ONE OF THE SLOGANS of the antiwar movement is “win without war.” It means that somehow, some way, Saddam Hussein will be removed from power in Iraq or, through some miracle of geopolitics, he will decide to disarm his country of weapons of mass destruction–all without a shot being fired. It’s a pipe dream, of course, but it raises the question of what really will happen if there’s no war of liberation that frees the Iraqi people from Saddam’s yoke.
The answer is nothing good and a lot that’s bad. The most disastrous result of no war is Saddam stays in power, stronger and less restrained than ever. He will have gone eyeball-to-eyeball with President Bush–and Bush will have blinked. That outcome is not likely to make Saddam willing to disarm or stop tormenting his own people or threatening his neighbors. Nor is it likely to make him skittish about getting up close and personal with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. One significant result: The security of the United States will be further imperiled.
Imagine how Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will feel, having sided with the United States, the losing side in the face-off. They will be forced to come to terms with Saddam, since he suddenly will be the new strongman in the Middle East. Imagine how the Israelis will react. Saddam is the guy who rewards the families of suicide bombers (who kill Israeli women and children) with a check for $25,000. The Israelis will feel less secure than ever, and they will be less secure, despite American assurances that Israel will never be abandoned. The bottom line is that the entire Middle East will have a taken a sharp turn for the worse.
Two examples. One, the Bush administration’s plan is to use Iraq, absent Saddam, as a beacon of democracy in the Arab world. The hope is that, just as in eastern Europe after the fall of Soviet communism, democracy will be contagious and democratic reformers will step front and center in Arab nations. Countries like Qatar that have started on the path to democracy will be encouraged to move ahead. And countries with little interest in democracy now–Egypt, for instance–will be prodded to democratize. With no war, however, any democratic trend will be short-circuited.
Two, the influence of the United States in the Middle East (and other regions) will be substantially reduced. Sure, America will remain the lone superpower in the world, but the United States won’t be quite as imposing if Saddam can force an American president to back down. It will bring back fears of the United States as a “helpless, pitiful giant,” fears that will not be unreasonable, given the new circumstances.
And it will mean the American pressure on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians to reform will not be taken as seriously. Bush has refused to meet or deal with Arafat and demanded reform of Palestinian rule as a step toward a major American effort to forge a final peace settlement between the Palestinians and Israel. Arafat has balked at reform that would weaken his authority. A Saddam triumph will only strengthen him and cause the reformers, now working quietly behind the scenes to make Arafat into a ceremonial figure, to desist. That would mean a peace accord with Israel is removed from the realm of possibility for the foreseeable future.
Another victim of no war against Iraq would be multilateralism and especially the United Nations. If Saddam is allowed to thumb his nose at U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring him to disarm, the United Nations will emerge as solely a palace of blather and boilerplate, not to be taken seriously. Certainly American presidents won’t consider the United Nations as an important body to consult in carrying out U.S. foreign policy. It will be irrelevant.
Another alliance will be badly damaged, too–the Atlantic alliance. France is positioning itself to become the leader of a new alliance that acts as a counterweight to the United States. If the French succeed in blocking a war against Iraq, it will not only be a feather in their cap, image-wise, but it will mark their first success in challenging a superpower. In political slang, France will be up, the United States down–and the Atlantic alliance shattered. NATO will be less damaged, but it won’t be the same either.
Those whose placards say “win without war” ought to consider who will actually win. It won’t be the United States, the Iraqi people, democracy, the United Nations, peace in the Middle East, or the Atlantic alliance. The slogan might as well be Saddam’s, for he will indeed win big if there’s no war.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
