Interesting (and scary) NYT piece on Iraq / Saddam Hussein.
[My only problem with things like this is that us "mere mortals" out here have no way on knowing if we are being told the truth ...]
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September 26, 2002
Why Iraq Can't Be Deterred
By KENNETH M. POLLACK
WASHINGTON - As the United States moves closer to war with
Iraq, some have suggested relying instead on deterrence to
deal with the threat Saddam Hussein poses. Those who favor
deterrence acknowledge that the containment regime that
constrained Iraq during the 1990's has frayed beyond
repair, but argue that Mr. Hussein can still be kept in
check by American threats to respond to any new Iraqi
aggression with force - including nuclear bombardment, if
necessary.
Certainly war should be a last resort, and deterrence is a
seemingly reasonable alternative; after all, it worked with
the Soviet Union for 45 years. Unfortunately, however,
those who seek to apply it to Iraq base their views on a
dangerous misreading of Mr. Hussein, and so fail to
recognize how risky such a course is likely to be.
Proponents of deterrence argue that Mr. Hussein will not
engage in new aggression, even after he has acquired
nuclear weapons, because he is not deliberately suicidal
and so would not risk an American nuclear response.
But what they overlook is that Mr. Hussein is often
unintentionally suicidal - that is, he miscalculates his
odds of success and frequently ignores the likelihood of
catastrophic failure. Mr. Hussein is a risk-taker who plays
dangerous games without realizing how dangerous they truly
are. He is deeply ignorant of the outside world and
surrounded by sycophants who tell him what he wants to
hear.
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.
A better case can be made that Mr. Hussein was deterred
from launching Scud missiles tipped with chemical or
biological agents at Israel for fear that the Israelis
would retaliate with nuclear weapons, but even here the
evidence is hardly perfect. After the war, United Nations
weapons inspectors reported that the Iraqi engineers knew
that their warheads were awful and probably would have done
little damage. For this reason, Mr. Hussein might have
considered the conventionally armed Scuds to be the most
potent arrows in his quiver.
After the gulf war, moreover, United Nations inspectors and
Iraqi defectors revealed a set of secret plans and orders,
issued by Mr. Hussein, that are disturbing at best. First,
he had set up a special Scud unit with both chemical and
biological warheads that was ordered to launch its missiles
against Israel in the event of a nuclear attack or a
coalition march on Baghdad. Since no one outside Iraq knew
at the time about this unit and its orders, it was clearly
intended not as a deterrent but simply as a force for
revenge.
Second, in August 1990 - after he realized that the United
States might challenge the invasion of Kuwait - Mr. Hussein
ordered a crash program to build one nuclear weapon, which
came close to succeeding. (It failed only because the
Iraqis could not enrich enough uranium in time.) His former
chief bombmaker has said that Mr. Hussein intended to
launch the bomb as a revenge weapon at Tel Aviv if his
regime started to collapse. His former chief of
intelligence has said that he believes that Mr. Hussein
wanted to build a nuclear weapon in order to deter the
United States from launching Desert Storm.
Third, Iraqi defectors and other sources report that Mr.
Hussein told aides after the war that his greatest mistake
was to invade Kuwait before he had a nuclear weapon,
because then the United States would never have dared to
oppose him.
What all this suggests is that if Saddam Hussein is able to
acquire nuclear weapons, he will see them as tools to
achieve his goals - to dominate the Arab world, destroy
Israel and punish America. He might not launch such weapons
immediately in pursuit of these aims, but that is cold
comfort. There is every reason to believe that he would
brandish them to deter the United States from interfering
in his efforts to conquer or blackmail neighboring
countries.
With 1990's-style containment fading quickly and unlikely
to be revived, both of the remaining Iraq policy options -
invasion and deterrence - carry serious costs and risks.
But a well-planned invasion, one that mustered overwhelming
force and the support of key allies, could keep those risks
to a minimum.
On the other hand, staking our hopes on a policy of
deterrence would cost little now (except a loss of face),
but it would run the much greater risk of postponing the
day of reckoning to a time of Iraq's choosing. Given Mr.
Hussein's history of catastrophic miscalculations and his
faith that nuclear weapons can deter not him but us, there
is every reason to believe that the question is not one of
war or no war, but rather war now or war later - a war
without nuclear weapons or a war with them.
Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst of the Iraqi
military, is director of research at the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy. He is author of "The Threatening Storm:
The Case for Invading Iraq."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
