A Lebanese view.
US contingency plans often differ from reality
The recent surfacing of US documents about plans developed by the former Nixon administration to occupy Gulf oil fields during the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo has provoked discussion about US intentions during that period. This has dovetailed with questions, prompted by the recent revelations of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, over whether it was the intention of the Bush administration to invade Iraq before Sept. 11, 2001.
Rather than arguing the relative merits of competing theories about American motives, however, it is more useful to take a closer look at the process of how the US tries to anticipate potential threats to its national security, and how it plans for such contingencies.
Threat analysis assessing the intentions and capabilities of potential adversaries is taught in military schools the world over. Traditionally, the military calibrates capabilities for meeting such threats should the need arise, and diplomatic services calibrate the intentions of the other party. Both are supported by intelligence services that gather and analyze information on intentions and capabilities. The decision of how to respond if a contingency becomes an actual threat is the responsibility of the political leadership.
In the real world, this process never works according to such a neat framework. With ever more information available to the public as a result of the information technology revolution, for example, public opinion plays an increasingly ubiquitous role in shaping the intentions both of domestic policymakers and potential adversaries. Hype and spin, misinformation and disinformation, can play a major role in how a country calibrates both intentions and capabilities.
In the US, planning for contingencies requiring the use of force has become a major preoccupation of the military. This comes amid the chilling reality that hostile actions can take place speedily and with such devastating results that unprepared countries remain so at their peril. For example, although there were numerous Gulf war contingency plans floating around the Pentagon prior to Iraq’s entry into Kuwait in August 1990, particularly in the US Air Force, the operational strategic plan for Desert Storm was prepared largely after the invasion, and it took six months before the coalition was ready to engage.
Fortunately for all concerned, Saddam Hussein did not move into Saudi Arabia, since he sought to avoid a US military response. However, it is also true that had he decided to do so, there was no military force in place in summer 1990 to prevent it.
Prior to the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which precipitated the oil embargo crisis, Israel was also caught unawares. It was convinced that Egyptian military moves were part of its annual maneuvers. The Israelis totally misjudged Egyptian and Syrian intentions, as well as their capabilities. US military support for Israel was crucial in rapidly re-supplying it with ammunition and aircraft. Yet to my recollection there was no US contingency plan for such a rapid re-supply.
However, in 1974 as the oil embargo by Arab oil-producers began to tighten around the US, the Pentagon drew up a contingency plan to prevent the global economy from becoming (in what was later reported to be the words of then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) “strangled” by a shortage of oil. When a story on the plan appeared in Harper’s magazine that winter, it provoked a storm of commentary that the US intended to invade the Gulf for its oil. However, whatever were Kissinger’s motives that led to the leak, the contingency plan was just that: a plan, not a statement of intention.
That is not to say that no one in the US government at the time wished to embark on an idiotic policy of invading Gulf oil fields. But the US foreign policy community, as in most countries, is not monolithic. High-ranking insiders constantly lobby for their ideas, no matter how silly, risky or self-serving. Fortunately, few such ideas survive the institutional sanity test, and most die unlamented.
Now fast forward to O’Neill’s recent claim that the Bush administration intended to invade Iraq before Sept. 11. Critics of US policy interpreted this to mean that President George W. Bush sought long before Sept. 11 to gain direct control of Iraqi oil resources to lessen US dependence on Gulf oil. It was deja vu all over again! According to the media, one document substantiating O’Neill’s claim was a Defense Department order to look into plans for such an invasion, dated well before the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Again, such an order did not constitute a statement of intention. Certainly, concern about Iraqi capabilities and intentions were there from the outset. Even Bush’s predecessor, former US President Bill Clinton, had stated the need for regime change in Iraq. That desire and the continuing refusal of Saddam Hussein to cooperate with the UN inspection regime imposed a military contingency plan. But to leap from contingency planning to implementation required more than the motivation of a few ideologues, no matter how influential. However shortsighted the US-led invasion of Iraq was, or whatever were the long-cherished dreams of Bush administration neoconservatives to redraw the political map of the Middle East, it took the trauma of Sept. 11 one shared by the entire US population and many abroad to trigger the chain of events leading to the invasion of Iraq.
Although it may have been unexceptional for the administration to prepare military plans for the Iraq invasion, the naive, ideological tenor of post-war reconstruction planning, which has been imperfect to say the least, has not reflected the existence of a coherent operational strategy crafted by military professionals far in advance of hostilities.
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