Is this a new war? The 12-year gulf war - By Tom Campbell
Posted on Tue, Mar 18, 2003
NOW that the second Persian Gulf War is upon us, I remember the time of the first Persian Gulf War, 12 years ago. The lessons from that time bear consideration now, not only because of the value of learning from history, but because the present crisis stems directly from that first crisis. Indeed, in all the discussion of various rationales for the present war, the clearest rationale of all has been overlooked: The war of 1991 never ended.
That war began when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He said Kuwait was just another province of Iraq. He claimed it as a matter of right. He asserted he would stay there forever. The world community disagreed. One rule, at least, had become clear for international behavior in those early days of the post-Cold War era: One country could not be allowed to take over another. Saddam was testing that new international regime. America stood up to him. No other country was capable of doing so.
When Saddam Hussein surrendered in March of 1991, he agreed to give up all claim to Kuwait, and to destroy all those weapons with which he could threaten his neighbors. In international law, the closest parallel is to the terms of the Versailles Treaty ending the First World War, whereby Germany agreed it would not militarize the area of its own country closest to France and Belgium (the Rhineland). The alternative was continuation of the war. The terms were accepted by the vanquished and were enforceable by the victors.
Except that in the case of the Rhineland, another tyrant tested the victors by putting German troops into the Rhineland in 1936. France should have mobilized that very day. Its failure to do so, in the universal view of history, encouraged catastrophic consequences.
In the case of Iraq, Saddam Hussein sensed the victors’ neglect, made inspections difficult and, in 1998, expelled the inspectors. The victors did nothing. However, their right to act was not extinguished. The U.N. resolutions granting authority to the United States and our allies to wage war against Iraq were not repealed. They remain in force for the sake of enforcing the promises Saddam Hussein made to end the 1991 War. Furthermore, from that time to this, hostilities have continued non-stop. The no-fly zones, patrolled by America and Britain, have seen military action in unbroken succession, under prime ministers Major and Blair, under presidents Bush, Clinton and Bush.
IN taking up the use of force again, the United States attempted and failed to obtain a new resolution from the Security Council. That fact cannot be denied. But it shouldn’t cloud the point that the 1991 war resolutions continue; hostilities have continued ever since; the conditions of the truce were broken; the victors have the right to enforce the conditions.
Can we enforce those conditions short of war? In 1991, I recall debating colleagues in Congress about the wisdom of going to war. Some argued that we should “let economic sanctions work.” The arguments this time are strikingly similar. We are urged to “let inspections work.” In a country the size of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania combined, a few hundred inspectors cannot be expected to find every possible location of anthrax stores or missiles capable of delivering them. The U.N. inspectors, before being expelled in 1998, documented the existence of those stores. The U.N. inspectors this time have found missiles capable of delivering anthrax. Saddam Hussein has no evidence of having destroyed the anthrax. Either he is the most modest of dictators, privately destroying his anthrax stores and not telling anyone, or he still has those stores and the missiles to deliver them. Putting the two together will be possible even with a thousand U.N. inspectors in his vast country.
When that day comes, the lessons of history will again have to be learned, as we have seen them in North Korea. A dictator armed with weapons capable of tremendous harm cannot be dealt with as readily as one not yet so armed. America is now embarking on what France should have done in 1936 -- using its rights under a previous treaty of peace to prevent a worse horror.
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