Now, the Essential Question: Is War the Answer?
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 9, 2003
For months, the big challenge facing the Bush administration has been convincing public opinion, both at home and abroad, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still developing weapons of mass destruction. That question was largely resolved Wednesday, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a trove of incriminating tapes and photographs to the U.N. Security Council.
The issue now is what the world should do about it.
For President Bush and his aides, the answer is obvious. Iraq is in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions demanding that it destroy its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. A tough new U.N. inspections regimen has failed to bring Iraq into compliance. If Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were to fall into the hands of terrorists, the results would likely be horrific. Military force is the only way left of destroying the potential nexus between rogue states and terrorist groups.
Not so, say the skeptics, who include many members of the country's foreign policy elite, such as former national security advisers, senators from both political parties, and senior military officers. Although the Bush administration may have demonstrated that Hussein is an evil man with evil weapons, it has yet to make the case that he poses an imminent threat to the peace and security of the United States that can only be defused through war.
Powell's presentation to the Security Council "changed the terms of the debate in Congress and in the country," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. According to Biden, few members of Congress doubt that Hussein "is a bad guy who is continuing to do bad things." The key questions now, says Biden, are "How much time do we have?" and "Who will be with us if we go to war?"
Bush has made clear that the administration is determined to go to war whether or not it obtains a new resolution from the Security Council. The Pentagon has accelerated its buildup in the Persian Gulf region, giving deployment orders last week to the Army's 101st Airborne Division, due to arrive in the region at the end of this month.
But the administration is still signaling that it prefers to go to war with some kind of endorsement from the United Nations, which would relieve much of the political and economic burden of running a post-Hussein Iraq. While insisting that time is running out, U.S. officials have not yet set a cutoff date for the weapons inspections, and Britain would like to see them continue at least through the end of the month.
At the Security Council, there was remarkably little debate last week on what was hitherto the crucial issue of whether Iraq was in violation of its disarmament obligations. France, which has been leading international opposition to imminent military action, continued to express doubts about Bush administration claims of alleged links between Baghdad and the terrorist organization al Qaeda. But France did not quarrel with Powell's assertion that Hussein has been concealing biological and chemical weapons.
According to French officials, the key issue is not whether Iraq is in compliance with Security Council resolutions, but whether war is the best way of defusing the threat posed by Baghdad. In the French view, it is very difficult for Hussein to do much mischief as long as the U.N. inspections are taking place, and he is "in his box." The French believe that a much more imminent threat is posed by North Korea, which last week announced that it had restarted a reactor capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.
"We see Hussein as a threat, but not as an urgent threat," the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, said Friday, at a meeting whose host was the U.S. Institute of Peace. "We fear that a war [with Iraq] could trigger more terrorism and more recruitment for al Qaeda."
According to France, the best way of dealing with the threat posed by Hussein is not to end U.N. inspections and go to war, as the Bush administration appears intent on doing, but to greatly increase their effectiveness. Responding to Powell's presentation last Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin proposed tripling the number of weapons inspectors in Iraq and insisting on much more intrusive overflights to gather intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs.
Despite the tough French line, some administration officials and independent analysts believe that France may yet change its mind and either vote for a second resolution endorsing military action or abstain. They note that during the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, then-President Francois Mitterrand decided to join the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq at the final moment, with the memorable phrase, "And now the armies must speak."
The 15-member Security Council seems evenly divided between supporters of the French and U.S. positions. Britain, Bulgaria, Spain, and Chile all seem to be lining up behind the Bush administration. Russia, China, Germany, and Syria are much closer to the French position. Angola and Guinea are likely to vote with Washington in a crunch. The swing votes belong to three Third World countries, Cameroon, Mexico, and Pakistan, all of which want the inspections to continue, but are subject to intense U.S. diplomatic pressure.
For the Bush administration, the showdown with Iraq has developed into a test of the credibility of both the United States and the United Nations. As the president put it in his weekly radio address yesterday, "Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator."
In contrast to French President Jacques Chirac, who sees a war with Iraq as a distraction from the war on terrorism, Bush believes that disarming Hussein is the best way of signaling U.S. resolve and preventing future terrorist attacks. An insight into the president's thinking came during a recent news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair when a reporter asked Bush how his strategic thinking had been affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
"After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water, as far as I'm concerned," Bush replied. The strategic vision of the United States, he added, had "shifted dramatically, because we now recognize that oceans no longer protect us [and] that we're vulnerable to attack."
Whether a war with Iraq will make the United States safer from terrorist attack -- or provide a pretext for more such attacks -- is a matter of great controversy and debate.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Columbia University professor Richard K. Betts argued that Hussein is much more likely to authorize use of biological or chemical weapons against American targets if he perceives that his regime is in danger and he has nothing left to lose. Even if the chances of such an attack are as low as 1 in 6, said Betts, the risks inherent in attempting to overthrow Hussein resemble a game of "Russian roulette."
"Iraq is not the only evil regime in the world that is seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction," said Betts, a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. "It is bizarre to hear the administration saying that we should attack Iraq, but not attack North Korea, whose nuclear programs are far more advanced than those of Iraq and whose behavior is wilder and crazier."
In public, administration officials insist that the North Korean crisis can still be resolved through diplomacy and economic pressure, methods that have failed with Iraq.
In private, they concede that the main reason it is impossible to go to war with North Korea is that Pyongyang is in a position to deliver on its threats to turn the South Korean capital of Seoul into a "sea of fire," because it has tens of thousands of artillery tubes lined up within striking distance along the demilitarized zone.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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