Last week’s air and missile attacks on Iraq, for all the damage they inflicted, didn’t accomplish much of lasting importance. Military planners seemed to be targeting Saddam Hussein’s elite forces in the hopes of stirring a general uprising in the regular army. But officials admit they were just “rolling the dice.” Since the Clinton administration gives no sign of seriously supporting Saddam’s many opponents in Iraq, such an uprising is unlikely. The bombing may well have “degraded” Saddam’s conventional military forces and infrastructure, but over time he will rebuild them, just as he did after the far more devastating Gulf War seven years ago. The damage to his forces might be significant if Saddam had to face a domestic uprising in the next few weeks or months. The last time the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles at Iraq, then-CIA director John Deutch candidly noted that the attack had only made Saddam stronger. Were Deutch around today, he’d be making the same assessment.
What about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? Unfortunately, the Pentagon admits that U.S. strikes did not target the facilities where Iraq is known to be developing chemical and biological weapons, for fear of unleashing those horrors on innocent Iraqi civilians. We will probably never know to what extent the military action succeeded in “degrading” his weapons programs, or indeed whether it had any effect on them at all. It is unlikely that U.N. inspectors will be visiting Iraq again any time soon to find out.
Finally, no one should imagine that Saddam will be cowed by this attack into complying with the U.N. resolutions and American demands he has spent the last year or more rejecting. Saddam may or may not have been surprised by the timing of the attack, but the scope of the attack was probably smaller than what he had anticipated. Because of the president’s bizarre concern about bombing Iraq during Ramadan (has anyone told the president that Iraq is run by a secular Baathist party?), this attack was both less severe and of shorter duration than the one the administration had contemplated back in November. Saddam is probably breathing a sign of relief, not shuddering in fear. The Americans took their shot, and he’s still around. That’s what Saddam calls victory.
Now here’s the good news. Last week’s strikes may not have shaken the pillars of Saddam’s regime, but they have destroyed the pillars of the Clinton administration’s Iraq policy and blasted away the myths and delusions in which that policy has been enshrouded.
For the past year and more, the Clinton administration’s policy toward Iraq has been built around three objectives: first, to keep a fragile consensus at the U.N. Security Council in support of containing Iraq, chiefly through economic sanctions; second, to preserve the U.N. inspections regime as the principal means of discovering and eliminating Iraq’s programs for developing weapons of mass destruction; and third, to create conditions in Iraq that would someday lead to Saddam’s ouster by a military coup.
Administration officials have long admitted that the third objective was more wishful thinking than practical strategy: Saddam has proved more adept at quashing coup attempts than the CIA is in fomenting them. But now the administration’s two other goals have also become impossible.
Last week’s attack drove a stake through the heart of any American strategy that depends on agreement in the Security Council. A month ago there was almost unanimity there on the need to attack Iraq, a remarkable moment which Clinton tragically squandered when he called off that attack. Now that fragile and temporary consensus has been shattered, perhaps permanently. Given the hostile reactions of France, China, and Russia, which withdrew its ambassador in protest against the U.S. attack, it is ludicrous to imagine that the United States will be able to rebuild a consensus in the Security Council for continued tough action against Iraq. Quite the contrary. Now that the bombing has stopped, we can expect those three nations to work even harder to lift economic sanctions and begin normalizing relations with Saddam. In this effort they will likely be supported by U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, whose opposition to the U.S. attack and sympathy for Iraq were on full display last week.
Meanwhile, you can say good-bye to the U.N. inspectors — chief inspector Richard Butler’s report on non-compliance last week was a virtual letter of resignation. Even if Saddam were to allow the inspectors back in — and he probably won’t — UNSCOM is a spent force. Russia and France are openly hostile to Butler, whom they blame for providing the pretext for last week’s attack, and they will demand that he be either removed or muzzled. Nor will Saddam be deterred by last week’s bombing from playing his usual cat-and-mouse games. If he does let the inspectors back in, it will only be to buy more time and to drive an even deeper wedge between Washington and the rest of the Security Council. The U.N. inspections regime is finished.
This is all to the good. For the past year and more, American policy has rested entirely on comforting fictions: that U.N. inspectors could keep the world safe from Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons, that maintaining a fragile and skin-deep consensus at the Security Council could substitute for the effective but risky exercise of American military power, and, above all, that Saddam could be “contained.” Perhaps now that these fictions have been exploded, the Clinton administration, as well as the Congress and the American people, will be forced to confront the stark realities.
The containment of Saddam Hussein is a myth. There have always been only two coherent strategies for dealing with Saddam. One is deterrence: Accept the fact that he is going to acquire weapons of mass destruction and hope that we can deter him from using them against his neighbors (not to mention against us). The Clinton administration has at times flirted with the idea of moving to a strategy of deterrence — though it has been loath to admit this publicly. And for good reason. A strategy of deterrence is fraught with perils: How will we prevent Saddam from brandishing weapons of mass destruction to bully his neighbors? Even if he doesn’t use them, his mere possession of such weapons will radically alter the strategic balance in the Middle East to the detriment of our interests and those of our closest allies. And even if he does use them, how credible is our deterrent? Will we really nuke Iraq if Saddam uses chemical weapons against, say, Bahrain or Kuwait? Will we invade Iraq with conventional forces if we know he has weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them? There are no sound answers to these questions. But at least a policy of deterrence would have the virtue of clarity. Unlike the failed strategy of containment, which could never deliver what it promised, deterrence would lower our expectations as it diminished our security.
The alternative to deterrence is a strategy to remove Saddam Hussein from power once and for all. If the goal of U.S. policy is to ensure that Iraq never develops or uses weapons of mass destruction — and this should be the goal — then the only way to achieve this with any confidence is to take Saddam out. There are at least two ways to accomplish this, both of which will require a significant commitment of U.S. forces and the will to use them.
Former undersecretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz has outlined a coherent and credible strategy for supporting forces in Iraq who want to challenge Saddam’s control. The Wolfowitz plan calls for the creation of a “liberated zone” in southern Iraq where opposition forces can rally, provide safe haven for defectors from Saddam’s regime, and establish a genuine alternative to the Saddam tyranny. To succeed, the opposition would have to be backed not only by American financial and military assistance — which Congress this year voted to provide in the Iraq Liberation Act — but also by American military power, both from the air and, if necessary, on the ground. Backed by credible U.S. force, an organized and well-supplied Iraqi opposition could quickly emerge as a dire threat to Saddam’s hold on power — something that air strikes alone can never be.
Another course would be to use U.S. military force directly to complete the job George Bush began in 1991. A military campaign that started with several weeks of devastating air strikes and ended with a ground attack on Saddam’s forces in Iraq would stand a high chance of success — if the president gave the U.S. military the resources to beef up their forces in the region. Although more costly and more risky in the short run, an invasion of Iraq might actually be the safest and surest way of saving the world from Saddam.
Whichever course one prefers, these are the kinds of options the Clinton administration and members of Congress must begin to take seriously. The old game is over.
Robert Kagan, for the Editors
