Contemptuous of the UN and fearful of America, Saddam Hussein is down to his last card: dividing America and Britain in the hope that the former will be unwilling to act alone to remove him from office. Saddam's man in London, Mudhafar Amin, told the Guardian: "If Britain does not offer diplomatic and military cover, the Bush Administration will be very hesitant to do anything."
Mr Amin is in for a big disappointment. He underestimates President Bush, who has rightly declared that the "worst regimes in possession of the worst weapons" pose an intolerable threat to America and other Western democracies. He is determined to help the Iraqi opposition - whose representatives are meeting in Washington today - liberate Iraq from one of the world's most brutal dictatorships; I have no doubt he would act alone if necessary.
But he will not be alone when the time comes. For Mr Amin also underestimates Tony Blair, who has shown extraordinary courage and leadership in defending Western values in the Balkans, in combating international terrorism and in the current confrontation with Saddam.
The reservations in Cabinet and among backbenchers will not hold him back. Neither George W. Bush nor Mr Blair will be deflected by Saddam's diplomatic charm offensive, the feckless moralising of "peace" lobbies or the unsolicited advice of retired generals.
The decision to use force is most difficult when democratic societies are challenged to act pre-emptively. That is why the Continental powers waited until Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and America waited until after September 11 to go after Osama bin Laden.
Hitler's self-declared ambitions and military build-up, like bin Laden's demented agenda, were under constant scrutiny long before the acts of aggression to which a response became unavoidable. Both could have been stopped by a relatively modest well-timed pre-emption.
The judgment involved in a decision to give armed support to Saddam's opponents, including air and possibly ground forces, entails a balancing of risks. What risk do we run if Saddam remains in power and continues to build his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons? What dangers would follow his acquisition of nuclear weapons?
We know that he harbours terrorists, about which more evidence will emerge in due course. Will he share his most lethal weapons with them, knowing his perfidy would be unprovable?
Those who are confident that Saddam will remain "contained" - that he will be deterred from action we know he is capable of taking - come down on one side of the balance. Those who fear we may wait too long, who worry that a nuclear-armed Iraq run by a man who has killed thousands of unarmed civilians with chemical weapons could do terrible things, come down on the other.
In Tuesday's Financial Times, Sir Michael Quinlan, a brilliant and distinguished expert in these matters, posed all the right questions and made as strong a case as there is to be made against military action to remove Saddam. Sir Michael acknowledges that pre-emption may sometimes be warranted, but, he says, "the hurdle must be set very high". He argues, reasonably, that "the evil needs to be cogently probable as well as severe".
I doubt he would dispute the severity of either Saddam's record or his potential for future destruction. He has invaded two countries and killed with impunity. His brutal rule includes slaughter, rape, mutilation and the destruction of families. He has endured painful sanctions for more than 10 years rather than submit to UN resolutions (whose authority he has destroyed by defying it, a point wholly lost on such peacekeeping and UN enthusiasts as Sir Michael Rose). Saddam is working feverishly to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraqis who know him are convinced he would not hesitate to use them.
Is the evil of which he is undoubtedly capable "cogently probable"? We cannot know for sure. But on which side would it be better to err? How would a decision to do nothing now and hope for the best look when Saddam has nuclear weapons and he makes another run at Kuwait or succeeds Afghanistan as terrorist headquarters of the world?
For the critics, erring by pre-emption assumes things will go badly, either during the course of the fighting or afterwards. Opponents of pre-emption, like those who argued against liberating Kuwait in 1991, tend to overestimate Saddam's support in Iraq and the region, as well as the competence, morale and ultimate loyalty of his army.
Here, too, there can be no certainty. But the frequency with which he rotates, murders or surgically mutilates his own officers hardly reflects confidence. As for their competence, the Iraqi force today is a third of what it was in 1991, and it is the same third, 11 years closer to obsolescence.
By contrast, America and even some of its allies have made enormous improvements in their ability to detect, and destroy with precision strikes, the critical elements of Saddam's military power. Alongside Iraqis eager to liberate their country, Saddam will crumble far more quickly than the critics of pre-emption expect.
Would Saddam's removal set the region aflame? Fear that the Arab world will unite in opposition to Saddam's removal lures even thoughtful critics into opposition. It seems at least as likely that Saddam's replacement by a decent Iraqi regime would open the way to a far more stable and peaceful region.
A democratic Iraq would be a powerful refutation of the patronising view that Arabs are incapable of democracy. And an end to Saddam's incitement of Palestinian terror would surely help the search for peace. Judgments about the aftermath of Saddam's fall differ widely. But this is precisely the sense in which the whole question of removing him involves a balancing of risks in the face of uncertainty.
Sir Michael rightly worries that an action to remove Saddam could precipitate the very thing we are most anxious to prevent: his use of chemical or biological weapons. But the danger that springs from his capabilities will only grow as he expands his arsenal. A pre-emptive strike against Hitler at the time of Munich would have meant an immediate war, as opposed to the one that came later. Later was much worse.
- Richard Perle is chairman of the Defence Policy Board
