Iraq Outmaneuvers U.S. -- Revealing Fundamental Lack of
Definition in US Foreign Policy
Last week, we wrote that: "Even with political support and
decisive military options [for the United States], Saddam is in
control of events. He can create crises. He can abort crises.
The very geometry of the relationship is asymmetric. The U.S.
cannot deliver a decisive blow against Saddam, nor can it
disengage. This means that Saddam can control U.S. behavior."
This weekend's events bear classic evidence of this view of the
situation.
With air strikes imminent, Saddam did what he does so well. He
changed course. Agreeing to allow the UNSCOM inspectors back in,
he seemingly aborted the crisis. This left the United States in
an impossible position. Its position had been that, unless
Saddam agreed to allow the inspectors back in, the United States
would attack Iraq. Once Saddam agreed to allow inspectors back
in, the United States found its hands tied by Saddam's apparent
capitulation. Of course, since practical considerations meant
that there would be a time-lag between Saddam's capitulation and
the return of the UNSCOM inspectors, the commencement of
inspections, and their final, effective completion, the U.S. now
finds itself in a no-man's land between Iraqi agreement and Iraqi
compliance.
If the United States attacks Iraq in spite of Saddam's
concession, it will appear that the U.S. demand for inspections
was merely a pretext, and that the United States was intending to
attack Iraq regardless of whether Iraq complied with UN
resolutions or not. Saddam would actually welcome an attack
under these circumstances. He is not particularly afraid of a
U.S. air campaign. He absorbed the worst the U.S. had to offer
in 1991 and survived. Current forces allocated to an air
campaign against Iraq are orders of magnitude inferior to those
available in Desert Storm. In short, Saddam has the measure of
the U.S. air campaign and believes he can survive it.
What he is really concerned about is breaking the anti-Iraq
coalition led by the United States, and thereby ending sanctions.
In order to do this he must induce the U.S. to take actions that,
from the perspective of the UN resolutions, are illegitimate.
So, if the U.S. attacks in spite of Saddam's concession, it will
appear that nothing Saddam could say or do, in practical terms,
would deter a U.S. attack. Of course, the U.S. will argue that
Saddam could simply no longer be trusted regardless of what he
promises. However, that would mean that the UN would have to
shift its strategy from compelling compliance to toppling Saddam.
France, China and Russia would all adamantly oppose this shift,
as would most of the Arab countries. Therefore, Saddam would
love the U.S. to attack him this week. It would be of enormous
help to him in his basic strategy of ending sanctions and
breaking the anti-Iraqi coalition.
If, however, the U.S. follows the strategy enunciated by
President Clinton on Sunday and holds off, waiting to see whether
Iraq complies, it has another problem on its hands. The U.S. has
now deployed a substantial portion of its readily available
strike forces. More forces are available, but they require more
time for deployment and the mobilization of reserve forces to
fill out their complement. Clinton must keep his eyes on Serbia
as well as Iraq, and wild cards like a Korean or Indonesian
crisis requiring a U.S. presence can't be dismissed. And keeping
U.S. forces in the region is not as easy as it may look. The
Clinton administration's budgetary policies have affected the
critical logistical support capabilities of the U.S.
dramatically. The U.S. must stand down much of its force well
before serious inspections even begin, let alone conclude. That
will allow Saddam to choose the time and place for the next
crisis.
In our view, Saddam wins regardless of what the U.S. does. The
central problem is that U.S. policy is completely inconsistent
with U.S. means. U.S. policy appears to prevent Saddam Hussein
from developing weapons of mass destruction. The means that it
has chosen to achieve this end are United Nations inspectors. In
order to compel the Iraqis to submit to inspection, the United
States threatens military action against Iraq. The problem is
that the military action being threatened is incapable of
threatening Saddam's fundamental interests: his regime's
survival. Nor are air attacks capable of destroying weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) without inspectors being able to pinpoint
the location of all weapons and facilities with an extremely high
degree of confidence. Thus, if Saddam stops inspections, the
U.S. can't hit WMD facilities. It is forced to hit subsidiary
targets and that doesn't frighten Saddam.
If Saddam develops and demonstrably deploys weapons of mass
destruction, he has a tremendous deterrent force available.
Striking Saddam might then trigger a massive Iraqi retaliation,
one that can't be risked. The irrational image Saddam has tried
so hard to craft, makes such weapons particularly dangerous in
his hands. Once he has them, it will be hard to mess with him.
Therefore, it is in his interest to endure any military action,
any sanctions, so long as his ability to develop WMD is
unhindered. Looked at in this way, Saddam's strategy is
completely rational. He will not permit effective inspections
because they would make his weapons projects vulnerable to air
attack. He does not mind air attacks on most targets, except
where WMD are being developed. Indeed, he will accept such air
attacks if necessary, and use them to achieve his diplomatic
ends.
The U.S. therefore cannot achieve its stated end, which is the
use of UNSCOM inspectors to rid Iraq of weapons of mass
destruction. In reality the sanctions regime since 1991 has
neither toppled Saddam, nor has it changed his strategy. It will
not do either in 1998. Saddam would like sanctions ended,
although they are not doing him or his government nearly the harm
the United States would like to think. Thus, the U.S. ends are
completely incompatible with U.S. means.
It is, of course, possible to get rid of Saddam and his weapons.
The United States can invade Iraq. The invasion and occupation
of Iraq would require a force substantially larger than what was
deployed in Desert Storm. This would require a build-up of
nearly a year, including the complete mobilization of reserves.
It would require cooperation from Saudi Arabia and Turkey and, at
a minimum, the neutrality of Syria and Iran. It would require
that the United States accept that it would be operating without
UN sanction, since a Franco-Russian-Chinese veto of an invasion
is almost certain. It would require that the United States
either surround or lay siege to Baghdad, or enter it and fight an
urban battle in which its technical superiority would be largely
negated by the nature of house to house fighting.
Therefore, an invasion of Iraq is not going to happen. Numerous
attempts to topple Saddam have all failed. Air attacks are not
going to bother him. The United States must now develop a new
strategy toward Iraq. Apart from the political courage it might
take to admit that the U.S. is incapable of solving this problem,
there is a deep intellectual problem at work as well. Neither
the Bush nor the Clinton administrations have managed to
enunciate a coherent foreign policy since the end of the Cold
War. And the U.S. has no intellectual framework for evaluating
its foreign policies.
The United States entered the Middle East at the end of World War
II because of its policy of encircling and containing the Soviet
Union with allies. The southern flank of the containment
required two partners: Turkey and Iran. The U.S. managed to
stabilize this flank by the mid-1950s. The Soviets, unable to
break Turkey and Iran, responded by a policy of counter-
encirclement. It focused on Syria and Iraq as potential allies
to threaten Turkey and Iran from the rear. In order to tie down
Syria and Iraq, the United States became dependent on Israel and
Saudi Arabia. In order to control Israel and Saudi Arabia, the
Soviets focused on Egypt and Yemen. Of course, history was not
as neat as this characterization, but the net result was that the
United States entered the Middle East in order to protect the
Turkish and Iranian frontiers with the Soviet Union, and the
ensuing alliances have persisted beyond the end of the Cold War.
The U.S. interest in the region was reinforced because of oil.
With the oil crisis of the 1970s, control of the world's oil
supply lay in the Persian Gulf. If the Soviets gained control of
the Gulf, they would not only break their encirclement, but they
would have the industrialized world under their control. That
was then. Today, the world oil market is very different. Prices
have plummeted because of a massive oversupply of oil. An oil
embargo that cuts the supply of oil to the industrialized world
is impossible today for economic reasons, let alone political
reasons. Even if a single power controlled all of the region's
oil, their ability to coerce the West is simply no longer there.
The United States is now conducting foreign policy by habit.
This is not unusual, particularly in a major power whose
fundamental interests are not engaged and which can afford the
dissipation of power without degradation of its national
security. While not uncommon historically, it is a condition
that is normally rectified if a great power is to retain its
preeminent position. The great danger for the United States is
that the reengineering of foreign policy is frequently triggered
by foreign policy disasters. Without disaster, the power of
unexamined premises and old habits continues to dominate.
In the case of Iraq, of course, even the excuse of habit doesn't
really work. Well before the Cold War ended, the United States
was working with Iraq against Iran. When Iraq appeared to be
getting the upper hand in its war with Iran, the United States
tilted a bit toward Iran, then back, in a fairly skillful attempt
to maintain the regional balance of power with minimal risk to
itself. The United States has been friendly with Iraq (if not
really friends), has been an enemy of Iraq, and has also been
indifferent to Iraq – all depending on political circumstances.
The British had a saying: "Britain has no permanent friends and
no permanent enemies. It has only permanent interests." This
view is the foundation of a mature foreign policy. Saddam
Hussein is no more important than half a dozen other regional
hegemons, some currently friendly to the United States, and some
currently hostile. Each of them has or can soon build weapons of
mass destruction. Indeed, if the real policy of the U.S. is to
prevent the spread of such weapons, then the obsession with Iraq
is poorly conceived, since it uses up resources on one trouble
spot that should be more rationally distributed.
The problem is that the United States can't possibly stop the
spread of these weapons. That isn't an option. The weapons have
already spread. The United States does not have the means for
achieving its end either in Iraq or elsewhere. What the United
States does have is the means to pursue its interests. The
problem that the United States must address is that it is not now
able to articulate a coherent national interest and therefore
cannot pursue a rational strategy. As a result, any regional
power that attracts American attention can create and defuse
crises at will. The problem in Iraq is not Saddam Hussein. The
problem is an American foreign policy that has not been forced by
events to enunciate a national interest.
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