Who’s next? This is the question now asked in teahouses all over the Middle East. There are two answers to the question. The first is: no one. The second is: everyone.
Let us begin with the first answer.
There will be no new target because Iraq was a unique case. Although most regional regimes have varying records of brutality, Saddam Hussein’s regime was the only regime that tried to wipe a member state of the United Nations off the map. It was also the only regime since World War I to use chemical weapons not only against adversaries in a war but also against its own people.
The key reason why Saddam’s regime was unique, however, lies elsewhere.
His was a regime that could not develop any mechanism for change. He could play in only two registers: absolute defiance or full capitulation. We first saw Saddam play the two registers inside the Baath Party. Between 1967 and 1970 he played full capitulation. After that he played absolute defiance to the point of murdering virtually the whole of the party’s top leadership at the time.
Immediately afterward he provoked a border war with Iran, playing in his absolute defiance register. When he was thoroughly defeated, he began playing full capitulation and, in 1975, signed a treaty that gave the Shah of Iran far more than he had dreamed of. His absolute defiance led him into an invasion of Iran in 1980. His full capitulation saw him beg for cease-fire in 1988. In 1990 he annexed Kuwait, an act of absolute defiance. He was offered generous bribes, including big chunks of Kuwaiti territory, to withdraw. He didn’t. He was in absolute defiance mode. Six weeks later he was fleeing from Kuwait in a full capitulation mood, ready to sign an act of unconditional surrender. The strategy had worked for three decades. This time it didn’t work because Saddam had wrongly calculated that his French and Russian friends at the Security Council would either prevent war or, if war broke out, it would somehow end it with a cease-fire that would prevent his regime from being toppled.
Now, look at other regimes in the region. All have some mechanism for change and have shown flexibility whenever their survival has been at stake. In some cases, such as Egypt under Anwar Sadat, the new ruler would purge the regime of some elements and lead the country in a new direction. Syria was able to develop an internal mechanism for change, known as “The Corrective Movement.”
Now consider the candidates for the position of “the next one”. They all know how far they can go without risking their existence. Let us begin with Syria, now singled out by part of the US media as “the next one.” Throughout the Cold War, Syria maintained close ties with the Soviet Union but refused to sign a military pact with it or grant it bases. President Hafez Assad also made sure that he met all the American presidents, from Nixon to Clinton. Although Syria’s Golan has been under Israeli occupation, not a shot was ever fired against the Jewish state from Syrian territory.
Today, there is no possibility that Syria will allow itself to be pushed into a corner in which the survival of its regime will be at stake. Syria knows how not to believe its own incendiary slogans, and how to compromise when it has to.
Iran is also referred to as a possible “next.” But Iran, too, has a mechanism for change. The regime can get rid of a few angry mullahs, replacing them with smiling ones, if and when necessary. Whenever its survival has been seriously threatened, the Khomeinist regime has always backed down. The Khomeinists captured the American hostages but made sure that none of them was harmed. In 1984 when the US Navy sunk half of Iran’s navy, the mullahs kept the whole thing quiet and opened secret channels to both Washington and Israel to ease pressure on themselves.
Another possible “next” is Libya. But even Col. Muammar Qaddafi has never made the foolish mistakes that Saddam Hussein repeatedly made. After the Americans bombed Tripoli in 1986, Qaddafi got the message and quickly severed relations with a variety of groups that Washington regarded as terrorist. The colonel later went further by handing over two of his senior intelligence officers to be tried as terrorists in the Lockerbie case.
Now to the second answer, that is: Everyone could be the next target.
The last Gulf War was aimed at restoring a status quo that had been upset by the Iraqi invasion. The current war is to change the status quo. Thus all the regimes in the region would have to change themselves. Those who regard change as an enemy will be in for rude shocks.
