#13 - RW 262
Moscow News
June 18-24, 2003
Iraq Lessons
Alexei Arbatov, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences World Economics and International Relations Institute International Security Center, deputy chairman of the RF State Duma Defense Committee, the Yabloko faction

The Iraq conflict has taught us one important lesson, on the juncture of its political and military aspects: While effectively performing regional military missions, a well-trained army can sometimes make up for the lack of foresight, statesmanship and responsibility on the part of the political leadership - at any rate, at the stage of an operation involving the use of force

Never before in its history has the United States begun a war with such strong military positions but in such a vulnerable political situation both at home and on the international arena. Never before has the United States possessed such top-class military command and, with rare exceptions, such intellectually inferior political leadership affected by tunnel vision. Yet the spectacular military victory was able to cover, and embellish, very bad policy - at least for now...

Win War but Lose Peace

Rampant looting, a wave of crime, and a lack of elementary hygiene, water supply and medical services - all of this is the thin end of the wedge. A Shi'ite movement is gaining momentum in the south, under fundamentalist banners. In the north, the Kurds are waiting for national self-determination as a reward for their support of the United States. Bloody clashes have erupted between the occupation forces and local residents who do not in their majority welcome the Americans as liberators but, quite the contrary, demand their early withdrawal (the far-sighted British began to pull out their contingent as soon as the operation was over). The more democracy there is in Iraq, the stronger the Shi'ites' positions will be (Shi'ites account for 60 percent of the population) and the greater the country's regional influence (and its role within the OPEC) - much to the annoyance of the United States and the neighboring Sunni Arab states; also, the greater the Kurds' activism and independence - much to the annoyance of Turkey. The less democracy there is in Iraq, the more acute the internal conflicts in the country and the tougher the reprisals on the part of the new Baghdad regime - but this time around, under the protection of U.S. arms and under U.S. responsibility. The idea of democratization in Iraq proved not so incontestable on the ground as it appeared to be in White House declarations before the war.

Just as predicted, the spread of weapons of mass destruction received a strong impetus. North Korea withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty, officially declaring that it already has nuclear weapons. Iran and a number of other countries are likely to follow suit to protect themselves against the U.S. forceful arbitrariness as well as against each other. The UN mission in Afghanistan began to unravel while, riding the crest of the wave of Islamic extremism, Taliban and al Qaeda are rebuilding their influence in rural areas.

Just as expected, international terrorism mounted a new global offensive - in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Israel, Spain, and Chechnya. True, pro-Western regimes in Islamic countries have thus far been able to resist the fundamentalist onslaught, but after the war, the future has become less, not more, certain.

Predictably, the occupation forces have found neither large chemical weapon stockpiles nor terrorist camps in the territory of Iraq. Thus the formal causes for the military operation are falling apart although amid the victorious fanfare, few in the United States are calling the operation into question. This, too, is just for the time being. Washington's haste in demanding the lifting of UN sanctions and the resumption of oil export as well as the awarding of oil field development contracts to U.S. companies confirm the suspicions about other motives lying behind the use of force than the purported danger of the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the alleged links to terrorists, and the inhuman nature of the Hussein regime.

Clausewitz in Reverse

If, according to the classic Clausewitz formula, war is merely a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means, the United States has shown it to be true in reverse. It has spectacularly won the war but is losing the political course that was to be furthered by means of the war in Iraq. Colossal military superiority led the U.S. administration to show extreme arrogance, contempt for diplomacy, and disdain for public relations. Very low, if any, priority was given to the need to justify its position and search for compromise at the UN and in the process of negotiations with its allies and partners in the antiterrorist coalition, or to consideration of a postwar order in Iraq and the region as a whole.

As a result, having routed the Hussein army and having toppled the Hussein regime, the United States has lost something far more important - the moral high ground and political leadership in the world, and sympathy and support by public opinion in Western Europe and in Russia (let alone Islamic nations, China, India, and other countries) that the United States acquired in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. American society also has split. A new UN resolution, of May 23, 2003, de facto legalizing the military operation against Iraq retrospectively, will hardly make up this loss.

The U.S. action in Iraq has deeply compromised the idea of a united front of different states in the struggle against a new common threat - international terrorism and its access to weapons of mass destruction. This coalition evolved in the wake of the 9/11 shock, showing itself to good effect by carrying out - under U.S. leadership, by joint efforts, and based on a UN resolution - an operation to wipe out the Taliban terrorist base in Afghanistan. Yet the way the U.S. expedition to Iraq was carried out substantially undermined the unity of this coalition. From now on, any action against particular countries under the slogan of stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction will, based on Iraq experience, be under strong suspicion on the part of the international community as to the ulterior, unilateral goals and interests.

Having scored a military victory over a relatively weak adversary, the United States has wasted an immense moral and political capital. Now the United

States will be hard put to achieve unity and effective interaction with Russia, China, India, and other states over North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. Yet the fact is that these countries pose a far greater threat than Iraq both insofar as concerns the spread of weapons of mass destruction and support of international terrorism. Indeed, don't spit into the well, you may have to drink from it one day.

Russia: Crisis Diplomacy in Retrospect

The Iraq crisis also holds important lessons for Russian politics. While rightly opposing the hasty and unjustifiable use of force, Moscow over-indulged in diplomatic maneuvering, in an effort to preserve good relations with all

parties - the United States, the leading West European countries (France and Germany), and the Hussein regime (driven by its oil and financial interests). Vigorous tactics filled the vacuum of strategy and offset the lack of coherent foreign policy priorities.

As a result, Russia failed to avert the war and the collapse of the Baghdad regime, just as it failed to assert the supremacy of the UN Security Council and the primacy of international law over the law of (U.S.) force. Although the United States did not force a showdown and recalled a resolution sanctioning military action so as not to compel Russia together with France to veto it (possibly by covert agreement), Russian-U.S. relations were considerably marred by the course of the military operation on the ground. The advent of a new regime in Baghdad will likely dash all hopes for the payment of debt, development of Iraqi oil deposits, and maintenance of high oil prices on the international markets.

It is easy to talk with the benefit of hindsight, but in this particular case the course of events was perfectly predictable long before the war began

while there were other options that could have brought about a different outcome. In the fall of 2002, President Bush's well-known statement made it clear that the Hussein regime was doomed - above all because of its crimes against its own people as well as its neighbors, its defiance of UN resolutions, its blatant sabotage of arms inspections in the 1990s (and its hysterial reaction in the wake of their resumption in 2002), its continuous attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, and its irresponsible bluffing around the issue. Whatever Washington's motives, Baghdad's flagrant defiance made regime change in the country a foregone conclusion - it was merely a matter of time and method.

In that context, the only alternative to the go-it-alone military action by the United States, inspired by the victory in Afghanistan, could have been a UN Security Council-sanctioned operation to expand arms inspections, backed by credible military support; to build a coalition of forces in the Persian Gulf region to exert pressure on Hussein; to disband his security service and

national guard, and to disarm his army and dismantle his WMD and missile production capacity. All of that would have ultimately brought about regime change - only without a war, without a split of the antiterrorist coalition, without undermining the UN authority, or without worsening the RF-U.S. relations, but with a guarantee that Russian interests would be taken into account by a new Baghdad regime, created under the UN auspices.

Fussy

No sooner had the shooting ceased than Moscow started making new mistakes. From the protracted sluggishness of the prewar period, Russian diplomacy all of a sudden shifted into high gear with statements to the effect that Russia is not interested in a U.S. military defeat; demands, together with a number of West European countries, that the postwar settlement in Iraq be placed under the UN auspices; the declaration, at Washington's bidding, that Iraq's debt could be forgiven; and suggestions that it would be desirable to give Russian companies access to rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry. Whichever way you may look at it, the gist of the UN resolution, adopted May 22, 2003 by a unanimous vote (with Syria staying away), is to legitimize retrospectively the U.S./British occupation regime and therefore, the military action in Iraq per se. Having refused to sanction war owing to the flimsiness of the U.S. case, the UN post factum legalized the action although the inconsistency of the casus belli was amply confirmed after the war. Contrary to the statements by the RF Foreign Ministry - let's face it - it was not that the "Iraq issue was brought back into the UN legal field," but the UN, through the efforts of its Security Council members, was brought back into the U.S. foreign and military policy field.

As far as the economic dimension of the problem is concerned, extension for another two months of the oil-for-food program (that Russian companies are moonlighting on) and the vague promises to offset Iraq's foreign debt against Soviet debt in the Paris Club as well as to provide all manner of compensation to Russian companies for the loss of contract to develop the Qurna-2 oil field could hardly be seen as a substantial gain by Russian diplomacy.

A Policy Fulcrum

Amid all of these negative aspects of the Iraq epic for Russia's foreign policy interests, there are only two positive things the prewar experience seems to suggest. One is that Moscow, for the first time in years, has shown that it can follow an independent line without taking its cue from the U.S., when the latter's policy is not in the international security interest but is guided by purely selfish considerations and runs counter to the rules of international law. Importantly, in such cases opposition to the U.S. does not lead to confrontation or "cold war."

The other is that for the first time in recent contemporary history, amid sharp contradictions with the United States, Russia has acted in close interaction with other leading European powers. That effectively preempted Washington's and Brussels' accusations against Moscow of slipping back into a "cold war" while within Russia, the nationalist and leftist forces were prevented from playing the card of Moscow's "perennial confrontation" with the West.

These few, but significant, acquisitions must be preserved and augmented, laying the ground for Russian foreign policy in the long term. It is essential to exercise restraint and self-respect, not to fuss and waste away the assets in pursuit of tactical gains. The Iraq saga is far from over.

In between the extreme points - return to confrontation with the United States and following the U.S. lead - there is a broad range of other, worthy and productive, policy options. A position of principle on Iraq does not rule out, but in fact presupposes, the continuation of cooperation with the United States in areas where this conforms to Russian and international security interests. The United States itself will have more respect for this Moscow line, taking it into account in its future actions. It could provide a basis for further rapprochement between Russia and its main neighbors in Europe (and in the EU as a whole), not only in the economic, humanitarian, and legal spheres, but also in the foreign and military policy sphere. Herein lie immense potentialities for interacting and increasing their aggregate weight on the international arena.

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