Part III of IV:
Continuing with Pollack's analysis:
When Yevgeny M. Primakov, a Soviet envoy, went to Baghdad in 1991 to try to warn Mr. Hussein to withdraw, he was amazed to find out how cut off from reality Mr. Hussein was. "I realized that it was possible Saddam did not have complete information," he later wrote. "He gave priority to positive reports . . . and as for bad news, the bearer could pay a high price." These factors make Mr. Hussein difficult to deter, because his calculations are based on ideas that do not necessarily correspond to reality and are often impervious to outside influences.
In 1974, for example, he attacked the Kurds even though Iran had been arming and supporting them (with American and Israeli support). He believed, for reasons unknown, that Iran would do nothing to help its proxies. The shah responded decisively, sending troops into Iraqi Kurdistan, mobilizing his army and provoking clashes along the border. To stave off an Iranian invasion that he feared would end his regime, Mr. Hussein was forced to sign the humiliating Algiers accord, which gave Iran everything it wanted from Iraq, including contested territory.
This pattern has been repeated many times since, and it is fair to say that Mr. Hussein's continued survival is far more attributable to luck than it is to any prudence on his part. Thus in 1980 he attacked Iran under the misguided assumption that the new Islamic Republic was so unpopular that it would collapse after one good shove. In so doing, he embroiled Iraq in a war that nearly destroyed his own regime.
In 1991, rather than withdrawing from Kuwait and heading off a war, he convinced himself that the American-led coalition would not attack and that even if it did, his army would emerge victorious. By confidently pursuing this path he again nearly destroyed himself and his regime.
The best evidence that Mr. Hussein can be deterred comes from the Persian Gulf war, when he refrained from using weapons of mass destruction because of American and Israeli threats of nuclear retaliation. But a closer look at the evidence provides more ominous lessons.
When Secretary of State James Baker met with Tariq Aziz in Geneva on the eve of the war, the letter he presented from President Bush to Mr. Hussein threatened the "severest consequences" if Iraq took any of three actions: use of weapons of mass destruction, destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields or terrorist action against the United States.
The first point to make is that this did not stop Mr. Hussein from destroying the oil fields or dispatching hit squads to the United States, so the notion that he is easily deterred is dubious. Mr. Hussein did not use chemical munitions against coalition ground forces because he initially believed that he did not need them to prevail. Nevertheless, he did keep stockpiles farther back from the front, suggesting he planned to use them if the battle did not go as he expected. Whether he would have used these weapons is an open question, because the coalition ground advance was so rapid that Iraq's forces never had a chance to deploy them. |
