Here's a good read:-
If US decides to wage war, will Saddam do a Hitler?
By RICHARD BETTS
I START from the point that I believe the coming war with Iraq is a very bad idea, but it seems almost impossible that the United States will turn around now and decide against war.
US President George W. Bush has gone way too far out on a limb and would be humiliated if he thought better of it and retreated (although he should, as the one thing worse than embarrassment is persistence in a dangerous strategic mistake).
Nothing will stop war now except a coup in Baghdad, and maybe not even that - the coup would need to eliminate the whole upper stratum of the Baath regime, and serve up all Iraqi scientists in weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) programmes to get full revelation of locations of biological and chemical weapon stocks, laboratories, production and testing facilities, so the whole infrastructure can be eradicated.
QUICK PUSH A MUST
REGIME change in itself would not guarantee elimination of WMDs, and without a radical change of regime, there is no assurance that they would not be reconstituted once the initial cleansing or occupation of the country is finished. But a coup does remain the one hope for avoiding war - a slim chance, but maybe 10-15 per cent odds that it will happen.
The main issues now are:
What will the strategy be in war?
How long will operations take to complete the invasion and eliminate the Baath regime and Republican Guard?
How will the country be occupied, for how long, and with what consequences?
What risks require special attention and precautionary counter-measures?
There is no point in trying to predict exactly how General Tommy Franks will prosecute war tactically, but a big question is whether it will be one lightning push on the ground after the initial air attacks, which will probably last at least several days, or whether there will be two phases, as some press reports suggest - initial penetration, then a pause to reinforce and build up a conventional armoured offensive if the Iraqis do not crumble immediately.
If all Iraqi forces crack at the outset, and a general military collapse allows nearly unopposed entry into Baghdad, many risks will be lower. This is possible, but not highly probable - the US ground forces being deployed are far smaller than in 1990, and without allied forces of consequence as there were then.
The US Army is not enthusiastic about daring, unlimited operations with limited forces. Few experts expect the regular Iraqi Army to fight effectively, if at all, but many believe the Republican Guard units, or a reasonable portion of them, and the Special Republican Guard, will fight, and that if they burrow into the cities, rooting them out will be highly destructive.
If the US advance into Baghdad is not done in one fast, unrelenting phase, disorienting the Iraqis completely and moving faster than they can react, it will be harder for Iraqi commanders to surrender, or to disobey orders to launch chemical or biological weapons, if they have Baathist political commissars sitting next to them ready to put bullets in their heads.
IF RESISTANCE IS ORGANISED?
AND if resistance within Baghdad is organised effectively, it will not take massive numbers of loyal Republican Guards to force house to house fighting and prolonged carnage - as witnessed in Israeli operations in Jenin but on a much wider scale - which will erode support for the invasion the longer it goes on. sk
It will also give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hunkered down in his bunker like Hitler in April 1945, time to contemplate ordering his best parting shot - use of WMDs in the region or on the US, if he has managed to pre-position agents and bacteriological weapons.
Once war is over - and it will be over within very few months at the outside - how will occupation proceed? Iraq is a vast country, with many contending ethnic, religious, tribal and political groups, and no history of democracy to draw on for institutionalising reform (unlike Germany and Japan in 1945).
If chaos is to be prevented once the lid kept on by Mr Saddam is released, US forces will have to be obtrusive and active, and clearly in charge of ruling the country for some time. The idea that exiles can be flown in to set up an effective functioning government, with minimal direct US involvement, is fanciful.
And if the media shows consistent images of American uniforms running the country for a long time, predispositions to believe the worst about US imperialism, and animosity in the Arab world, may be confirmed.
But how will the US staff and fund a serious occupation that forces Iraq to be free, a la 1945? It has not been doing too well in Afghanistan, where the US-installed President Hamid Karzai is known derisively, but accurately, as the 'Mayor of Kabul'.
With burgeoning budget deficits at home, and allies who have no interest in paying for what they didn't want the US to do, it is likely to do it on the cheap.
And where will the personnel come from? One estimate I've heard is an occupation force of 75,000. That's a very significant portion of the whole US Army, already stretched thin in deployments around the globe. Perhaps the US can get the United Nations or Nato to take over the job, but that can't be counted on, and how well can they be expected to perform if they do? Better than in Bosnia or Cambodia where peace-keeping operations have had a mixed record to say the least?
If the US handles these risks, on the other hand, by settling for a quick and limited occupation, what will it have to show for in a year or so after leaving? And how confident can it be that what comes after will be so benign that the war to oust Mr Saddam may not come to seem quixotic?
How do I estimate odds of various outcomes? I have no confidence in an estimate. There are too many imponderables, things that could go either way. But I have a hunch about the odds for three general outcomes, from good to awful.
I would say there's a 30 per cent chance that the whole business will be as successful, quick, and clean as optimists in the Bush administration hope (as the first, much more limited, Gulf War was a dozen years ago).
In this case, there would be a short war, with little combat and only modest destruction and casualties; no Israeli intervention; a relatively effective occupation and rooting out of WMD infrastructures; contained and short-lived outrage among the world's Muslims; and decent steps towards political construction - not 're' construction, since no one should want to re-establish any political system that has existed in Iraq before - with no chaotic disintegration, warlordism, civil war, or new dictatorship.
There's a 50 per cent chance that the war will be messier and much more costly than optimists anticipate, but that the US will get out of it without intolerable disaster: a war that lasts weeks or months, with bloody urban combat, high casualties and collateral damage; political upheaval in much of the Muslim world; and further diplomatic and political damage to US alliances.
This scenario would also see limited use of chemical weapons against US forces; high expenditure; and botched occupation that's either too obtrusive or the opposite - too brief and weak, leaving the country to wallow in disorder and strife, or revert to brutal dictatorship.
IF THERE'S REAL CATASTROPHE
THERE'S a 20 per cent chance of real catastrophe: use of biological weapons against Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or the US, with American civilian casualties in the tens of thousands; and overthrow of conservative governments in Egypt, Pakistan, or other critical states in the region, and their replacement by radical anti-Western regimes.
This scenario would also see transfer of Iraqi WMDs to terrorists, as Mr Saddam falls; a dramatic upsurge in Al-Qaeda recruitment; simultaneous wars in Korea and Kashmir, as contestants try to take advantage of US distraction in the Middle East; or other disasters.
If these hunches are correct, the good news is that the odds of catastrophe are not very high. The bad news is that they are still too high.
The writer is director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and author of If Saddam Strikes Back. This article is adapted from a speech he delivered at Yale University last Friday. Copyright: Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation. |
