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# Posted 8:51 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

ANTI-WAR, ANTI-LOGIC: In a razor-sharp yet idiosyncratic essay, historian Perry Anderson exposes the untenable logic on which the anti-war movement rests. (Special thanks to reader AG for bringing the essay to my attention.)

Anderson's sharpest point is his refutation of the argument that a unilateral invasion of Iraq will undermine either the institution of international law or the trans-atlantic alliance on which it depends. As he observes:

Historically, the United States has always reserved the right to act alone where necessary, while seeking allies wherever possible. In recent years it acted alone in Grenada, in Panama, in Nicaragua, and which of its allies now complains about current arrangements in any of these countries? As for the UN, NATO did not consult it when it launched its attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, in which every European ally that now talks of the need for authorisation from the Security Council fully participated, and which 90 per cent of the opinion that now complains about our plans for Iraq warmly supported.

I might add that the unprecedented influence that the United Nations has at the moment is in part a response to American (and European) disrespect for its mandate. As I've said before, an invasion of Iraq is thus as likely to strengthen the UN as it is to destroy it.

The idiosyncratic side of Anderson's argument emerges in the form of warm praise for arch-realists Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Incomprehensibly, Anderson endorses Waltz's bizarre hypothesis that the spread of nuclear weapons will make the world safer. Perhaps Prof. Anderson has not heard of a man by the name of Kim Jong Il?

All in all, Anderson's essay is well worth reading. Yet, as always, caveat emptor.

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