The Center for Defense Information
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| December 17, 1998 |
| December 17, 1998 |
By Eugene J. Carroll Jr., ecarroll@cdi.org
Retired Rear Adm. Eugene J. Carroll Jr. is
Deputy Director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
SADDAM HUSSEIN is a man who has caused great harm, great pain to many people including the majority of Iraq's citizens. In his time, Hussein has turned a prosperous nation that once was one of the most progressive Muslim societies into an impoverished disaster area.
Few tyrants have ever more thoroughly devastated the quality of life for their own subjects or more aggressively attacked their neighbors than Hussein. He is a criminal, an easy man to hate.
This being true, it still must be asked what we hope to accomplish by air attacks on Iraq? Depose Hussein? Not a chance? The history of aerial bombardment confirms that it unifies a society and solidifies the political power of the leadership.
Will we end Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction? Not a chance. Our intelligence is good but cannot possibly locate easily concealed scientific and engineering facilities.
President Bill Clinton only claims to be able to "delay and degrade" Iraqi initiatives. In reality, the attacks are punitive reprisals for Hussein's contemptuous defiance of U.S. demands and the unavoidable consequences of repeated U.S. threats.
President Clinton has been criticized for past pinprick attacks and for canceling the planned November strikes altogether. Given his vulnerable political circumstances, Clinton simply could not now compromise American credibility abroad by failing to carry out U.S. threats.
The tragic irony is that the blows fall on the already victimized, suffering people of Iraq -- not on arch villain Hussein.
This raises a further question: What other costs may result from the attacks? The first obvious one is increased vulnerability of Americans living in Muslim countries. These include not only our diplomatic and military personnel but large numbers of civilian employees of U.S. companies doing business abroad.
Violence predictably begets violence even though it is directed against innocents. There is certainly a risk that we will incur significant political costs in our relations with Islamic nations as well as with Russia and other major nations that resent yet another unilateral action by the world's only superpower. We accord ourselves the right to act militarily in our own interests, but many other nations are growing uneasy about our willingness to do so without consultation and consensus within the world community.
As the world's foremost military power we have the ability to do that today.
But how long will Americans be willing and able to pay the steadily growing military costs of maintaining our military dominance?
This year the Pentagon will spend $280 billion and is already asking for $300 billion or more next year to be ready to fight anywhere on the globe.
In short, the strikes are the inevitable consequence of America's making its military power the primary instrument of its foreign policy. In this instance, among others, military action cannot significantly affect the situation in Iraq to our advantage. But it will generate real political costs in both the short and the long term.
Iraq is a clear signal that America must give serious attention to devising a strategy that places less emphasis on punishing Washington's adversaries and more on leading constructive efforts to resolve issues peacefully as part of a cooperative world community.
Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.
Striking Baghdad -- Some Questions and Answers
Q. Did Iraq make any efforts to comply with its solemn undertakings of February 23rd and November 14th to cooperate with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and with the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA)?
A. Yes. Although the promised "full cooperation" with UNSCOM was not forthcoming, Ambassador Richard Butler's report on UNSCOM activities since November did note that inspectors were not completely shut out by Saddam's tactics. Further, the IAEA's chief said that Iraq has pledged to resolve the remaining questions about Iraq's past nuclear weapons program.
Q. Will cruise missiles and bombing open any doors now closed or produce greater cooperation from the Iraqis?
A. We can confidently expect that the immediate result of the bombing will be the total exclusion of remaining UNSCOM and IAEA monitors. Short of occupying Iraq with ground forces, there will be no way to determine if Iraq is complying with its obligations to the UN -- let alone compel it to comply. The bombing will not end Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction; as good as our intelligence might be, we simply do not know where all Iraqi scientific and engineering facilities are located, and we will not be successful in destroying all of those that have been targeted.
The "best" we can hope for from the bombing, as President Clinton acknowledged, is to "degrade and delay" Iraq's efforts to build weapons of mass destruction. But this raises serious questions: how many more times will we have the "degrade and delay"? What will be the cost in lives and money? What constitutes "degrade and delay"?
Q. What has been the effect of this military action on our allies and our friends in the UN?
A. With only the British supporting the United States (unlike in the November stand-off), U.S. military action has drawn sharp opposition from other Security Council members, including permanent members China and Russia. Russian officials in the Yeltsin government and in the Duma (parliament) have said that START II ratification by the Duma is dead. This is an ironic outcome to the U.S. bombing, for START II would have mandated massive reductions in Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons. Yet the U.S. attack was undertaken to deny Saddam Hussein the ability to build nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile systems.
In the Gulf and elsewhere in the Islamic world, friendly Arab governments may have to contend with domestic opposition from many who are sympathetic to the long suffering of the Iraqi people. While it is true that Saddam Hussein has caused great pain to his own people and has impoverished his nation, these are not the "human side" of events that draw the attention of ordinary people in the Islamic world. It is possible that any serious opposition in Islamic nations to the U.S. attack may result in some Arab governments requesting the withdrawal of U.S. air and ground forces and equipment from their territory.
There are also intangible costs: lost cooperation with Russia on important bilateral issues other than START II; growing unease in many nations about U.S. unwillingness to consult and seek consensus within the world community before using military force; the further erosion of U.S. moral authority, already compromised by the failure to fully pay our monetary obligations to the UN.
Q. What are the risks to American military personnel and to other Americans?
A. For attacks involving sea or air launched cruise missiles risks would be minimal and largely associated with accidents in handling or firing munitions. The B-52s flying from Diego Garcia would not overfly Iraqi territory to launch their cruise missiles, and Iraq does not have the capability to attack U.S. ships operating in the Persian Gulf. The more significant risks to American military personnel will involve the possible loss of tactical aircraft (fighters and fighter bombers) operating over Iraq against air defense and ground combat forces.
Americans living and working in Islamic countries are also at greater risk. U.S. embassies and diplomatic personnel in many areas will also be targets. In fact, the Administration has ordered 40 American embassies in Africa to close for two days because of "the heightened threat environment following military action in Iraq" and has "done some ordered departures in Kuwait and in Israel."
Q. How much will the attack cost?
A. This depends on how long the assault continues and the extent of reinforcements being sent from the U.S. In addition to the possible loss of American pilots and Iraqi civilians, and assuming that an attack would run for four days before a pause was made, a conservative estimate of the cost of attack is $500,000,000, not including the acquisition costs of aircraft and ships. This is in addition to the $280 billion authorized for FY1999 and the estimated $300 billion that the Pentagon will request for FY2000.
Q. If military power is not the answer to Saddam Hussein, what is?
A. The best, and perhaps the only, sustainable action is to "manage" Saddam Hussein in a manner similar to our efforts to contain and manage the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. But this requires a great deal of diplomatic effort aimed at building and sustaining coalitions of nations that see U.S. leadership and U.S. positions as fair and even-handed responses to violations of international norms and standards. The perception that U.S. actions toward Iraq have not hurt Saddam Hussein although unfairly punishing the Iraqi people who are unable to throw off their ruler, and that the U.S. will inevitably will resort to declaring its "right" to employ military force unilaterally whenever it cannot muster international support for its position, guarantees that "containing" Saddam will now be harder than ever.
Perhaps one approach to "managing" Saddam is for Ambassador Butler to estimate for the UN Security Council a finite length of time (say one year) -- and the number of trained personnel -- required to complete the inspection regime if his teams are permitted free and unfettered access. The Iraqi government would be informed that if Iraq complied fully for that period of time, then the sanctions would be removed. However, if during inspections the teams encounter ongoing activity to develop nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or long range missiles, the clock would be reset; similarly if the Iraqis delay inspection of sites a commensurate time would be added before sanctions were lifted.
In the end, however, Saddam or any successor government, if it so chose, will be able to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction. This is the reality which at best can only be delayed even through diplomacy unless all nations agree to verifiable treaties.
-- Chief of Research Colonel Dan Smith, USA (Ret.), dsmith@cdi.org