Iraq

Abstract

Although Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a veteran violator of generally accepted rules of state conduct both at home and abroad, its true deviant status was of recent vintage. For many years Iraq escaped this standing because leading powers – notably the US – for strategic and economic reasons preferred to turn a blind eye to Saddam’s well documented transgressions. What is more, these foreign countries aided and abetted the Iraqi leader in his errant ways. It was only after Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990–91 that it was condemned to outcast status. Saddam’s former benefactors and patrons then not only took up arms against Baghdad, but also initiated a range of other collective punitive measures – the severest ever imposed by the UN. This dramatic reversal in Iraq’s international fortunes – its descent from darling to deviant at the hands of major Western powers – provides an object lesson in the opportunism, selectivity and inconsistency that can characterize the politics of ‘devianization’. Those purporting to act in defence of international norms of good behaviour, the Iraq case reminds us, are guided by far more than moral considerations.