Has the countdown for American military action against Saddam Hussein already started? This is the question now debated in diplomatic circles both in the Middle East and the West.
There was a slim hope that the talks held between the United Nations and Iraq in Vienna last week might lead to an easing of tension. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, and Iraq’s Foreign Minister Naji Al-Sabri had started the talks with broad smiles and warm handshakes. But when they were taking leave of one another Friday, the smiles were gone and the handshakes were merely formal.
To be sure, neither Annan nor Al-Sabri were principals in a conflict that must ultimately be decided by the US President George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. So far, however, there are no signs that either man is prepared to even consider what the other wants.
Bush has gone too far in his public commitment to removing Saddam from power to be able to back down now. The least that he might be able to accept is a compromise under which the Iraqi Baath Party will retain a big share in power in exchange for ditching Saddam. And that, of course, is unthinkable, at least at the moment.
Saddam, for his part, wants the UN sanctions completely lifted so that he can gain full control of Iraq’s oil revenue and presumably speed up plans for rebuilding his war machine. Most experts now agree that Saddam’s chief aim is to develop a nuclear weapon.
He has witnessed that the possession of nuclear arms, even on a rudimentary scale, has transformed the international status of both India and Pakistan in the past three years. He is, no doubt, also aware that the fact that North Korea is believed to have some nuclear weapons is one of the reasons why the US is treating it with kid gloves.
To keep the pot boiling, Saddam has in recent days ordered an intensification of attacks by his anti-aircraft defenses on US and British planes enforcing the no-fly zones. He has also ordered some armored units into areas close to the UN-protected Kurdish “safe haven” in the northeast. A presidential decree issued last Tuesday orders the repositioning of some elite divisions in southern Iraq. By all accounts, Saddam is working on a massive show of force on July 17, the day that marks the 34th anniversary of the Baathist seizure of power in Baghdad.
Washington has retaliated by leaking details of a scenario for invading Iraq, perhaps sometime in the autumn. The collapse of the Vienna talks pushes tension one notch higher, making military conflict that much more likely.
Paradoxically, it is Saddam Hussein rather than George Bush that seems to be anxious to provoke an early showdown.
The question is: Why?
Reading Saddam’s mind is both easy and difficult.
It is easy because he is rather predictable. He has a propensity for imagining things the way he wants them to be. Once this is done, no one can attract his attention to any alternative narrative. Right now he has persuaded himself that George W. will not be able to attack Iraq for a number of reasons. The Baghdad daily Babel, one of the publications where some of Saddam’s thoughts are echoed, albeit faintly, reflects that belief.
Saddam believed that the Bush administration is divided and that the “soft-liners” led by Secretary of State Colin Powell might well be able to stand against the “hard-liners” headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Powell played a crucial role in persuading the first President Bush to allow Saddam to remain in power in Baghdad in 1991.
Today, however, Powell no longer believes that he had made the right choice. Also, a series of recent events have shown that, when it comes to the crunch, Powell would go with the winning side within the administration. The rejection of the Kyoto Protocols, the decision to overthrow the Taleban in Kabul rather than seek a deal with them, the refusal to make the US a signatory of the treaty on the International Criminal Court are all options that Powell opposed but failed to stop.
Saddam is also counting on European, Arab and Russian efforts to prevent military action against him. But here, too, he fails to take into account some recent developments. The recent tide of right-wing electoral victories in the European Union has weakened the traditional anti-American constituencies that might have been mobilized against Washington. As for the Arabs, he would be deluding himself if he thinks that any Arab leader would genuinely regret his demise. Making solemn diplomatic statements is one thing, going with the crushing tide of Realpolitik is quite another. Right now, at least four of the smaller Arab states are working closely with the US in preparations for a new campaign against Saddam. And, when the chips are down, it is unlikely that any Arab state would declare war on the US in support of Saddam. Russia is another mirage. President Vladimir Putin has reorganized his entire strategy to base it on close partnership with the US. It is in that spirit that Putin has just ordered the termination of Russia’s nuclear cooperation with Iran.
Reading Saddam’s mind is also difficult because he could be totally unpredictable. He could provoke a new crisis that could give Washington the pretext it needs for building up a large task force in the region. At the last minute, however, Saddam is also capable of suddenly backing down as part of his favorite game of cat-and-mouse.
The Iraqi leader knows how to provoke conflicts but does not know how to manage them. He provoked the bloody conflict with the Kurds in 1969 and failed to manage it until he had to pay a heavy price in the form of swallowing all of Iran’s historical claims in 1975. In 1980, he provoked the war with Iran, a conflict that, once again, quickly ran out of his control. His most dramatic error, the invasion of Kuwait and its consequences, was a continuation of the same strategy.
As the New York Times reported the other day, another war over Iraq now looks inevitable. The question is: When?
Iraq’s decision to derail the Vienna talks will only advance that date.
