A crucial question regarding Iraq is whether Saddam is able to be deterred. The best arguments in the negative are presented in the relevant chapter of the Pollack book. The best arguments that I've seen in favor are presented in the following essay by John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt. It should be read in conjunction with the Pollack chapter to help people make up their minds.
tb@wereport,youdecide.com
The following piece written by John J. Mearsheimer and
Steve M. Walt will be published as an occasional paper
later this month by the International Security Program
at Harvard University's Kennedy School.
Can Saddam Be Contained? History Says Yes
John J. Mearsheimer
Stephen M. Walt
November 12, 2002
Should the United States invade Iraq and depose Saddam
Hussein? Over the past few months, advocates of war
have advanced a number of reasons why toppling Saddam
is desirable. He is a bloodthirsty tyrant. He has
defied the United Nations on numerous occasions. He
has backed terrorists in the past. Removing him will
reinforce respect for American power and spark
democratic reform in the Middle East. If you're
looking for a reason to support a war, in short, there
are plenty from which to choose.
Most of these reasons are not convincing, however.
True, Saddam is a cruel despot, but plenty of other
leaders have bloody hands and we aren't thinking about
going after them. Yes, Iraq has defied numerous UN
resolutions, but so have a number of other countries
and this sin is hardly sufficient justification for
war. Granted, Iraq has harbored terrorist
organizations in the past, but the groups it has
supported do not pose much of a threat to the United
States and eliminating Saddam would not eliminate
them. A successful war might trigger a wave of
democratic reforms in the Arab world, but a bitter
anti-American backlash is more likely. If these
reasons were the only ones that advocates of war could
offer, their campaign would never have gotten off the
ground.
But advocates of preventive war do have a trump card.
They maintain that Saddam's past behavior proves that
he is too reckless, relentless, and aggressive to be
allowed to possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
and especially nuclear weapons. They sometimes
acknowledge that war against Iraq might be costly,
might lead to a lengthy U.S. occupation, and might
complicate U.S. relations with many other countries.
But these concerns are dwarfed by the belief that
Saddam is simply too dangerous to be deterred or
contained if he acquires nuclear weapons. For that
reason alone, he has to go.
Interestingly, even many opponents of preventive war
seem to agree that Saddam cannot be deterred, and
therefore must not be allowed to get nuclear weapons.
Instead of invading Iraq and overthrowing the regime,
however, these moderates support using the threat of
an attack to compel Saddam to permit the resumption of
UN weapons inspections. Their hope is that
inspections will eliminate any hidden WMD stockpiles
and production facilities and ensure that Saddam
cannot acquire any of these deadly weapons in the
future. This motivation explains why skeptical U.S.
Congressmen nonetheless voted in favor of a resolution
authorizing the use of force, and it also explains why
the U.N. Security Council eventually passed a
resolution threatening military action if Iraq did not
allow inspectors back in. In short, both the hardline
preventive war advocates and the more moderate
supporters of inspections accept the same basic
premise: Saddam Hussein is not deterrable, and he
cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear arsenal.
There is only one problem with this argument: it is
almost certainly wrong.
The belief that Saddam's past behavior shows that he
cannot be contained rests on distorted history and
dubious logic. In fact, the historical record shows
that the United States can contain Iraq
effectively-even if Saddam has nuclear weapons-just as
it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
And that conclusion carries an obvious implication:
there is no good reason to attack Iraq at this time.
Is Saddam Another Hitler?
Those who now call for preventive war begin by
portraying Saddam as a serial aggressor bent on
dominating the Persian Gulf. Indeed, he is often
compared to Adolf Hitler, who is history's poster
child of an inveterate aggressor with a limitless
appetite for new conquests. The war party also
contends that Saddam is either irrational or prone to
serious miscalculation, which means that he may not be
deterred by even credible threats to retaliate.
Kenneth Pollack, a proponent of war with Iraq, goes so
far as to argue that Saddam is "unintentionally
suicidal."
The facts, however, tell a different story. Saddam
has dominated Iraqi politics for about thirty years.
During that period, he has started only two wars
against his neighbors. He invaded Iran in 1980 and
Kuwait in 1990. Now compare that with Hitler. Once
he had rearmed Germany, Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia
and Poland in 1939, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and
France in 1940, and Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet
Union in 1941. And to top it all off, Hitler declared
war on the United States in December 1941, even though
Nazi Germany was by then embroiled in a bloody
campaign inside the Soviet Union and hardly needed
additional enemies. By this standard, Saddam's
behavior seems rather tame.
Indeed, Saddam's past behavior is no worse than that
of several other states in the Middle East, and it may
even be marginally better. Egypt fought six wars
between 1948 and 1973 (five against Israel, plus the
civil war in Yemen), and played a key role in starting
four of them. Israel initiated wars on three
occasions (the Suez War in 1956, the Six Day War in
1967, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon), and has
conducted innumerable air strikes and commando raids
against its various Arab adversaries. Iraq happens to
be located in a rough neighborhood, and it is hardly
surprising that Saddam plays hardball, just like his
neighbors.
Furthermore, a careful look at Saddam's two main wars
shows that his behavior was far from reckless. In
fact, both times he went to war because Iraq was
vulnerable, and because he had good reason to believe
his targets were weak and isolated. In each case, his
goal was to rectify Iraq's strategic dilemma with a
limited military victory. This does not excuse
Saddam's aggression, but his willingness to use force
on these two occasions hardly demonstrates that he
cannot be deterred.
The Iran-Iraq War
Iran was the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf
during the 1970s. Iran's strength was partly due to
its large population (roughly three times that of
Iraq) and its oil reserves, but it was also due to the
strong support that the Shah of Iran received from the
United States. Relations between Iraq and Iran were
quite hostile throughout this period, but Iraq was in
no position to defy Iran's regional dominance. In
fact, Iran put constant pressure on Saddam's regime
during the early 1970s, mostly by fomenting unrest
among Iraq's sizable Kurdish minority. Iraq finally
got the Shah to stop meddling with the Kurds in 1975,
but only by agreeing to cede half of the Shatt al-Arab
waterway to Iran, a concession that underscored Iraq's
weakness at the time.
Given this history of animosity, it is not surprising
that Saddam welcomed the Shah's ouster in 1979.
Indeed, Iraq went to considerable lengths to foster
good relations with Iran's revolutionary leadership.
Saddam did not try to exploit the turmoil in Iran to
gain strategic advantage over his neighbor, and made
no attempt to reverse his earlier concessions, even
though Iran did not fully comply with the terms of the
1975 agreement. The Ayatollah Khomeini, on the other
hand, was determined to extend his revolution across
the Islamic world, starting with Iraq. By late 1979,
Tehran was pushing hard to get the Kurdish and Shiite
populations in Iraq to revolt and topple Saddam, and
Iranian operatives were actively trying to assassinate
senior Iraqi officials. Border clashes became
increasingly frequent by April 1980, largely at Iran's
instigation.
Facing a grave threat to his regime but aware that
Iran's military readiness had been temporarily
disrupted by the revolution, Saddam launched a limited
war against his bitter foe on September 22, 1980. His
principal aim was to capture a large slice of
territory along the Iraq-Iran border, not to conquer
Iran or topple Khomeini. "The war began," as Efraim
Karsh writes, "because the weaker state, Iraq,
attempted to resist the hegemonic aspirations of its
stronger neighbor, Iran, to reshape the regional
status quo according to its own image."
The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, and cost the two
protagonists over 1 million casualties and at least
$150 billion. Iraq received considerable outside
support from a number of other countries-including the
United States, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and
France-largely because these states all were
determined to prevent the further spread of Khomeini's
Islamic revolution. Although the war cost Iraq far
more than Saddam originally expected, it also thwarted
Khomeini's attempt to topple him and dominate the Gulf
region. War with Iran was not a reckless adventure;
it was an opportunistic response to a significant
threat.
The Gulf War, 1990-91
But what about Iraq's brutal invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990? Perhaps the earlier war with Iran was
essentially defensive, but surely this was not true in
the case of Kuwait. Doesn't Saddam's decision to
invade his tiny neighbor prove that he is too rash and
aggressive to be trusted with the most destructive
weaponry? And doesn's his refusal to withdraw even
when confronted by a superior coalition demonstrate
that he is in fact "unintentionally suicidal?"
The answer is no. Once again, a careful look at the
actual history of the Gulf War shows that Saddam was
neither mindlessly aggressive nor particularly rash or
reckless. If anything, the evidence suggests the
opposite conclusion.
Saddam's decision to invade Kuwait was an attempt to
deal with Iraq's continued vulnerability, and not part
of a grand design to rule the Persian Gulf. Iraq's
economy was badly damaged by its earlier war with Iran
(1980-88), and continued to decline after that war
ended. An important cause of Iraq's economic
difficulties was Kuwait's refusal to loan Iraq $10
billion, as well as write off the debts Iraq had
incurred during its war with Iran. Saddam believed
Iraq was entitled to additional aid for one simple
reason: Iraq had ruined its economy in a war that had
helped protect Kuwait and other Gulf states from
Iranian expansionism. To make matters worse, Kuwait
was overproducing its OPEC oil quotas, which drove
down world oil prices and reduced Iraqi oil profits.
Saddam tried using diplomacy to solve the problem, but
Kuwait hardly budged. As Efraim Karsh and Inari
Rautsi note, "the Kuwaitis suspected that some
concessions might be necessary, but were determined to
reduce them to the barest minimum."
Saddam reportedly decided on war sometime in July
1990, but before sending his army into Kuwait, he
approached the United States to find out how it would
react. In a now-famous interview with the Iraqi
leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam that
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like
your border disagreement with Kuwait." The U.S. State
Department then reinforced this message by declaring
that Washington had "No special defense or security
commitments to Kuwait." The United States may not have
intended to give Iraq a "green light," but that is
effectively what it did.
Given the go-ahead by Washington and given that Kuwait
was no match for Iraq militarily, Saddam invaded
Kuwait in early August 1990. This act was an obvious
violation of international law, and the United States
was justified in opposing the invasion and organizing
a coalition to reverse Iraq's aggression. But
Saddam's decision to invade was hardly the act of an
irrational or reckless aggressor, given the problems
he faced and the lack of any obvious obstacles to a
military solution. Deterrence did not fail in this
case; it was never tried.
But what about his failure to leave Kuwait once the
United States did a 180-degree turn and demanded a
return to the status quo ante? If Saddam is a
rational and responsible leader, shouldn't he have
figured out what would happen when his army clashed
with America and its allies? Wouldn't a prudent
leader have abandoned Kuwait before getting clobbered?
With hindsight, the answer seems obvious. But Saddam
is not clairvoyant and he had good reasons to hold out
as long as he could. A precipitous withdrawal would
have undermined his prestige at home, and could have
shaken the foundations of his regime. Moreover, he
also had considerable reason to believe that hanging
tough would work. In the months preceding the
fighting, for example, it was far from obvious that
the United States would actually fight. American
public opinion was initially ambivalent; Congressional
opinion was even more divided, and most Western
military experts predicted that the Iraqi army would
mount a formidable defense and maybe even force the
United States into a protracted war. If the fighting
did drag out, there was a reasonable chance that the
American-led coalition would collapse and public
opinion in the United States might turn against the
war. These forecasts seem foolish today, but they
were almost the "conventional wisdom" before the war
began.If most Americans weren't sure how the war would
go, why expect Saddam to have figured it out?
When the war began in mid-January 1991, U.S. airpower
took swift aim at the Iraqi ground forces deployed in
and around Kuwait. By mid-February, those forces were
seriously weakened and in no position to contest the
coalition's large and powerful ground forces.
Realizing that he had miscalculated, Saddam promptly
began searching for a diplomatic solution that would
allow him to retreat from Kuwait before a ground war
began. Indeed, Saddam made it clear that he was
willing to pull out immediately and return to the
status quo ante. Instead of allowing Iraq to withdraw
and fight another day, however, the Bush
administration wisely insisted that the Iraqi army
leave its equipment behind as it withdrew. As the
administration had hoped, this was a deal Saddam could
not accept.
There is no question that Saddam miscalculated when he
attacked Kuwait, but the history of warfare is full of
cases where leaders have misjudged the prospects for
war. But there is no evidence suggesting that
Hussein did not weigh his options carefully. He chose
to use force because he was facing a serious challenge
and because he had good reasons to think that his
invasion would not provoke serious opposition.
Nor should we forget that the Iraqi tyrant survived
the Kuwait debacle just as he has survived other
threats against his regime. He is now beginning his
fourth decade in power. If he is really
"unintentionally suicidal," then it appears his
survival instincts are even more finely honed.
Finally, history provides at least two more pieces of
evidence demonstrating that Saddam is deterrable.
First, although he did launch conventionally-armed
SCUD missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel during the
Gulf War, he did not launch chemical or biological
weapons at the coalition forces that were decimating
the Iraqi military. Moreover, senior Iraqi
officials-including Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and
the head of military intelligence, General Wafic
al-Sammarai-have testified that Iraq refrained from
using its chemical weapons because the Bush
administration had made ambiguous but unmistakable
threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons if Iraq used
WMD. Second, in 1994 Iraq mobilized the remnants of
its army on the Kuwaiti border, in an apparent attempt
to force a modification of the UNSCOM weapons
inspection regime. But when the UN issued a new
warning and the United States reinforced its forces in
Kuwait, Iraq quickly backed down. In both cases, the
allegedly irrational Iraqi leader was deterred.
(cont.) |
