Hans Blix: The arms control Einstein who turned 96 this year

If there are names in international diplomacy that have become synonymous with statesmanship and conflict resolution, Hans Blix is certainly one of them. The former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) turned 96 in June, and although his life in retirement means he no longer plays an active role in nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, his legacy has left an indelible mark on the institutions where he served, elevating the causes for which he fought.

Blix was most prominent globally as the person Bill Swainson, a former senior editor at Bloomsbury London, described as “the one unimpeachable inside witness to the events leading up to the war in Iraq.” It was the crescendo of Blix’s career, as chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, mandated with finding out if Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. In the sensitive role, he established that the dreaded weapons widely assumed to be possessed by Saddam Hussein didn’t exist.

George W. Bush still pushed ahead with the invasion. Blix was accused by the US administration of derailing the war momentum, and Vice President Dick Cheney became his biggest detractor.

“I was not operating against the United States,” Blix told me earlier this year in the lead-up to his birthday. “I was a servant of the Security Council, and the council had given me the mission to go to Iraq and to carry out professional inspections and report on what the situation was.”

“There is a fundamental reality, that you cannot prove the negative. You cannot prove that there is nothing. And the US warned us very clearly, that if we said there was nothing, then they would discredit us. The same happened later,” he said.

It strains credulity that as the former foreign minister of a NATO member state, he was criticised for allegedly siding with Iraq or being lenient on Iran, the other country that was much in focus during his tenure. The uproar didn’t intimidate Blix, a consensus-builder who had unambiguously said such weapons were never in safe hands, no matter who owned them.

Blix strived to apply consistent measures of enforcement and monitoring to all nations, which is how he built trust with the otherwise cynical Global South states. He leveraged his position as a European diplomat to change the dominant perceptions around denuclearisation and disarmament, including the conventional wisdom that major powers receive preferential treatment from international organisations.

When Blix was awarded the $50,000 Olof Palme Prize in 2003, the memorial fund recognised him by stating that he “worked throughout his life for the benefit of international law, peace and the United Nations.” The former president of the United Nations Correspondents Association Ian Williams has described Blix as “one of the archetypal Swedes who have kept the UN running for half a century.”

On 17 March 2004, Blix was invited to address the University of California, Berkeley, on the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. CNN’s senior correspondent Christiane Amanpour was the moderator in what went on to be remembered as a blockbuster panel at the iconic Zellerbach Hall. The auditorium was at full capacity that night, and scores of students gathered outside to hear from the celebrated expert. Orville Schell, then dean of the university’s Graduate School of Journalism and one of the event organisers, had found the turnout unbelievable: “who would have thought a year ago that 2,000 people would come to hear a weapons inspector speak?”

By the time Iran’s contentious nuclear program was referred to the Security Council by the IAEA board of governors in February 2006, Blix had left the agency as its second longest-serving chief. It didn’t mean he was not part of the conversation. He became the first head of Sweden’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission in 2003. As an expert, he weighed in on the debate surrounding Iran’s nuclear quest and vocally supported the 2015 nuclear deal.

The deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, involved a cumbersome process, but was later abandoned by Donald Trump in May 2018. Blix said as the agreement was “blessed by the Security Council,” meaning it was codified in the resolution 2231, it was probably “illegal” for the Trump administration to ditch it.

“I felt that the nuclear deal that was reached between Iran and the P5 plus Germany was an intelligent solution” to a volatile situation, Blix told me. He cites with the findings of the US intelligence community, made public in a declassified 2007 report, that Iran abandoned any nuclear activity with possible military dimensions in 2003. He said he is convinced that Tehran may resume those activities under increasing external threats.

Blix was awarded the 2007 Sydney Peace Prize for his “principled and courageous opposition” to the Iraq war, and his tireless advocacy for non-violence and disarmament. Between 1954 and 1956, while he was a PhD student at Cambridge University working with the judge of the International Court of Justice Hersch Lauterpacht, he spent two years at Columbia University in New York doing legal research.

The academic cultures of the two institutions were fascinating to him in being notably different: “Work style in Cambridge is more relaxed. The intellectual level is as high. At Columbia, they are more diligent and work harder at the library than at Cambridge.”

“And I have equal love for both places.”