The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis in Global Security

By Richard Butler

Book Overview

"The Greatest Threat is the ""brutally candid"" inside story of the West's failure to stop Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction (Booklist)."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586480391
• ISBN13: 9781586480394
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Greatest Threat by Richard Butler

What an eye opener. The Greatest Threat gave me goose-bumps. I couldn't put the book down. Scary! Everyone needs to read this book. It grabs you right from the start as if you were right there with the UNSCOM inspectors. I agree with the author on American and International politics needing to be over-hauled. Maybe the mess we find ourselves in today could have been avoided if our country and other countries had worked together to promote disarmament. Then, inforced it when the country refused to comply instead of sweeping the issue under the rug. The book is well written and reads like a the latest thriller. The trouble is it is very real. It's sad that one ruthless leader can cause so much pain to his own people and the world. I don't like war either, but it looks like that is the only choice we have as the author pointed out. This book is a must read if you want to know what is going on with Iraq and how we got where we are today.

A Chilling First-hand Account

Butler's very sobering firsthand account of the effort to disarm Iraq after the Gulf War provides the essential reasoning of why it is necessary for President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to continue to push for the replacement of Saddam Hussein.Butler was a career Australian diplomat who had been the Australian Ambassador for Disarmament. He was named head of the United Nations Special Commission on Disarming Iraq. Butler depicts the unwavering determination of the Iraqi government to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He details the politics of Kofi Annan and the United Nations leadership as they tried to paper over Iraqi deceptions so as to achieve a diplomatic "victory" in the face of a startlingly different reality. The ultimate triumph was handed to a very dangerous Saddam and a defeat to both the UN and the Clinton Administration.Hitler's Mein Kampf explained Nazi Germany's future for those who would read it (as Churchill did). Similarly, Butler brings his readers face to face with Hussein's twisted world. He explains clearly what it is and why Saddam is working so hard to develop weapons of terrifying capability.Butler illustrates a frightening Iraqi worldview captured best by Deputy Prime Minister Aziz who "had stated quite plainly that Iraq had used chemical weapons on Iran, that it maintained biological weapons, and that these were intended specifically for use against Israel." Aziz declares his government's vision of an Iraqi future "leading and defending" a united Arab world. One that is "vigilant against the Persians in the Northwest and the Israelis in the Southwest". In order to achieve this dominant role for Iraq "it had sought, obtained, used, and would use again in the future weapons of mass destruction."Butler asserts: "Iraq's main triumph was the removal of all disarmament inspections and the shutdown of all monitoring systems." Butler writes that many weapons were removed but "Saddam still satisfies the three criteria usually advanced in judging whether or not a crime was committed: motive, means, and opportunity. He clearly continues to have the motive and means to threaten great danger, and now the opportunity for renewed weapons development, given the extended absence of international arms control in Iraq."Butler introduces Iraq in a chapter entitled "A Glimpse of Terror". He recounts again and again the true character of Saddam's regime. "Its brutal and tyrannical nature has been documented in detail for almost two decades. The political currency of his regime is homicide, frequently threatened and often delivered, the callousness of the regime toward its own people--a quality we witnessed daily in our dealings with Iraq, something which gives the lie to Saddam's public protestations that his primary goal is to lift the awful burden of international sanctions from the backs of the Iraqi people." The truth is that he could get relief from sanctions, as Butler puts it, "at any time by giving up h

Thought The Post Cold War World Was Safer? Read This Book

This book is exceptional on so many levels I scarcely know where to begin. Richard Butler former Executive Chairman of UNSCOM is very definitely a man of deep integrity driven by an equally deep concern for the issue of arms control not solely in Iraq but throughout the world. This book is his story and how during the course of two years he battled to achieve the complete dismantling of Iraq's stockpile of weapons chemical biological and nuclear. He describes in detail the stand-offs between himself and the Iraqi authorities and how ultimately the united nations through weakness and division have allowed Saddam Hussein to hold onto much of his deadly arsenal. He charts the use of these weapons by Iraq in its war with Iran as well as the use of gases on ethnic minorities inside the country itself. The reader gets an incredible look at the UN Security Council attempting to apply a, geo-political rules as usual approach, to the problem of Iraq's non-compliance with UN resolutions. The role of the Russian diplomats along with the French and Chinese come in for close scrutiny. If Butlers understanding of Israel's defence posture during the gulf war is accurate then the reader can take it that if Saddam were to use a chemical weapon or worse against a city like Tel Aviv then almost certainly and without consultation Israel would respond with tactical nuclear weapons against Iraq. During the gulf war Israeli Jets sat fuelled and ready to fly against targets in Iraq following the deployment of some 39 Scud missiles fired at Israel during the conflict. This analysis and so much more is contained in this sober but authentic look at how dangerous the world has become. Worst of all is the ongoing capitulation by the United Nations in terms of forcing Iraqi compliance with its own resolutions.

A riveting, courageous story

The story of UNSCOM's final two years in the effort to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is rivetingly told in this book, full of rich, sometimes delicious detail. There are subplots involving the Secretary General and a former weapons inspector with their own agendas, a back story of Presidential misdeeds, and for added flavor, the French and Russians each with their own, financially motivated policies to pursue in Iraq. It all adds up to a fine, refreshingly candid read about how something so right-the need to find and eliminate long range missiles, chemical and biological weapons-could go so wrong. Richard Butler deserves credit for having the courage and ability to step outside the world he has inhabited for so long professionally--diplomacy with all its deliberate, oppressive opacity-and tell a story plainly. He admits that the bombing of Iraq under Desert Fox has hurt rather than helped the cause of weapons inspections and that sanctions have outlived whatever usefulness they had at one time. The characterizations of various senior officials, in all their self-absorbed pomposity are not to be missed (e.g. de Mistura briefing the Security Council on his mission to "map" the presidential palaces, or Russian Foreign Minister Primakov "whose heaviness and pedantry were so redolent of the Soviet" era). Equally compelling is Butler's prescription. He rightly observes that there are few issues facing the international community that are grave enough to command an exceptional level of action and agreement. Chief among these, he argues, should be the need to control and ultimately eliminate weapons of mass destruction. He calls on the five permanent members of the Security Council to act in concert to enforce the various nonproliferation treaties by, among other things, not threatening use of the veto in a way that precludes any useful collective action to remedy serious cases of noncompliance. Sadly, Butler's invitation to the U.S. to exercise its considerable leadership in achieving such a worthy objective is likely to be ignored.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

...Book Review: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory by David Isenberg Thursday, May 18, 2000...There is no way to say this delicately so I may just as well come right out and say it. This is a painful book to read. Why? Is it badly written? No, it is both informative and engaging. Does it deal with an unimportant topic? On the contrary, it deals with a critically important issue: the effort to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Why then the pain? This book is essentially the story of a failure, one that has consequences for the entire world. Specifically, it is the telling of the undermining and destruction of UNSCOM by Saddam Hussein. The West set up UNSCOM, short for the United Nations Special Commission, in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish diplomat, headed UNSCOM for its first six years. In 1997, after Ekeus left to become Swedish ambassador to Washington, Richard Butler took over as executive director. Butler was an experienced Australian diplomat who had previously worked on many other disarmament issues. This book is the story of the final two years of struggle with Iraq in accordance with the original U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991. This struggle more or less ended -- unsatisfactorily -- when the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, an event that marked the end of UNSCOM inspections in Iraq. Caught cheating Bear in mind that the various global arms-control regimes are based on the presumption that if those being inspected are found breaking the rules, some sort of enforcement will take place -- usually through the U.N. system and specifically thorough the Security Council. When enforcement fails, as happened in Iraq's case, the consequences are critical. As Butler notes: "Saddam's cheating has been detected, but it has not been stopped. Nations that could take action have chosen not to. The implications of this for the maintenance of the strictures against weapons of mass destruction, built so painstakingly over almost half a century, are dire. If Saddam finally gets away with it, the whole structure could well collapse." Butler's is a story of many disappointments. He faced lack of political will and crass appeasement on the part of member nations of the U.N. Security Council. Constant obfuscation and deception by Iraq are the main themes, highlighted by vignettes of pettiness on the part of U.N. bureaucrats, such as the advisers to U..N Secretary-General Kofi Anan, and brazen lying by such Iraqi functionaries as Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Butler had a reputation as a plain-spoken man. It is a reputation that is deserved. It is refreshing to see a diplomat use words like "outrageous," "appalling," "word witchcraft," "blackest lie," "phony" and "facile." Back to Iraq? In the first two c