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V. Implications for International Relations Theory
The careful attention to process in this study leads to a few definitive conclusions
and a few which continue to be speculation. First, Iraq never fully complied with the
demands made on it in the sanctions regime. Second, Iraq was never fully non-compliant
with those demands. Third, it is clear that, for whatever reason, the effort that the
government of Iraq put into compliance decreased between 1998 and 2001. Fourth, the
demands on Iraq did not change significantly, either over time or with partial compliance.
Fifth, partial compliance received very little attention from the Security Council, even
when it was substantial.
The interesting questions, though, are the speculative ones – what would have
happened had Iraq come closer to compliance? What were the true conditions of the
sanctions regime? The information synthesized here indicates that sanctions were
conditioned not on the demands as articulated in Resolution 687, but on the fear of Iraq
that those demands expressed. This leads support to the theory briefly outlined above –
IR is about relative power, misperceived and indirectly.
Convention