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

Richard Butler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2000

The leader of the United Nations' weapons inspection team issues a scathing indictment of the West's failure to stop Saddam Hussein--and a stern warning about the future.. The West may face no greater enemy than Saddam Hussein, and yet, as Richard Butler makes clear in The Greatest Threat, the West would rather bury its head in the Mesopotamian sands than deal with the problem. As the head of UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission that was supposed to regularly inspect Iraq for weapons violations after the Gulf War, Butler was the West's "sheriff"--the one person on the ground with the authority to shut the Iraqis down if he caught them cheating. And he was not the type to surrender to the Iraqis, not when he knew what was at stake. But Butler's authority was undermined behind his back. As he reveals in this outspoken, finger-pointing, newsbreaking book, Kofi Annan agreed to Hussein's outrageous demands and then claimed victory. Russia's foreign minister took secret payoffs from the Iraqis in exchange for his support. The French, eager to do business with the dictator, undercut American efforts to force Hussein to comply. And the result is that, despite Iraq's supposed defeat, Saddam Hussein has very likely resumed building nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that could be used against Israel, Turkey, or even the United States.The Greatest Threat is arousing, disturbing reading for anyone interested in American foreign policy, in the breakdown of controls on weapons of mass destruction, or in the precarious state of international relations. The West may face no greater enemy than Saddam Hussein, and yet, as Richard Butler makes clear in The Greatest Threat, the West would rather bury its head in the Mesopotamian sands than deal with the problem. As the head of UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission that was supposed to regularly inspect Iraq for weapons violations after the Gulf War, Butler was the West's "sheriff"--the one person on the ground with the authority to shut the Iraqis down if he caught them cheating. And he was not the type to surrender to the Iraqis, not when he knew what was at stake. But Butler's authority was undermined behind his back. As he reveals in this outspoken, finger-pointing, newsbreaking book, Kofi Annan agreed to Hussein's outrageous demands and then claimed victory. Russia's foreign minister took secret payoffs from the Iraqis in exchange for his support. The French, eager to do business with the dictator, undercut American efforts to force Hussein to comply. And the result is that, despite Iraq's supposed defeat, Saddam Hussein has very likely resumed building nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that could be used against Israel, Turkey, or even the United States.The Greatest Threat is arousing, disturbing reading for anyone interested in American foreign policy, in the breakdown of controls on weapons of mass destruction, or in the precarious state of international relations. *Butler is a commanding, charismatic, outspoken person who is passionately concerned about this subject Full of stories of political intrigue at high levels and an insider's portrait of major world figures .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the memoir of a frustrated man. Richard Butler is the former chairman of UNSCOM, the United Nations-appointed arms-inspection team assigned to Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War. Between 1992 and 1997, Butler toiled to prevent Saddam Hussein from manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. UNSCOM experienced some success, but it was essentially a failure thanks to the intransigence and intimidation Butler faced from without (by Saddam's henchmen, such as Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz) and from within (members of Butler's own task force, representing the interests of their own countries, constantly undercut him). And this "constitutes a serious crisis in global security," writes Butler. "While the full nature and scope of [Saddam's] current programs cannot be known precisely because of the absence of inspections and monitoring, it would be foolish in the extreme not to assume that he is: developing long-range missile capabilities; at work again on building nuclear weapons; and adding to the chemical and biological warfare weapons he concealed during the UNSCOM inspection period."

Butler's account of his own efforts is, as he freely admits, "far more important than it is colorful." If readers hunger for a spy thriller about Iraq, they should turn to novelist Frederick Forsyth's The Fist of God instead of The Greatest Threat. But if they want a realistic look at Middle Eastern power politics, the maddening challenge of disarmament, and a few vivid reminders that Saddam is both "determined and diabolical," Butler's book is an excellent resource. Butler, who is Australian, closes with an idealistic call to stop nuclear proliferation, urging Americans to forsake "the pursuit of purely national goals": "By leading the global community in the effort of reducing and then eliminating the unique danger posed by weapons of mass destruction, the United States can assure itself the highest and most justly honored place among nations in the annals of history." Whether or not readers agree with that sentiment, Butler convincingly shows that reducing Saddam's ability to make war is in virtually everybody's interest. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

It has been a full year since an international team of disarmament specialists was booted out of Iraq, leaving the world with the chilling question: Who is watching Saddam Hussein? As a former chairman of UNSCOM, the body created by the United Nations to monitor Iraq for weapons violations after the Gulf War, Butler has a unique perspective on the matter. Having intimate knowledge of Iraq's programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Butler engaged in what he calls "an elaborate shell game" with Iraq in 1997 and 1998, as his team investigated Saddam's deadly arsenal. In this revealing and beautifully executed record of those years, Butler recounts the intransigence of Iraqi negotiators and the maddening charades they played to foil international law. As Butler makes clear, the stakes are staggering: a single warhead carrying 140 liters of VXDone of the most toxic substances ever madeDcould kill a million people. UNSCOM found that Iraq made at least 3,900 liters of VX, along with anthrax and other weapons of mass destruction. Butler also details how Russia, France and China flouted disarmament efforts to protect their own political interests, and he argues that UNSCOM's mandate was bargained away in Baghdad by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Especially interesting is the author's stern rebuttal of claims by his chief inspector, Scott Ritter, that UNSCOM was a puppet of the Pentagon, funneling intelligence to the U.S. Certain to have a profound impact on international diplomacy, Butler's remarkable story can be ignored only at the world's peril. Maps. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (May 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620533
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620539
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,206,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, June 5, 2000

By 

David Isenberg - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis in Global Security (Hardcover)

...

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 chapters, Butler briefly describes his childhood and later working for the Australian Foreign Affairs department and the work he did prior to taking on his position as head of UNSCOM. But the remaining chapters constitute the core of the book.

Much of the book details the two wars that UNSCOM waged. Sadly, it lost both. The first and the better known is the daily war of attrition it fought with Iraq, which used ceaseless tactics of cheat, retreat and cheat in order to thwart UNSCOM. As Butler explains, Saddam Hussein did not believe he lost the Gulf War. Though Saddam was driven from Kuwait, he viewed the Dessert Storm coalition's real aim as to remove him from power or turn Iraq into a vassal state. Thus, for Iraq the battle with UNSCOM was simply the last battle of the Gulf War. And for Iraq to "cement its "victory" in that war they had to defeat both UNSCOM in general and Richard Butler personally. In fact, Iraq paid Butler an ironic compliment when it demanded his removal as item 9 of a list of demands presented to the Security Council in November 1998 in its attempt to forestall the Clinton bombing.

The other war UNSCOM fought with the U.N. to both preserve its independence and to get the Security Council to support its documentation of Iraq's continuing refusal to live up to its pledge to allow UNSCOM inspectors to carry out their work.

One of the more intriguing sections of the book deals with the allegation by Scott Ritter, former UNSCOM weapons inspector who resigned in 1998, that Butler had taken direction from the U.S. government and that UNSCOM had allowed itself to be a conduit for U.S. intelligence collection in Iraq. Ritter's view was detailed in his book Endgame published last year. We may never know the exact truth of the matter, but Butler musters a good case that his charges are false.

As Butler makes clear in his conclusions, we cannot expect UNSCOM's successor organization, UNMOVIC (United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission), created in December 1999, to accomplish anything worthwhile. To name just two flaws, unlike UNSCOM it will be under the direction of the U.N. secretary-general; its staff will be U.N. civil servants instead of technical experts.

The conclusion that Butler leaves us with is both dismaying, and even worse, true. "When a determined criminal flouts international law under cover of the principle of state sovereignty, the world system, as currently constituted, appears able or unwilling to stop him," he writes.

In short, we should be afraid, very afraid...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Overstated Case, August 16, 2004

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis in Global Security (Hardcover)

There is an advantage to reading a book a few years after it is first published. The advantage in this case is that the Saddam dictatorship is history and many of the assurances that lead us to war have been proven to be a little over hyped, to be generous. That comment leads us to this book. The author was the head of the UN weapons inspectors in the last two years they were in place, ending in 1998. This book is his review of his time on the job and the obligatory musings about what needed to be done with Saddam circa 2000. I had heard in a number of other articles and some books that the author was a bit arrogant and pushy. To be fair, those personality traits, if they even exist, did not come out in the book. The author presented his case in a rather fair sounding and well thought out process. There were no over the top dramatics nor did it seam to me that the author was trying to stretch the truth to prove his point.

I started this book thinking it would be one case after another of how Iraq had hid WMD`s, yet they were hardly ever mentioned. By this I mean that the author only detailed out a few cases of papers being found and old weapons parts being dug up. In all his pages on the inspection process, the author gives the reader no finds of the actual weapons the world was looking for. All the author really detailed was the unlimited number of ways the Iraqi's found to be unhelpful, arrogant, and just plain nasty to his team. If there ever was a case for how not to play well with others the Iraqi's are the hands down favorites. In hind sight, what is rather humorous is that if they would have just swallowed a little crow and let the UN run all over their county unmolested for a few years, they would have left and the Saddam cronies would still be in power. This could be the first dictator to loss power due to unending amounts of arrogance coupled with a good helping of plain ignorance.

The last item I found interesting was the side story that bordered on a male cat fight. This author and Scott Ritter, another of the weapons inspectors, had a few words while working together and both decided to finish the disagreement in the press. About the only value in the comments is that it makes you smile a little to think that this author lowered himself to grade school play ground name calling in a book for the masses. Overall, I found the book interesting in its detail of the way the Iraqi government dealt with the UN and how the French, Russians and Chinese all interacted with the US. I also thought the very apparent lack of evidence of WMD`s being discussed in the book was a precursor of things to come. If you are interested in the conservative thinking that lead up to the Iraqi war, then this book is an interesting bit a the picture.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Threat by Richard Butler, January 17, 2003

By 

Carol Davis (Dubuque, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security (Paperback)

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.