The twentieth century, which was to prove the bloodiest in history, began with a timetable. The Schlieffen plan called for the mustering of one and a half million German troops on the Belgian and French frontiers. This vast deployment in 1914 at the start of World War I, was made possible by precise railway timetabling. When, in the hours before this most pointless of wars actually began, the German Kaiser had second thoughts, he was told it was too late to stop the vast synchronized movement of men and materiel. In the next four years, 10 million people were to die, 20 million wounded and the seeds sown for further conflict which would cost many millions more dead.
Is the United States operating its own Schlieffen plan at the start of the 21st century ? The military build-up against Iraq continues steadily but the reasons for a war do not. Everything depends upon the findings of the UNMOVIC inspectors in Iraq. Now a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with whom the UNMOVIC inspectors are working, has said that neither his organization nor UNMOVIC believes that comprehensive inspections will be completed within a year.
If this is true, it seems unthinkable that the United States and its unquestioning British ally will be prepared to keep a large attack force in the region for such a period, let alone maintain that force at a level of preparedness which will enable it to act at a moment’s notice. On top of this, US diplomats would need to make prodigious efforts to maintain the reluctant acquiescence of other countries, which have been persuaded to support an Iraq attack in certain circumstances. Even if Washington had agreed unequivocally that no conflict would begin without the express approval of the United Nations, it is hard to see how the current military build-up could be sustained for a full year.
As ever, we come back to the half-hearted US support for the weapons inspectors. Having insisted that they be allowed to return to Iraq with a tougher and far wider-ranging mandate than before, now they are back on those terms, Washington appears to see them as an obstacle to its real plan. It seems highly probable that the Bush White House was calculating on an outright Iraqi refusal to accept UNMOVIC’s return. When Saddam gave in, the Americans lost their first excuse to attack.
Then the US administration grumbled over the details in the Iraqi weapons declaration made under Resolution 1441. UNMOVIC was not happy either, but decided that it was a document from which it could work and so continued with its inspection program. Now the Washington line is that UNMOVIC is never going to find anything and unless Saddam stops playing games and voluntarily hands over the weaponry which the US insists that he has, the attack goes in. An added refinement to this aggressive bullhorn diplomacy is the often repeated statement that Washington wants anyway to see an end to Saddam. Yet if Saddam does indeed have any weapons of mass destruction, these are his last protection from political oblivion or worse. Even now prosecutors in The Hague are probably preparing the evidence against him and his henchmen. If Saddam surrenders his supposed weaponry, he is also surrendering his regime.
His only possible avenue of escape is to keep the UNMOVIC teams at work. While that is happening, US aggression may falter and world opinion against war harden.
All this however may be valueless if the US is embarked upon its own carefully choreographed Schlieffen-style plan of attack, which may soon become too far advanced to stop.
