| U.S. Policy Options Toward Iraq
Statement before the U.S. House of Representatives
National Security Committee
September 16, 1998
by Michael Eisenstadt
U.S. policy toward Iraq is at a
turning point. Decisions made in the coming weeks and months will affect American
interests in the Middle East and the fate of the region for years to come. Unfortunately,
there is no clear, obvious solutions to the dilemma Washington faces regarding Iraq;
rather, the United States faces the unenviable problem of choosing between bad and worse
options.
America's containment policy toward Iraq has -- despite repeated challenges -- been
reasonably successful at achieving minimal U.S. objectives: limiting Baghdad's ability to
threaten its neighbors or key U.S. interests. Containment during the past seven years
rested on four pillars: weapons inspections, sanctions, no-drive and no-fly zones, and the
threat or use of force -- to compel Baghdad to cease obstructing weapons inspections or to
deter it from threatening its neighbors or U.S. forces in the region.
Weapons inspections and sanctions were at the heart of the containment regime. Having
weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq conducting surprise, no-notice inspections,
complicated Iraqi efforts to engage in forbidden weapons development, and kept alive the
possibility that smuggled items and forbidden activities might be uncovered. Moreover,
sanctions stripped Iraq of the political, economic, and military influence it enjoyed
before the 1991 Gulf War. By limiting imports and smuggling, sanctions aided efforts to
dismantle and monitor Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) infrastructure. Thus,
inspections and sanctions had a mutually reinforcing effect, and without sanctions, the
inspections and monitoring effort would have been even less effective than it has been.
However, during the last crisis with Iraq that ended in February 1998, the U.S. apparently
took two decisions that marked a major shift in American policy and that have effectively
transformed the traditional containment regime.
First, it seems that the Administration decided that it would cease, at least for the time
being, employing the threat or use of force to compel Iraq to cease obstructing weapons
inspections. This became clear from the lack of an American military response (not even a
modest force buildup) to Baghdad's August 5 decision to halt all further weapons
inspections and to permit monitoring only at declared facilities in Iraq -- despite the
fact that last February U.S. officials warned that such obstruction would be met with
firmness. Iraq has permitted weapons inspections only grudgingly, and under duress, and
they continued only so long as Saddam believed that obstruction could lead to military
retaliation by the United States. Without a credible threat of force, there will be no
effective weapons inspection or weapons monitoring regime in Iraq.
The situation now prevailing following Baghdad's decision of August 5 is reminiscent of
the period prior to the 1991 Gulf War, when nuclear inspectors visited only declared
nuclear sites -- where of course nothing untoward was occurring. Iraq was thus able to
hide a massive nuclear weapons program under the nose of blissfully ignorant inspectors.
The cessation of inspections provides Iraq with greatly increased latitude for proscribed
weapons development and production activities. Meanwhile, if UNSCOM remains inactive for a
protracted period, the best people working for that organization will leave and it will
gradually lose its effectiveness.
Second, the creation of the "oil for food" program has transformed the sanctions
regime. Prior to "oil for food," the United States denied Saddam income by
preventing Iraq from exporting oil (in fact small quantities were permitted in a
concession to Jordan and Turkey, who benefitted from this limited trade). Under "oil
for food," Iraq is allowed to export nearly as much oil as it did before the 1991
Gulf War (though it lacks the means to do so at this point) and to import equipment for
its oil, telecommunications, and transport infrastructure to enable it to meet its new
export ceilings. Under these changed circumstances, the United States is relying on the
UN's control of Iraqi oil revenues as the main means to keep Baghdad from rebuilding its
military capabilities and regaining its former political influence.
However, controlling Iraq's revenues addresses only half the problem; the U.S. also needs
to control the flow of imports into Iraq. While Iraq cannot smuggle in major military
items such as tanks and aircraft, Washington's ability to prevent the smuggling of
equipment and technology that Iraq could use to rebuild its surviving conventional
military and WMD infrastructure is limited, and will become more so as the amount of Iraqi
imports grow under the "oil for food" program. The small number of overworked
and inadequately trained and equipped inspectors now on the Jordan-Iraq border cannot
effectively screen hundreds of trucks carrying thousands of items into Iraq daily, nor can
they be expected to distinguish banned tank parts from permitted truck parts, or to
identify mislabeled crates. And what about the borders with Syria and Turkey, where there
are no inspectors? Because of these loopholes in the sanctions regime, it is crucial that
UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors be able to do their job, so that
smuggled items relevant to WMD programs might be discovered after they have entered the
country.
The effectiveness of U.S. efforts to contain Saddam thus rests to a great degree on the
ability of the U.S. to maintain the integrity of the UN weapons inspections regime in
Iraq. To do so requires a credible threat of force. As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
said after helping defuse the most recent crisis with Iraq last February: "You can do
a lot with diplomacy, but of course you can do a lot more with diplomacy backed up by
firmness and force." Force and diplomacy are two sides of the same coin and both are
necessary if the U.S. desires to maintain an effective containment regime on Iraq.
Now, some have claimed that past U.S. efforts to use force vis-a-vis Iraq have been
unsuccessful, and that Saddam cannot be compelled to cease obstructing weapons
inspections. Certainly, during the past seven years, America could have wielded the
military instrument much more effectively against Iraq than it has. But it is simply
incorrect to state that Washington's use of the military option has been ineffective. In
fact, experience of the past seven years shows that the threat or use of force against
Iraq has in fact been reasonably effective in achieving a variety of objectives: deterring
Iraq from again invading Kuwait (October 1994) and possibly continuing its thrust into
northern Iraq beyond the city of Irbil (September 1996), and compelling Iraq to cease
obstructing UN weapons inspections on several occasions (September 1991, January 1993, and
most recently February 1998).
Experience has shown, moreover, that Saddam does not take risks when the stability of his
regime is at stake. Air and missile strikes targeting the organizations that constitute
the pillars of his regime (the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, and Special
Security Organization) and that are also responsible for safeguarding Iraq's retained WMD
and missile capabilities, are likely to succeed -- at least temporarily -- in compelling
Saddam to cease obstructing weapons inspections.
The strongest argument against the military option in Iraq is not that force will not
succeed, but that this option is not politically sustainable, either domestically or
internationally. According to this line of thinking, neither the American people nor our
Arab Gulf allies will support military action, while the use of force could prompt Iraq to
expel the weapons inspectors, produce a political backlash in the Arab world that would
further strain already tense relations with America's allies there, and perhaps even lead
to the collapse of the sanctions regime.
This argument must be taken seriously -- even if some of the assumptions it is based on
are questionable. However, a U.S. policy that eschews the use of force in support of
weapons inspections entails some very serious consequences. The weapons inspections and
monitoring regime will rapidly collapse. Iraq will be able to rebuild its military
capabilities beyond current levels (and if it acquires fissile material on the black
market, it might even succeed in finishing the three or more unfinished nuclear weapons it
is believed to have built over the past several years). And Saddam will be emboldened by
his success in undermining the weapons inspection regime to seek ways to further undermine
sanctions.
The Administration can point to one achievement that its current diplomatic approach has
produced: the passing of UNSC Res 1194 in September 1998, which freezes further sanctions
reviews until Baghdad allows UNSCOM to resume inspections. This resolution, however, will
have no practical impact on efforts to contain Iraq, since there was no chance that
sanctions would be lifted anytime soon. (Though if this resolution succeeds in provoking
Saddam to take some rash step to unites the international community behind the United
States, and provides Washington with greater latitude to pursue its diplomatic and
military options, the policy shift will merit a more favorable judgement). Moreover, the
price paid has been the suspension weapons inspections regime. A major reason offered in
February for not using force against Iraq was that Baghdad would respond by expelling UN
weapons inspectors. This has now come to pass anyway, without Baghdad paying a price, and
without Washington garnering any major benefits.
Some have suggested that the U.S. could conduct periodic limited military strikes to
prevent the reconstitution of Iraq's WMD capabilities. However, in light of past
experience, the U.S. is unlikely to have sufficiently detailed intelligence to do so
effectively; there is no reason to believe that there will be greater political support
for these kinds of military operations in the future than there have been in the past; and
the possibility that attacks on WMD facilities could produce massive civilian casualties
resulting from the release of chemical or biological agents into the atmosphere, are
likely to cause the U.S. to eschew such a course of action, in favor of a policy of
deterring Iraq. However, as past experience has shown, deterring Saddam is an uncertain
proposition. Saddam has twice plunged the region into war through miscalculation -- and it
seems very likely that if allowed to rebuild his capabilities even partially, he will do
so again.
In sum, we know from the past seven years, that containing Iraq requires an effective
weapons inspection and sanctions regime. Ensuring the effectiveness of these measures is
difficult and exasperating work, and entails certain costs. It requires the constant
attention of senior policy makers, the expenditure of large amounts of political capital,
and the maintenance of a large, expensive forward military presence which discomfits our
allies and which must occasionally be used -- with or without their support. However, with
all its drawbacks and contradictions, there is no other way to contain Iraq but by the
approach that America has pursued the past seven years: the reliance on both force and
diplomacy to support weapons inspections and sanctions, combined with support for
opposition efforts to overthrow Saddam and his regime.
The new approach that the Administration has apparently adopted is simply not a viable
long-term approach for containing Iraq, since it denies weapons inspectors the military
backing needed to be effective, and emphasizes the control of Iraqi revenues without
addressing the difficult problem of monitoring rapidly increasing quantities of Iraqi
imports. This approach will lead to the marginalization of UNSCOM and a further weakening
of the containment regime, inviting further challenges by an emboldened Saddam, and
setting the stage for a new confrontation with Iraq - perhaps under less favorable
circumstances for the United States. |
