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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (57435)	11/16/2002 11:09:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A Safer Way to Stop Saddam “Winning Without War” Issue Brief No. 6 October 25, 2002 iraqpolicy.com Bush Administration insistence that the UN Security Council resolution on Iraq provide authorization for US military action continues to meet stiff opposition from other veto-bearing members of the Council. France and Russia, in particular, argue that the UN must give weapons inspectors the chance to do their job before passing judgment on military action. As the six-week long impasse drags on, there is new thinking about how to prevent Iraq from posing a security threat to others without waging a costly and risky war, and mounting international political will to implement such policies. A new report issued by the Fourth Freedom Forum, Winning Without War, outlines a policy of containment -- strengthened weapons inspections, a tightened sanctions regime, and enhanced deterrence -- that can accomplish the US objective of disarming Iraq and preventing its use of weapons of mass destruction. The elements of an effective policy of containment are described below. An effective inspection regime · A unified Security Council with the political will to compel Iraqi cooperation (or prevent obstruction) by maintaining a continued threat and capacity to use military force. · Credible assurance that force will not be used if Iraq complies with its obligations to disarm. Otherwise Saddam has little incentive to comply and every incentive to hold onto whatever weapons he’s got and indeed to use them, if attacked. · No-notice “anywhere, anytime” access by inspectors to any facility in Iraq including so-called “presidential palaces,” backed by the threat to use force to ensure access. · Open-book inspection of Iraqi weapons inventories and records of weapons programs, with unhindered access to scientists and engineers who have worked in them. · Use of data from national intelligence agencies to guide the inspectors’ work. The 1990s UN weapons inspections uncovered and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear weapons program and the bulk of its biological and chemical weapons. As the British government dossier concluded last month, “Despite the conduct of Iraqi authorities toward them, both UNSCOM and the IAEA action team have valuable records of achievement in discovering and exposing Iraq’s biological weapons programme and destroying very large quantities of chemical weapons stocks and missiles as well as the infrastructure of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme.” Military containment Economic sanctions and military containment since the Gulf War have worked to defang Iraq. Its military forces are in poor condition, no one believes it has rebuilt a viable nuclear weapon program, it continues to have some chemical and biological capability, but with limited capacity to deliver it. About half the country’s air-space is patrolled by US and UK forces and the Kurds are continuing to solidify their control in the north. Saddam is not in a position to threaten anyone but his own population. Despite these accomplishments, the international containment of Iraq can and should be fortified through better monitoring of imports, and by tighter controls on Iraqi oil sales. Winning Without War, recommends a vigorously enforced system of border monitoring and cargo inspections at Iraq’s borders and the Aqaba port. Cargo entering Iraq currently is not inspected. The report also recommends improvements in the system for Iraqi oil marketing and pricing to reduce kickbacks and illegal payments to Baghdad, including a requirement that oil purchasers submit audited financial reports. Diplomatic efforts with Syria are needed to bring the Syrian-Iraqi pipeline under UN control, thereby closing off the major source of illegal Iraqi revenue. The UN also should fully implement the new sanctions policy that Secretary of State Colin Powell persuaded the UN Security Council to adopt last May. The reformed policy focuses on prohibiting embargoed items and suspicious dual-use items while facilitating import of food, medicine and material needed to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and oil-production facilities. Saddam can be deterred Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, but as many analysts have noted, he is a survivor not a suicide bomber. His government is bellicose, but it functions as a state -- unlike a terrorist network -- that is responsive to threats. Secretary of State James Baker recounts in his memoirs how he deterred Saddam Hussein. Before the war started Baker told him that if Iraq used chemical weapons, the US would destroy his regime. Saddam did a lot of terrible things during the Gulf War -- he lobbed scuds into Israel and Saudi Arabia, he burnt Kuwaiti oil fields on the way out. But he did not use chemical weapons. The US, working with the UN could strengthen deterrence by reaching formal agreement that specified acts of Iraqi aggression would trigger specified military responses. Such acts might include military aggression against other states, aid to Al Qaeda or other international terrorist organizations, testing of long-range missiles or nuclear weapons. Winning Without War War against Iraq is not inevitable, nor is it necessary. The U.S., in concert with the United Nations, can achieve its security objectives without a costly and risky military invasion of Iraq by acting forcefully to enhance containment and strengthen deterrence. As Mort Halperin, former Policy Planning Director at the State Department (1998-2001), has written, recently “The simplest question that supporters of going to war with Iraq cannot answer is why would Saddam Hussein be less likely to use his weapons of mass destruction if we attack than if we contain him.” Halperin cites the striking parallels between supporters of preemptive war against Joseph Stalin in the late 1940s and early ‘50s and the Bush Administration’s case for unilateral action against Saddam. He concludes that just as containment worked in the case of the USSR, it has worked with Iraq since the end of the Gulf War. (The American Prospect, November 4, 2002). An assertive application of military, economic and diplomatic containment policies is more likely to be successful than any other approach. Winning Without War can be found at www.fourthfreedom.org. Co-author and Fourth Freedom Forum President David Cortright can be reached at: 574-534-3402 Morton Halperin, Director of the Washington Office of the Open Society Institute and Open Society Policy Center can be reached at 202-721-5600.