If the United States unleashes the massive fire power with which it confronts Iraq today, thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians will die.

Will the world be a safer place as a result? Will those Iraqi’s who survive be better off?

The Bush administration says yes. Much of the rest of the world says no. Many say the answers to both questions are uncertain.

Are there alternative to war which can prevent Saddam Hussein’s from developing or employing weapons of mass destruction? The Bush administration claims that short of Saddam Hussein’s removal from power there are not. French, German, Russian and Chinese leaders say there are.

As this is being written, in fact, Germany and France are planning to present to the United Nations Security Council a plan to disarm Iraq without war. Their joint proposal which seems to have the support of the Russian and Chinese governments as well, calls for tripling the number of weapons inspectors and deploying United Nations troops in Iraq and declaring the entire country a no-fly zone.

But Paul Kennedy, the Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University and the author of “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” would go further still. In a February 3 Tribune Media Services International article, he suggests that in addition to calling for more inspectors the Security Council pass resolutions mandating the UN to: establish an office in Iraq to monitor human rights abuses, set up a network of Non Government Organizations (NGOs) to distribute food and medicine to the Iraqi people, join with environmental organizations to map out and deal with environmentally dangerous sites in the country, and with assistance from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and United Nations Development Programme, help restore Iraq’s economy. The work of so many UN sponsored offices and organizations in Iraq, Kennedy says, would tie Saddam down and prevent him from doing harm as Gulliver was tied down and restricted by the Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s famous story.

“With personnel from U.N. agencies and other international organizations setting up offices in the capital and literally crisscrossing the country to regional offices, inspection sites and meetings with local officials, educators, scientists, and tribal representatives,” writes Kennedy, it would be: “inconceivable” that Saddam “could restart any hidden programs to develop weapons of mass destruction,” “impossible for him to claim that women and children were starving” when they were not and difficult for him to continue violating with impunity the human rights of the Iraqi people. Moreover, the proposed projects would have two advantages over a military campaign: they would not be quick in and out operations but would last for years if necessary and, their cost would be significantly less.

By setting up international bodies with offices and legions of inspectors in Iraq, Kennedy says, “the world community would totally and imaginatively call Saddam’s bluff. In fact, rather like Gulliver himself…Saddam would be between the devil and the deep blue sea.” Protected by the presence of so many international organizations and their agents, “the Iraqi people would at last be able to speak and operate without fear. Observing the benefits of being returned to the world community, they would be likely soon to call for free elections; and if there were such, one doubts that Saddam would get the 99 percent vote he received last year. If, in fact, U.S. hawks are so right and Saddam is unpopular (but feared), then we would have ‘regime change’ all right, but one carried out peacefully and not by the 101st Airborne Division. What could be more congenial — except to those who truly want a war?”

And it Saddam refused to comply with the restrictions placed on him by the additional UN resolutions or subsequent UN mandates based on information received by its inspectors and allies within the country? Then, according to Kennedy, the entire world community would support using force to remove him from power.

Note: The next meeting of the University of Massachusetts Human Rights Working Group is on Friday, February 14th (Valentine’s Day) from 12:30 to 2:30 in room 138 on the fourth floor of Wheatley (W4-138). All interested in helping to establish a human rights program at UMass Boston or promoting human rights activities on campus are encouraged to attend. For more information about the UMBHRWG go to the UMass home page (www.umb.edu), scroll down to the shortcuts, and click on human rights.