The Washington Post
Sunday, December 7, 1997

Henry Kissinger

# No Carrots for Saddam

The crisis over the expulsion of U.N. observ-
ers from Iraq has temporarily eased. But
the way it was handled by the Clinton adminis-
tration has made another, similar, crisis highly
probable.

Though Saddam Hussein is often described
as a madman, his strategy to loosen and
ultimately overturn the restraints placed upon
him by the U.N. inspection system is in fact
quite rational.

On the two occasions on which the Clinton administration used force against Iraq, it resorted to mere pinpricks. In 1993, in response to an alleged Iraqi plot against former President Bush, the administration announced a nighttime cruise-missile attack on an empty building. In 1996, after Saddam virtually eliminated the leadership of the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, established and supported by America, the administration reacted with inconsequential raids against radar sites in the south.

Having concluded that he had little to fear
from American military action, Saddam saw a
political opportunity when Russia and France
recently blocked a weak Security Council reso-
lution to put baby teeth into the U.N. inspection
effort. On the basis of this, Saddam was quite
rational to conclude that the political response
to challenging the U.N. restraints would be no
more meaningful than the military one.

The administration's first reaction to Sad-
dam's threat to expel American inspectors was
to warn that the issue was nonnegotiable. Yet it
acquiesced in—if it did not encourage—a three-
man U.N. mission to Iraq, an inherent invitation
to compromise. Saddam probably never sought
the complete elimination of U.N. inspections, at
least not in the first round. Almost certainly, his
real aim was to achieve a veto over the conduct
of inspections, to increase the obstacles to
effective enforcement and to trigger a diploma-
cy that would ultimately undermine the U.N.
effort by weakening the core of the Western
coalition and encouraging a broader Russian
role in the area.

This is why, from the very beginning, Deputy
Prime Minister Tarik Aziz asked only for reduc-
ing the proportion of Americans on the inspec-
tion teams and for an easing of sanctions.
Saddam understood that any change in inspec-
tion procedures or any modification of sanc-
tions under threat would spell success for him,
undermine the confidence of the weak gulf
states, embolden Iran, the chief threat to the
area, and erode American leadership.

Given these stakes, the overarching Ameri-
can objective should have been to bring
about an unconditional return to the precise
inspection system that had existed when the
inspectors were expelled, together with strict
accounting for the diversion of prohibited mate-
rial during the hiatus in inspections. The United
States needed to demonstrate by action, word
and nuance its determination to impose this
solution, if necessary by unilateral American
action together with whatever other countries
would join us. Half-way measures were, in fact,

the most dangerous because they increased the
risk of prolonging the crisis and a blow-up
under circumstances in which America rather
than Saddam has become the issue.

Our reiterated commitment to multilateral ac-
tion and to demonstrating a conciliatory, hence
compromising, attitude ran counter to these
imperatives. Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright's traveling party held out the prospect of
"carrots" for Saddam—later disavowed by the
White House, though the disavowal seemed to
refer to the word more than to the substance.
High-level leaks conveyed that we would go along
with a "restructuring" of the inspection teams to
enhance "their effectiveness." Similarly, adminis-
tration spokesmen stated from the first that the
United States, concerned about the people of Iraq,
would not stand in the way of easing sanctions for
humanitarian purposes.

But any change in the composition of inspec-
tion teams, especially one that reduces the
proportion of Americans and increases the
number of Russian and French inspectors,
would politicize the inspection process. And if
we are honest with ourselves, we will recognize
that humanitarian sanctions are a contradiction
in terms. The concept of painless sanctions
reflects the illusion that a form of international
social ostracism will induce a change in Sad-
dam's behavior—a preposterous proposition.
Anyway, to ease sanctions under pressure from
Saddam and Russia would deprive us even of
credit for humanitarian motives.

The hesitation of the former gulf coalition to step up to the crisis was in large part due to doubts about America's ultimate strategy. The various leaders, with their finely honed sense of survival, feared that, after an ineffectual American

response, they would be left alone with a radical
Iraq and, later on, with an even more powerful
Iran. The clear lesson of the Gulf War is that
multilateral coalitions come together when Amer-
ica leaves no doubt about its determination to act
alone if it must; other nations can then affect
events only by joining the coalition.

When the administration blamed Arab foot-
dragging on the alleged intransigence of Israeli
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, it danger-
ously confused this issue. I know no state of the
erstwhile gulf coalition that would encourage
Iraqi domination of the gulf to vindicate the
Palestinian cause—especially when most have
expelled Palestinians from their countries. But
countries that were never part of the gulf
coalition may gleefully use this excuse to
increase pressure on an Israel in open conflict
with its principal ally.

BY T. GIBSON

(over)

Unwilling to face down Saddam, our diplomacy turned to countries such as France and Russia that, having opposed our policy in the Security Council, were assumed to have a standing as mediators. For this we paid in two ways: Any compromise would vindicate Saddam's goal of making sanctions the issue rather than his transgressions; and it would establish opponents of our policies as permanent advocates of Iraq. In the follow-on U.N. diplomacy, Russia has proposed that the inspection agency be assigned five deputy chairmen, one from each of the permanent members of the Security Council, and that the books on nuclear inspections be closed. This would transfer the deadlocks of the United Nations to the inspection apparatus. And France has continued to speak of showing Saddam a light at the end of the tunnel—a euphemism for rewarding intransigence.

It is certainly important to explore the utility of the much-invoked strategic partnership with the new Russia. But not if we encourage it to act as the lawyer of Saddam or to pursue the same policies as those of the old Russia.

The conduct of France raises a more long-range challenge. As Europe adopts a common currency, common political institutions are likely to follow. And there are two schools of thought on how North Atlantic relations should evolve thereafter: France's, which insists on bringing about a European identity by distinguishing its policy from America's; or Britain's, which seeks to develop a common policy through cooperation and consensus—as it demonstrated by its support of the United States throughout the crisis. It is in the American interest and in the interest of the future of the North Atlantic alliance that the cooperative approach prevail. But the diplomacy of the administration has in effect rewarded France for a policy described in the Nov. 2 issue of Etelaat, an official newspaper of the Iranian Islamic regime, which praised the "emerging Teheran-Moscow-Paris axis" as a bulwark against the "world arrogance" of America.

The administration's crisis management machinery in this, its first real crisis, gives rise to concern. To compel an unconditional withdrawal by Saddam, it was necessary for the United States to look ominous. But in the critical week, President Clinton was on the West Coast, National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger in Washington, the secretary of state first in a minor gulf state and then in Pakistan and India, and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson in the Congo. The dispersal of key personnel made military action extremely implausible, thus dissipating the diplomatic impact of the rapid, efficient and professional deployment of our military forces.

To be sure, modern means of communication enable even far-flung policymakers to make major decisions. But long-range messages cannot substitute for a systematic exchange of opinions. Had all policymakers met regularly, backed by adequate staff work, the following issues might well have been raised, perhaps modifying some of the key decisions:

* The danger that the wishy-washy U.N. resolution banning travel by Iraqi officials impeding the inspection process signaled indecision rather than determination. The American reluctance to put forward a stronger resolution was explained by the desire to avoid multiple vetoes. But would Russia really have vetoed in the midst of its financial crisis, China so soon after the Jiang Zemin visit and France when the chips were down?

* The crisis ended with only four of the six expelled American inspectors returning to Baghdad. Did this not appear as yielding to precisely what Saddam demanded?

* The foreign ministers of the permanent members of the Security Council met at 2 a.m. in Geneva to end the crisis. This obliged the secretary of state to cut short a visit to India to accommodate Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov's scheduled trip to Latin America. Did this not convey loss of mastery over the process and excessive eagerness?

I criticize with regret an administration whose policies on China, NATO expansion and fast-track trade negotiations I have supported. Its past record of learning from experience leads me to hope that the situation is still remediable, especially since, in all likelihood, we have witnessed only the first stage of a longer crisis.

With respect to the immediate situation, any modification of the inspection system or easing of sanctions undermines the long-term ability of the United States to protect the gulf. The United States should therefore reverse the Geneva "compromise," by which the inspectors returned to Baghdad in exchange for a diplomatic process to review the composition of the inspection teams and an easing of the food-for-oil sanction. Specifically:

* We should stick to the proposition that only the Security Council can change the structure, mission or composition of U.N. inspection teams.

* We should refuse any modification in the food-for-oil program until the inspectors have had unimpeded access for at least four months to all sites.

* We should prepare for military action to exact full compliance with inspection procedures. These should be designed to deprive Saddam of the chief elements of his military structure.

The present crisis is the result of years of drift during which the question of our ultimate purposes was deferred while the basis for the existing policy was eroding. A coherent long-range strategy for the gulf must be devised urgently to deal with some questions admitted by not easily answered:

Can dual containment—the policy of basing gulf policy on simultaneous opposition to Iran and Iraq—work? What other countries must be involved? What is the role of Turkey, and how is its role in the gulf to be related to other Turkish priorities? And if the policy is to be modified, toward which country, by what methods and to what end—always keeping in mind that after all that has passed between Saddam and the United States, a settlement with him is impossible for the United States in the foreseeable future?

How do we deal with Russia so that it cannot combine the phraseology of strategic partnership with the reality of an adversarial relationship? How can we rally our allies to a common course and give them a sense of participation in defining it?