Ken Pollack offers the centerpiece arguments in Al Hunt's column today in the WSJ. On the links between US policy vis a vis North Korea and Iraq.
POLITICS & PEOPLE
By AL HUNT
Confusion More Than Clarity
online.wsj.com
Saddam Hussein probably feels better this week. The Butcher of Baghdad, who relies more on his gut instincts than Americanologists who might tell him what he doesn't want to hear, sees:
• Success in his delaying tactics. Initially, American commanders were told to be ready for a late January invasion; now the inside word is not before March, and the British foreign minister pegs the odds of war at less than 50/50. Based on experience, the Iraqi dictator views time as an ally.
• American clarity has dissolved back into chaos and conflict. Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld keeps steadily amassing American troops in the region, but Secretary of State Colin Powell's diplomatic front is moving just as inexorably.
• North Korea has made a mockery of Bush resolve -- remember the old "I say what I mean and I mean what I say" -- as the administration retreats daily. It may be a fatal misreading, but Saddam must see this as the U.S. backing down after its bluff was called.
"I'm afraid the message Saddam is getting is: "I'm actually in a good position; all I need to do is wait this out," says Kenneth Pollack, author of the highly acclaimed book on Iraq, "The Threatening Storm," and a former top government expert on the country. Similarly, former Clinton United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke says, "what concerns me the most is not North Korea itself but the message it sends to Saddam: Stand up to Washington and they'll back down."
When Bill Clinton was president, foreign policy hard-liners insisted words have consequences and weakness anywhere only emboldens terrorists and thugs. Thus, Mr. Clinton was denounced when he foolishly removed ground troops as an option during the months-long bombing assault against Serbia, and critics charged that American vacillation in Mogadishu encouraged Osama bin laden and al Qaeda.
But this administration's Korean performance makes Mr. Clinton's policies look resolute. A linchpin of the Bush administration's national security approach was ABC -- Anything But Clinton. Thus the 1994 pact with Koreans was denigrated, the South Koreans were chastised for promoting more engagement and North Korea, in a bow to affirmative action, was the one non-Islamic member of the Axis of Evil.
After the North Koreans acknowledged they were further developing nuclear capacities and would throw out international inspectors, abrogating the 1994 pact, the White House drew a hard line: no talks with this despicable regime until it capitulates. As the crisis grew and distracted the focus from Iraq, the administration sought to downplay it. Then, last weekend, in a scene out of Saturday Night Live, Bill Richardson, the former Clinton diplomat and newly elected Democratic governor of New Mexico, held talks with North Korean officials in Santa Fe, with the administration's blessing.
In the midst of this confusion, the White House took the military option off the table. Now a war on the Korean peninsula would be a cataclysm -- in a riveting piece, experts on Ted Koppel's Nightline estimated casualties of more than a million -- but declaring that under no circumstances would we use force didn't enhance our leverage with the North Koreans or with the Chinese or Russians. Image the outcry if Bill Clinton had done this.
That has worried experts on both sides of the political aisle. "By pledging not to use force President Bush has violated 50 years of American doctrine of deterrence in Korea," says Mr. Holbrooke. Even tougher has been Republican Sen. John McCain, who in the conservative Weekly Standard this week blasted the Bush policy: "The rapid deterioration of our resolve is as reckless as it is disingenuous," the Arizona Republican declared in a withering critique.
This all sends the wrong signal to Saddam, as well as Kim Jong Il, as does the appearance of the administration paralyzed by internal power struggles. The president has not been well served recently by his advisers," worries Mr. Pollack. Unquestionably, the U.N. weapons inspectors, with their predictable inability to find any smoking gun, have prolonged closure in Iraq. The Jan. 27 Hans Blix formal report on the UN inspectors findings once was considered the beginning of the final countdown for regime change.
That's less likely, to the dismay of administration hawks; insiders say testy relations between Colin Powell and Vice President Cheney have worsened recently, as the Cheney camp blames the secretary of state for what it sees as the U.N. quagmire.
So where's George W. Bush.? The post Sept. 11 zeitgeist was "George Bush may not know all that much but he has all these great advisers who steer him on the right course." But what happens when these smart advisers disagree? Actually George Bush's post-Sept. 11 performance, while winning deserved plaudits, wouldn't have been much different with any other president. On North Korea, the Middle East or Iraq, he has to earn his pay.
On Iraq, Mr. Pollack says it's critical that Mr. Bush soon detail a clear course of action. "If it's war, he has to lay out the case much more than he has to the American people and the world and then proceed." If instead he wants opts for a continued containment policy, Mr. Pollack says, the president has to spell out a much more vigorous sanctions and inspections policy, demanding a new United Nations resolution, creating a system with teeth that prevents Iraq from illegally smuggling oil and bring in lethal weapons.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw notwithstanding, war remains the more likely course. Dick Cheney and Colin Powell can battle it out, but most persuasive will be Karl Rove's warning of the perils of running for reelection with Saddam still snubbing his nose at us. If so, let's hope Mr. Bush conducts the war and the messy aftermath with more skill and resolution than he has displayed in the first two weeks of this year. |
