E-Notes

Iraq: Squall Before the Storm

by Harvey Sicherman

December 2, 2002

Harvey Sicherman, Ph.D., is President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former aide to three U.S. secretaries of state. His recent online essays (at www.fpri.org) include “Bush’s Palestine” (July 2002) and “Next Steps in the Middle East” (May 2002).

On November 8, 2002, a unanimous U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441 demanding that Iraq destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to be confirmed by international inspectors, or face “serious consequences.” The Council vote concluded two months of intense negotiations led by the United States and capped an eight- month campaign against Iraq that emerged from the American war on terrorism. Thereby hangs a tale of a late summer political squall that tested Presidential leadership, U.S. relations with close allies and, ultimately, American support for the United Nations.

Ebbing Containment

The Iraqi situation was among the most problematical inherited by George W. Bush from Bill Clinton. Saddam had spent a decade trying to squirm free of the international coalition and its sanctions that followed Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War. He challenged the United States in 1993 (the Bush assassination attempt); in 1994 (deployment south toward Kuwait); and in 1996 (the attack on Irbil that cost the CIA-nurtured opposition its safe haven). Most serious was his repeated defiance of U.N. efforts to find his weapons of mass destruction, which he brought to a crisis in 1998. Declaring that Saddam was “a man with whom I can do business,” U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan then negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that seriously compromised the integrity of the inspection system. Nonetheless, Clinton supported the deal and also accepted as new chief inspector Dr. Hans Blix, who, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had been earlier deceived by Saddam on Iraqi nuclear capabilities. When Saddam defaulted anyway, the United States briefly bombed Iraq.

“Containment,” the name given by Washington to this policy, was ebbing fast. The French, the Russians, and even Saddam’s neighbors chafed (or cheated) under the sanctions regime and the Iraqis effectively laid blame on the United States for the civilian suffering exacted by the cumbersome import-review process. Meanwhile, the Iraqis were firing steadily at U.S. and British planes patrolling the northern and southern “no fly zones.” Matters had become so perilous that newly appointed Secretary of State Powell’s first order of business in early 2001 was to rescue the coalition from imminent demise by promising an Arab League Summit that the United States would develop “smart sanctions”—a holding action at best. Containment appeared moribund.

This situation would have produced a big crisis sooner or later. It was the American war on terrorism following the 9/11 attack that advanced the date. While Iraq could not be definitively linked to 9/11, Saddam was in the same trench as Osama if not the same foxhole. The Baathist regime boasted convincing credentials, both in using terrorism and hosting terrorists. Most significantly, the Iraqis continued to improve their biological and chemical weapons and were suspected of renewing a quest for nuclear bombs. Iraqi achievements in these fields threatened not only to liberate Saddam from containment but also to offer a potent new source of encouragement and weapons for terrorist action. Bush therefore stigmatized Iraq as part of the “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, making Saddam a major target following the successful American military campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Preemption and the War of the Op-Eds

Preoccupied by crises between India and Pakistan, and between Israel and the Palestinians, the Bush Administration did not focus again on Iraq until early summer. The President’s resolve to act against Saddam was then complicated by the introduction of the slogans “preemption” and “regime change.” Preemption referred to an alleged new Bush Doctrine announced in a speech at West Point on June 1st, that could be misread into meaning an American right to strike first “out of the blue” against those disliked by the United States. Regime change was the American objective in Iraq, declared so by a frustrated Congress in 1998 after Saddam’s defiance of the inspectors. These two slogans suggested to many abroad that Iraq might be the proving ground for a superpower that henceforth would dictate leaders and governments as it saw fit.

The Administration did remarkably little to ease such suspicions. Bush said often that there were “no war plans on my desk” although speculative leaks seemed to be all over The New York Times and Washington Post. Meanwhile, it was not clear whether the United States would seek a coalition through the U.N. in a repeat of 1990-91. The argument for avoiding the U.N., often attributed to Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, was powerful: except for Britain no one on the Security Council could help the military campaign much and the U.N. had manifestly failed to deal with Iraq’s misbehavior. As Cheney eventually pointed out, even the return of inspectors (certainly under the Annan rules) would not necessarily eliminate the problem. Yet the rewards could be potent: a natural coalition did exist on the weapons inspection issue, as the State Department argued. Especially in the Middle East, a U.N. imprimatur would give states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt an excuse to support the removal of a leader they feared.

A major political squall broke on August 15th when Brent Scowcroft, a close associate of the first President Bush, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that argued against “Iraq Now,” suggesting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be the main focus. Four days earlier, former Secretary of State Kissinger, supporting Bush, had laid out some of the difficulty in tackling Iraq. The New York Times then stoked the fire on August 16th by claiming that Scowcroft, Kissinger, and others opposed the Iraqi policy (The Times retracted its characterization of Kissinger on September 4th).

Over the next fortnight, all the former Republican Secretaries of State weighed in. James Baker wanted to go to the U.N. for a new resolution; Lawrence Eagleburger wanted more justification for action. Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (August 29) and George P. Shultz (September 6) argued that Saddam’s violation of U.N. resolutions had already invalidated the cease-fire and the only point of the U.N. was to obtain an ultimatum which, if ignored, would be followed by military action. Powell also publicly revealed differences within the Administration in his interview on September 4th.

On September 12th, the President dispelled this squall. In a very tough message to the U.N., he insisted the Security Council act in accordance with the existing consensus: Iraq had violated its obligations and had to shape up. But the Council also had to shape up. It had tolerated Saddam’s defiance for too long. In effect this was a dual ultimatum captured by Bush’s references to the U.N.’s discredited predecessor, the League of Nations. Should Saddam fail to comply and the Security Council fail to support actions forcing him to comply, then the United States would find its own solution to the problem.

Bush’s speech quickly unified the Administration. The United States would indeed try to recruit a coalition through the U.N. but only on behalf of an ultimatum backed by the threat of force. No more was heard of preemption and regime change.

A Dance with France

On the surface the American case was irrefutable and simply repeated the essence of earlier resolutions. No one could deny that Iraq had repudiated its obligations (“material breach”). No one could be confident that a new inspection would be meaningful except under the most stringent terms, certainly not those of Kofi Annan’s MOU. And no one could expect Iraq to do anything unless threatened by overwhelming military force. As the United States was the only member of the Security Council able to enforce the threat, it verged on the outrageous to put U.S. action at the veto of those incapable of acting. Why then did it take the Security Council eight weeks to embody these points in a resolution?

The answer could be found in Paris. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac had forced a reluctant Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia. Now he would try to force a reluctant George W. Bush to accommodate the U.N. Security Council. The French argued that if war were to be made on Iraq to enforce Security Council resolutions then the Security Council should pull the trigger. Let the inspectors inspect and report obstructive behavior; then the U.N. would decide what to do. Behind these arguments lay governments (including Russia and China) anxious to brake the superpower, and Americans (notably the President) equally determined to settle the Iraqi problem— with the U.N. if possible, without it if necessary.

The dance floor held occasional surprises for both sides. After a quick start following the President’s September 12th speech, Powell found himself stalled by an outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence and then by the more significant obstacle of Annan’s embarrassing MOU. Encouraged by the U.N. Secretary General and the other Arab states, Iraq suddenly agreed to the demand for a return of the inspectors, but under the Annan rules. In a long reply to the Bush speech, laced with insults (the inspectors were called the “confusion commission” and the Security Council the “obedient Council”), Saddam demanded that the U.N. show its spine by rejecting the U.S. demands. Iraq, a pinnacle of civilization, without which Bush would not even know how to write, so said Saddam, would fight for its dignity. Saddam also justified his sudden accession to inspectors by claiming that this would bring the lawless Americans back into the U.N. and international law. Iraq was now ready to accept the Annan MOU it had dishonored in 1998!

Washington soon overcame this obstacle and registered a significant success along the way. Despite his previous record, Dr. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, convinced the Bush Administration that he was serious about inspections. Simultaneously, Bush apparently convinced Blix that he wanted inspections to work, not simply to offer a pretext for war. On October 15th, Blix told the U.N. Security Council that with modification, the American approach would help him. This killed Annan’s MOU and with it Saddam’s first-line of defense. And the non-permanent members of the Security Council, a majority of whom had eluded the United States under French prodding, now had a good reason to vote for the Americans.

The Congress Agrees

The stall at the U.N. settled any question in Washington about what would come first, a U.N. resolution or one from Congress. This was a reversal from 1990-91, when the first Bush Administration found the U.N. Security Council more supportive than the Democratic-controlled Congress. On that occasion, the Senate Democrats led by Majority Leader George Mitchell nearly all opposed war while, in the House, more of the party (but still not a majority) favored an attack. Notably, then-Senator Al Gore and his later Vice Presidential running mate Joe Lieberman broke party ranks to support Bush.

This time around, the Democrats comprised a bare majority in the Senate and a minority in the House. Senator Daschle, initially inclined against the President, also had to contend with an incoherent Democratic record on the use of American forces abroad. The Democratic majority that opposed war against Iraq in 1991 backed Clinton’s 1999 war against Serbia in Kosovo. That campaign, in particular, had been waged as a NATO project, without reference to the U.N. Security Council, where Russian and Chinese vetoes could have been expected to block the way. Kosovo was arguably a primarily humanitarian intervention. Neither the United States nor any American ally was threatened by Milosevic while Saddam’s possession of chemical and biological weapons, and Iraq’s potential development of nuclear weapons, surely did. How could the Democrats support Clinton on Kosovo but not Bush on Iraq without being vulnerable to the charge of negligence on the national interest?

The Iraq issue soon displaced the economy as the centerpiece of the November elections. To Daschle’s discomfort, former Vice President Gore surfaced as an opponent to Bush’s policy although he offered no alternative except “U.N. action.” While the Democrats quarreled, the White House helped its case, arguing that a unified America would be key to stiffening the U.N. Then on October 7th, the President addressed the American people. Again there was no mention of “preemptive doctrine”; U.S. military action and even the replacement of Saddam were linked to the disarmament issue. Three days later the House gave the President its support (296-133) followed by the Senate on October 11th (77-23). Both Gephardt and Daschle voted for it. Bush’s mastery of the domestic scene was confirmed three weeks later on November 5th when mid-term U.S. elections yielded Republican gains in the House and recovery of Senate control.

Washington, Baghdad and Jerusalem

As the U.S. effort progressed, the Bush Administration had to face the most incendiary possibility, that a fresh wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli retaliations would divert international attention from Baghdad to Jerusalem. Bush sharply reminded Sharon of this risk when Israel besieged Arafat’s compound anew in the third week of September. Indeed, influential voices in Washington and abroad counseled the Administration to tackle Jerusalem first. Otherwise, so it was argued, an American-led attack on Iraq while Palestinians continued to suffer would dangerously inflame the Arab public in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman, perhaps endangering leaders friendly to the United States.

Such opinions echoed those rejected a decade ago. The first Bush Administration determined that while the Arab-Israeli conflict would be affected by the war against Iraq, it was essentially different from it. Washington denied Saddam’s claim that he had seized Kuwait in order to go to Jerusalem but took out an insurance policy in the form of a promise to re-ignite the stalled Arab-Israeli diplomacy once the war ended, thus giving political cover to Arab allies. Desert Storm did indeed wreck the Arab coalition led by Iraq and the PLO that, with Soviet help, had effectively restricted peacemaking to Egypt and Israel. The Madrid Peace Conference, Oslo, and the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty followed.

Now, a decade later, President Bush had already committed himself to a similar course. He had become the first President to support a Palestinian state in November 2001 and then the first leader to insist that its leadership be free of the taint of terror in June 2002. The defeat of terrorism as a means for achieving political objectives lay at the heart of this policy; it was the central objective of the war against terrorism everywhere. By this logic, the disarmament of Iraq, peacefully or more likely by force, could have an impact similar to that of 1991, convincing the Palestinians at last that their goals could only be achieved diplomatically. There would be no strategic reserve for Arafat and no Saddam eventually coming to the rescue with weapons of mass destruction.

As for the famous “Arab street,” Arab governments had fallen to coups and assassinations but never to a popular uprising. In any event, American policy could not be determined by a plebiscite of Arab fears. Washington would urge the Israelis to sit tight, do nothing too drastic in the run-up to war and cooperate in diplomacy intended to draw a "road map" for achieving Bush’s objectives. It was the equivalent of 1991’s promise to push for solutions once Iraq was defeated.

After the Squall

In the midst of these movements, the United States was reminded that the war on terrorism not only had many fronts but also had many other reluctant allies to cultivate. On September 22nd, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won reelection after a campaign during which he stimulated anti-American sentiment among his party’s Old Left-New Left base, capped by a declaration that Germany would not support war on Iraq even if the U.N. approved it. The Chancellor poisoned his personal relations with Bush. His tactic had also paralyzed the European Union, and, in its place, France postured as the middle way between Britain and Germany.

More seriously, on October 12th, 200 people (mostly Australian tourists) were killed by a bomb on the Indonesian island of Bali. This disaster finally prodded the reluctant Megawati government to suppress its own Islamic revolutionaries. Then, on October 16th, the White House revealed that North Korea had admitted cheating on the 1994 agreement whereby it had agreed to abandon nuclear weapons development in exchange for an expensive food and fuel aid package. The Korean dictator Kim Jong-il thus affirmed his own membership in the Axis of Evil,” challenging the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia to do something about it. Unlike Saddam, Kim already had a few nuclear weapons and, even more importantly, a huge field army complete with heavy artillery and rocketry capable of inflicting terrible damage on the South Koreans even if it were eventually defeated.

Faced by challenges in both Asia and the Middle East, the U.S. was disinclined to open another military campaign. After a brief pause, Bush decided that the military should still focus on Iraq as the major theater for large-scale conventional operations; the expanding war against al-Qaeda and allied terrorists would also continue; and in the Korean peninsula, diplomacy should bear the main response. The Korean revelations at once reinforced the argument for dealing with Saddam before he acquired Kim’s clout while simultaneously showing that even the superpower had military limits.

As November dawned, Bush had demonstrated his willingness to run the Security Council gauntlet without losing his focus: to disarm Iraq one way or another. Both the Congress and the American people backed him; the inspectors proved surprise allies; and neither the Israeli-Palestinian war nor the North Korean nuclear fraud deflected him.

Only a few more squiggles were needed to allay French, Russian, and Chinese fears that Americans might use the resolution to make war without referring back to the U.N. A unanimous vote was secured when Syria’s Bashar al-Asad, faithful to his father’s 1991 legacy, chose to join the American side. While Syrian diplomats protested to the Arab League Summit in Cairo on November 11-12 that this was done to prevent the Americans from going to war, it could only be an ominous sign for Saddam. Although committed to consulting with the Security Council in the event of non- compliance, the United States nevertheless reserved the right to act itself if the U.N. failed its duty.

Before the Storm

The Bush Administration has thus far weathered a significant squall while remaining on course toward the almost certain Iraqi storm on the horizon. As in 1990-91, Washington assembled an inner coalition (this time Turkey, some Gulf States and Britain) sufficient to wage war, followed by an outer coalition at the U.N. to minimize the political consequences of the war. At home, Bush overcame the incoherent opposition comprised of almost the identical groups that had opposed American military action to free Kuwait a decade ago.

Nonetheless, there were plenty of lessons to be learned by the Bush Administration from what might have been a fatal disturbance. The cornering of Saddam was needlessly complicated by misunderstandings (such as “preemption”) and a surprising lack of diplomatic consultation before September. Valuable weeks were lost while Washington puzzled over how to give other governments reason to support the United States beyond those of a superpower’s compulsion. Most importantly, Bush was now at least partly hostage to an inspection process that could stall in a morass of conflicting interpretations and delay a military campaign beyond its optimal point. The storm on the horizon might hold a successful war to disarm Saddam but it could also contain a disastrous muddle that would check the War on Terrorism.

The President now finds himself in a situation similar to that experienced by his father between the November 1990 announcement of a doubling of U.S. forces in the Gulf and the opening of the war. Two and one-half months of dangerous political time ensued that Saddam failed to exploit. This time around he may do better.

Whatever the second-guessing, including internal dissent, Bush will have to continue the U.S. military buildup unabated lest he signal Saddam— and others— that his resolve has weakened. The Administration must also decide what kind of Iraqi obstruction would be cause for war while using intelligence tips and diplomatic monitors to keep Blix and the U.N. to their part of the bargain, including serious inspections and ever more serious consequences for non- compliance. Simultaneously, the campaign to destroy al- Qaeda cells and the diplomacy to contain Israeli-Palestinian violence, will have to be kept at full pressure. Clearly, the most difficult part lies ahead. All of the President’s impressive powers of focus will be needed during the next ninety days to achieve his objective, namely, ridding the Middle East and the world of a Saddam-ruled Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction.

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