgetary costs (even the US public purse is not bottomless), could be high.

There are questions about how Iraq would be run afterwards. The ideal would be a new regime democratically legitimated, politically coherent, commanding support and respect from Iraq?s various elements at the same time as approval from the West, and observing international norms. But it is hard to see any adequate basis in the condition of Iraq, the history of the Middle East or the disparate would-be rulers outside the country for expecting an outcome anywhere close to this. Administering Iraq and holding together its shallow-rooted diversity, to avoid fragmentation which would disrupt the whole region, might need protracted external effort.

Repercussions around the Middle East could be far-reaching. Maybe the removal of Saddam by the United States (the partisan protector of Israel, as most think) would be met with applause and relief, but we can scarcely assume that outcome, especially while the dispute between the Arabs and Israel remains acute. No neighbour loves Saddam, but all Arab governments have opposed invasion. Arab popular opinion might be outraged at a third Western onslaught upon an Islamic state, this time without the clear justification for the 1991 expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait and the recent overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Public unrest might threaten the alignment or even survival of Arab governments friendly to the West. The support of governments for measures against terrorism and popular tolerance of such moves could be imperilled and renewed outrages stimulated; attention and effort might be diverted from the drive against al-Qaida. There could be economic damage both regionally and (because of oil) more widely.

Perhaps this is all too pessimistic ? and perhaps not. The costs could be formidable and long-lasting, quite aside from questions of legitimacy and precedent-setting. That does not prove invasion to be unwise or unjust; but it sets a high hurdle for proof of necessity.

Three main reasons are being advanced for judging the current situation so unacceptable as to require action beyond maintaining economic sanctions: that Saddam was behind al-Qaida and the 11 September atrocity; that he is a grave and probable threat to his region and the wider world, especially the United States; and that his continued flouting of treaty commitments and UN Security Council resolutions cannot be tolerated.

The first cannot bear weight. Saddam has indeed had contacts with al-Qaida, and the US administration has looked for and would be glad to find evidence of his complicity in the outrages of 11 September ? but has not been able to do so. Occasional voices are reluctant to abandon the suspicion, but no serious authority claims that it is substantiated.

The second reason ? the threat to neighbours and beyond ? is much more strongly urged; it has been the main argument in President Bush?s utterances. But it remains less than compelling.

Saddam has twice assailed neighbours. Both adventures, a considerable time ago, ended in costly failures scarcely encouraging to further attempts. The first was against Iran, which the Iraqi President knew was regarded then by the West as a special enemy; the second, against Kuwait, miscalculated the attitude and interest of the United States. The eyes of the world are on him now ? no need to spell out a ?three strikes and you?re out? rule; any new aggression would finish him.

What scenario is there for attack by Saddam on any adjacent country (especially with his forces much weaker than in 1990-91)? On Israel? In face of Ariel Sharon?s nuclear capability? That capability, alongside that of the United States, is reasonably interpreted as having played a part in Saddam?s not using biological or chemical weapons even amid the temptations and stresses of the 1991 war; it is far-fetched to postulate his initiating such use unless we drive him to desperation. And this deterrence would still apply even if he acquired nuclear weapons.

And what of attack further afield? Saddam lacks the military reach to strike Europe, let alone the United States; even if he had it, huge deterrent penalties would loom over him. His only option would be to pass ?weapons of mass destruction? to terrorists. But for what purpose, given his preoccupation with survival, would he take so vast a gamble as to hand them to people whose actions, competence, discretion and security discipline lie outside his control? No absolute guarantee is possible, but human affairs cannot be run to that standard; it is not prudent policy to take substantial risks of heavy costs to seal off remote hypotheses.

Why, if use of weapons of mass destruction is implausible, does Saddam cling to them? There are multiple explanations besides the obstinacy of an egotistical autocrat. His ritually denied but widely perceived possession of such weapons confers prestige. Defying the United States plays well domestically. And these weapons give him deterrent leverage against terminal threats.

There is an option available to reinforce deterrence. The key 1991 Security Council resolution spoke of ?grave consequences? if weapons of mass destruction were ever used. A new resolution could undertake that any use, threat or transfer of them would be treated as forfeiting the Iraqi regime?s legitimacy and requiring the pursuit of anyone implicated as an international criminal (like Milosovic).

The third possible reason for action against Iraq is to defend international order. Saddam?s activities flagrantly transgress the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention to which he voluntarily acceded, and defy Security Council resolutions. Those resolutions are not like those bearing upon Israel and the occupied territories, or India and Kashmir; they are in a more imperative category, under a different chapter of the UN Charter, and Saddam accepted them in the ceasefire bargain that limited his 1991 defeat. To let him disregard them would be a grave long-term blow to the credibility and authority of the Security Council, as well as to the regime against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This is cogent ground for action.

The first recourse must be a Security Council demand that Saddam comply fully with the 1991 resolution. In view of his record the demand must require that UN inspectors work without exclusion or obstruction; and politically, if not in formal legal terms, that needs to be expressed in a fresh resolution. This should include a clear signal that any failure in compliance will bring harsh consequences; but there is merit in the French view that it should not be left solely to individual nations ? in effect the United States ? both to judge what constitutes non-compliance and to choose the punitive action to be taken. Given that the driving consideration is to uphold Security Council authority, those decisions should rest with that council.

This entails a constraint upon the United States: it would be extraordinary to sustain UN authority by means that had failed to win UN approval. It may also take time, which would not please hawks keen on action before the hot season; but no good case for urgency has been made. The approach also, however, places a heavy responsibility on Security Council members, especially the permanent five, to rise to a challenge which some of them have previously found uncomfortable. We need not assume that the inspection path will fail ? it achieved much before 1998 ? but to help it succeed the Security Council must show itself prepared to go to the next stage. The council must be manifestly ready, if defiance persists, to impose penalties that hurt Saddam; and we know that economic sanctions ? which he exploits to his own advantage ? cannot suffice.

The only military option hitherto advanced is regime-changing invasion. The costs and dangers of this, however, are disproportionate to the aim (even if, improbably, the Security Council agreed to it). More measured options should be developed, such as air strikes on assets which Saddam prizes, on a scale well beyond the 1998 Desert Fox operation that followed the departure of the UN inspectors. Even with the necessary caution to avoid targets that would entail heavy civilian casualties, attacks could hit sites suspected of connection with weapons of mass destruction, including the ?presidential-palace? compounds, and also the installations and equipment of Saddam?s other forces, notably the Republican Guard. This would not itself topple him or guarantee to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction; but it would attenuate them (especially the nuclear element) and deterrence would still bear down on whatever remained. The salutary message for the future would be transmitted, to whom it may concern, that flouting the United Nations carries punitive costs.

Tony Blair?s policy of staying close to the United States and exercising influence from the inside, rather than (like Chancellor Schr?der) noisily opposing from outside, has paid dividends. His counsel probably played an important ? perhaps a pivotal ? part in President Bush?s crucial decision of 12 September, unwelcome to some in the administration, to take the UN rather than the unilateral fork in the road. The hard potential question is what Mr Blair should do if Saddam refuses or obstructs adequate inspection and the Security Council declines to authorise action severe enough to please the United States, which then wants to attack without UN authority. At such a point Britain should part company, which might have great effect. But Mr Blair is wise in refusing to cross that bridge. To start taking options off the table, or shifting away from the United States even hypothetically, would reduce the pressure on the UN to act firmly and on Saddam to comply, and so perversely increase the danger of having to face the question. It is to be hoped that Blair has red lines beyond which he will not go; and the rest of us can voice opinions on where these should lie. But whether or not he warns President Bush about them privately, he is right not to define them publicly now.

The Iraq issue sets the US administration a searching test of wisdom and responsibility. The United States has entered an era of international dominance scarcely rivalled in history; and this may last (I hope it will) for a very long time. The way in which President Bush acts now will provide both a key experience for the United States and, for others, a key portent of what kind of American leadership the era may see.

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