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Politics Trumps Diplomacy in Showdown with Iraq
Phyllis Bennis
Newsday, Sunday Focus, 15 November 1998 (unedited version)
Having functionally abandoned its already flawed commitment to serious disarmament in Iraq, Washington is once again gearing up for a military assault. Once again the Clinton administration is claiming that air strikes are the right and appropriate way to enforce UN resolutions, and that it has no alternative if Saddam Hussein does not relent in the current crisis over weapons inspectors. But once again Washington is wrong.
A US (or US-British) military attack against is wrong because it replaces UN legitimacy and the importance of international decision-making with military action by a superpower unaccountable to the rest of the world. It is wrong morally because it will kill more Iraqis, already dying as a result of economic sanctions, and destroy more of Iraq's already devastated infrastructure. It is wrong because it won't work either to kill Saddam Hussein or to destroy whatever remains of Baghdad's effort to rebuild weapons of mass destruction. And it's wrong because it will do nothing to further the cause of disarmament in the terribly arms-bloated Middle East.
A White House statement Thursday called the international community 'united', but in fact any military strike will be only a US-British operation. Certainly most governments agree the Iraqi regime is in violation of UN resolutions - but agreeing on a critique, even agreeing to condemn as the Security Council did last week (without specifying consequences), is a far cry from agreeing on how the international community should respond. And so far, no other government is hopping on board the US military train. Even US Arab allies, even those (and they are many) who despise the Iraqi leader and wish him no good, are reluctant to endorse the US effort. Some Arab leaders may fear that a US strike will leave Saddam Hussein bloodied but unbowed, though they might support an assault that destroyed the Iraqi dictator. But that guarantee cannot be made, and those leaders know it. They also know that their populations, held in check by a combination of oil wealth and/or iron-fisted monarchies or military regimes, largely reject their leadersÆ alliance with the US - and that widespread instability could result.
The US claim (not shared even by Britain) that earlier UN resolutions provide sufficient legitimization for a new US military strike, has outraged many in the UN, including even some who might sympathize with Washington's effort. With the US still $1.5 billion in debt to the world body, its claim to be acting in defense of UN resolutions rings increasingly hollow. Many are also critical of the selective nature of such US enforcement efforts. Washington constantly invokes the Iraq ceasefire resolution 687, for instance, to justify continuing punitive economic sanctions. But how much energy is the US spending to enforce another part of that same resolution, the part that calls for the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free and weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone throughout the entire Middle East?
The moral problem with a military assault is directly tied to the fact that it won't work. Pentagon officials all acknowledge that bombing and air strikes cannot destroy whatever remains of IraqÆs efforts to rebuild chemical or biological weapons, supposedly the goal of US 'enforcement of UN resolutions'. But instead of taking that caution seriously, the Clinton administration simply changed the language of its justification, claiming that the strikes aim to incrementally 'degrade' Saddam Hussein's military capacity, and to undermine his ability to rule. One official
reportedly identified the entire town of Tikrit as a potential target, because it is the home of Saddam Hussein's 'ethnic base'.
What is certain is that the Pentagon's plan for a sustained military campaign will kill many Iraqis. Some might be Republican Guards. But many more will be ordinary people without the access to special protection available to Saddam Hussein's military favorites. Many will be among Iraq's most vulnerable, babies, children and old people, who are already dying in disproportionate numbers as a result of economic sanctions. The withdrawal of UN humanitarian personnel, including the staff of food, health and children's programs, in response to US military threats, will further erode many Iraqi civilians' already shattered lives.
The renewed preparations for military action and increasingly tightened economic sanctions come when the administration has already abandoned serious disarmament and military monitoring efforts. Even before Saddam Hussein's most recent denial of access to UN inspectors, US pressure played a major role in UNSCOM's diminished emphasis on inspections. Washington officials even acknowledged that intensified economic sanctions and a containment strategy of military assault, not inspections and elimination of IraqÆs putative weapons of mass destruction, would shape the new US policy towards Iraq. Disarmament is essentially off the agenda.
So why is the US doing this? Certainly Saddam Hussein remains the military dictator he has been for nearly three decades - including the years of partnership with the US But now WashingtonÆs threats of military retaliation have boxed the US into a situation in which the only politically acceptable alternative is to carry out those threats. Everyone from former secretaries of state to congresspeople and Clinton administration officials are urging support for air strikes to avoid what Paula Dobriansky of the Council on Foreign Relations called a 'negative impact on US credibility with long-term effects on US leadership in the region'. Credibility is all. Politics trumps strategy, and fears of 'losing credibility' with some regional leaders and perhaps losing face at home apparently win out over billions wasted on Tomahawk missiles, perhaps thousands of dead Iraqis and a new generation of Middle Eastern outrage at US callous disregard for Arab lives.
What all of this means is that the administration admits it is possible to separate economic from military sanctions - but they're doing it all wrong. Critics of US policy have long called for delinking the economic and military sanctions, but with just the opposite result. The military sanctions, the disarmament effort, supposedly the cornerstone of US policy and UN resolutions, should be strengthened and expanded to include provider as well as recipient companies and countries. Until now UNSCOM is forbidden to reveal information it finds in Iraq documenting the sources of Baghdad's weapons procurement programs. One US company, the American Type Culture Collection, just as an example, provided biological weapons material to the Iraqi government under US Department of Commerce license right up until a few months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, including the germs to produce botulism, anthrax, e-coli and many more horrifying diseases. That information was revealed in Senate hearings in 1994 - but until today UNSCOM is forbidden from releasing such documents. Other companies, including many in Germany, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, have been involved in similar sales, some even more recently - isn't it time to give some serious attention to stopping this weapons traffic?
A real commitment to disarmament also means continuing diplomatic efforts to get UN inspectors back to work. But that effort should go forward keeping in mind UNSCOM's and the International Atomic Energy AgencyÆs own assessment of the current stage of Iraq's military capacity. According to those agencies before the current crisis, Baghdad has no nuclear weapons or capacity to make them, has perhaps a dozen usable missiles, is close to being clean on chemical and missile programs, and with problems remaining only with biological potential. Serious yes, but on a scale relative to other unsavory and over-armed governments, probably not cause for global hysteria.
What is required now is a new approach to delinking economic from military sanctions, keeping the military disarmament goals on top, and the blunt-instrument economic sanctions off, the US policy agenda.
The US must return to the United Nations, and maintain the integrity of UN and other multilateral decisionmaking on how to respond to Iraqi defiance.
Enforcement of UN resolutions must be extended to ALL of 687, including the calls for region-wide disarmament efforts.
And economic sanctions, designed for inevitable civilian impact, must be ended. The real goal of the UN resolutions, the disarmament of Iraq and steps towards disarmement of an already over-armed and unstable region, should not be abandoned in favor of politically motivated military strikes or the continued starvation of Iraqi children.
Copyright 1998 Newsday
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