Declarations of war are marketing strategies produced to emphasis one set of reasoning and understate another. They are announcements of securitisation that dramatise and emotionalise an issue to make it seem morally and ethically necessary. They try to pull at the heart strings of the population in order to ensure the population approves of the governments strategy. In doing so the declaration brushes over certain details of reasoning, to ensure the most likely to receive public support are most highlighted.
As such humanitarian intervention is the “best” a reason a government can cite for declaring war on another states. As the Human Rights Watch said “what could be more virtuous than to risk life and limb to save distant people from slaughter?” Some wars genuinely are to save the lives of others. Interventions, such as that of the French in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Belgian mission during the Rwandan genocide, were clearly motivated by a desire to stop the ongoing breaches of human rights and were supported by the United Nations.
When American President George W. Bush announced the start of military action in Iraq, the suspected presence of weapons of mass destruction was cited. The high-risk nature of these weapons requied military action, securitizing the legitimate force, or the threat of such force – as with the Cold War. However, this factor was only one of many media focused upon when the war commenced.
For many Americas, the threat of nuclear weapons would not have been enough of a reason to start a war pre-9/11. And even after the dramatic events of that day, this reasoning wouldn’t have been enough for many people, so Bush pulled out the humanitarian card. This played on the heart strings of citizens. The West values human rights above all else, if a government is willing to violate those of their own population what else wouldn’t they be willing to do? Playing into the hands of the media, enabling them to use almost propaganda like journalism to help ignite the flames against terrorism and hatred for Saddam’s Iraq.
The majority of Bush’s speech focused on the people of Iraq and the inhabitants of the United States of America. He used phrases such as “free the people” and “defending the world from grave danger”; he said “people must trust” him and the military; he talked of honour and morality. He spoke of Saddam Hussein “attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military”, which he spoke of as “a final atrocity against his people”. Before closing with his declaration asserting that the “dangers to our country will be overcome”. Bush securitized this as a societal problem, Saddam’s regime were violating human rights.
Yet no one was fooled by the idea that America went to war to ‘save the children of Iraq’. They attacked for purely their own benefit. Someone had managed to attack them from inside, they needed to show the rest of the world they were still strong and could fight back, that they could punish those that had threatened them. The humanitarian focus was purely a marketing strategy intended to influence the opinions of America’s.
Declarations of war are ploys to gain citizen support and acceptance even if in doing so it is necessary to bypass the governments actual or key reasoning. The war is going to happen, why the population agree with it is merely detail.