For him, everything is negotiable, except his own survival
The key issue in the crisis in the Gulf is no longer whether Iraq will withdraw, or be made to withdraw, its forces from Kuwait unconditionally but whether Saddam Hussein can survive the withdrawal for any worthwhile period of time.
The first question can be said to have already been settled in effect by the presence of awesome military power in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, in view of the dramatic initiative Saddam has taken to resolve the outstanding problems with Iran despite the bitter memories of the eight-year war between the two countries, involving a loss of around one million lives, it too cannot be ruled out that he himself may announce soon his decision to withdraw his troops from Kuwait.
At the time of writing (on August 16) the contents of Saddam’s message of President Bush through King Hussein (now Sheriff Hussein) have not been disclosed. Even so it can safely be anticipated that President Bush will not accept any conditions for withdrawal, even if these are not as unrealistic as the ones Saddam proposed last Sunday, and that he will not negotiate terms of withdrawal. Saddam has to announce a unilateral and unconditional withdrawal and he has to be seen to be withdrawing immediately in the wake of the announcement.
Out of question
K Subramanyam, India’s foremost writer on strategic issues, in fact doubts whether even an offer of unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait would be acceptable to the Americans since elimination of Saddam and the military power of Iraq is their central objective. He fears that they may well anticipate such a move on Saddam’s part, invent an excuse (as in the case of Vietnam in the mid-sixties when they arranged skirmishes in the Gulf of Tonkin) and start bombing Iraq with a view to destroying its missiles, aeroplanes and tanks.
Saddam cannot but be alive to such a possibility and must be planning to frustrate it. Military action is, almost certainly, out of the question for him. That should put paid to the earlier speculation that he might, on King Hussein’s invitation, send a contingent to Jordan with a view to provoking Jerusalem so that he could emerge as the champion of Arabs in their struggle with Israel. Only a political initiative is open to him, if that, and time may well be running against him. He has to act soon.
There is, of course, a case for Saddam to bide time if only he can be reasonably sure that the Americans would not jump the gun and would, by and large, act within the parameters laid down by the UN Security Council. That could help bring into the open the differences of approach between the US and some of its NATO allies and the Soviet Union; President Mitterrand has already expressed annoyance over the American action in interdicting Iraqi ships without the prior sanction of the Security Council; and, above all, it could enable his allies such as Yasser Arafat to mobilise Arab public opinion against the US.
Popular opinion
For all we know, he may do just that. Once Arab popular opinion begins to turn in his favour, as I think it will, his chances of survival, following finally an unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, will definitely improve because his enemies within Iraq, especially among the armed forces, would by logical calculations, be discouraged by demonstrations of support for him in other Arab countries.
Saddam is a gambler. But this time he will need to be a reckless gambler if he attempts to outwit Washington. Americans are not known to be either unduly patient, or unduly respectful of legalities outside their boundaries. After all, they have waged regular wars, for a whole decade in the case of Vietnam, without a declaration of war. In the past, the fear of involvement in an armed conflict with the Soviet Union and/or China could act at least as a restraining factor. Now they operate under no such constraint.
This is, however, not to say for sure that they will soon attack Iraq. A great deal depends on whether they are willing to split, or they can somehow be persuaded to split their twin objectives of securing Iraq’s withdrawal and Saddam’s overthrow. The Soviet Union and France are trying to persuade Washington to do so. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed.
President Bush has to contend with two contradictory pressures. On the one, he is being asked to confine his actions within the parameters laid down by the United Nations, intended primarily to secure Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait; and, on the other, he is being told, it can be safely assumed, to go in for a quick kill. Muslim governments, Arab and non-Arab, which have agreed to send troops to Saudi Arabia, have a particularly high stake in a quick kill.
The arguments in favour of both propositions are pretty strong. But those in favour of the second option appear to be stronger. There can be no certainty that Saddam can be overthrown in the near future once he has withdrawn from Kuwait and the sanctions against Iraq have consequently been lifted; after all, Castro has survived so many plans by the CIA to eliminate him. His survival will by itself ensure his emergence as the most formidable Arab leader; Assad could not have successfully competed with him even if he had not compromised his radical anti-US credentials by sending troops to Saudi Arabia; by doing so, he had knocked himself out of the race, however strong his compulsions.
Moreover, the present turn of events in the Gulf cannot but stiffen the Israelis in their resolve to hold on to the West Bank; no one can now possibly convince them that they can trust Arafat, or any other Palestinian leader, or, for that matter, Arab government even if they are willing, which is highly unlikely, to negotiate a comprehensive peace agreement with them.
Topmost priority
Thus, from whatever angle we view the turbulent scene in the Gulf, the compulsions for the US to go in for an assault on Iraq appear overwhelmingly powerful. Indeed, it seems to me that not only the overthrow of Saddam but the destruction of Iraq’s military machine must be Washington’s topmost priority. The liberation of Kuwait, independently of the achievement of that objective, could produce for it a nightmare.
In this context it must be remembered that apart from Syria, there is no Arab entity in the Gulf region which can be called a country capable of building and sustaining a viable defence system. Oil wells do not, and cannot, constitute a country simply because the British endorsed a tribal chief as the ruler and gave him a flag. Kuwait bought military equipment worth billions of dollars and it surrendered without even a show of resistance. Saudi Arabia is believed to have spent around $50 billion on military purchases in recent years and it panicked at the very appearance of Iraqi tanks over the horizon in Kuwait.
All these vague entities have so far survived because no one with the necessary clout has seriously challenged their right to exist. This right has now been questioned. Regardless of the certainty that Iraq will not be allowed to get away with the annexation of Kuwait, the status quo ante cannot be restored in a meaningful sense of the term. The rulers, including of those of Saudi Arabia, have fully realised that they are vulnerable in the face of just show of force. Not to speak to Saddam Hussein, the survival of Iraq as a viable military power will haunt them and their principal protector, the United States.
In terms of sheer raw military power, the elimination of Iraq as a factor of military importance is clearly within America’s reach. But the tragedy is that this too will not ensure peace in the oil-rich region so vital for the economic well-being of the whole world. After all, till only recently Iran loomed large as the principal threat to its interests in the Gulf, so much so Washington intervened actively, even if indirectly, in the Iraq-Iran war on the side of Iraq. The ‘moderation’ in evidence in Teheran is largely the result of the exhaustion produced by that war. It is likely to disappear as Iraq is eliminated, or contained, as a military power in the region.
Worse than folly
US policy-makers have not been known to think in such ‘complex’ terms. Their responses have been known to be determined by immediate exigencies. Witness their conviction in the fifties that China was a Soviet satellite and in the sixties that Vietnam was a Chinese surrogate and Khmer Rouge an offshoot of the Vietnamese communist party. Also witness their support till recently for the Khmer Rouge in its war on the Vietnamese-supported government in Pnom Penh.
It is doubtful that they have learnt from their past experience. On the contrary, it seems reasonably certain not only that they will seek to woo Iran, which is at least understandable in the interest of ‘neutralising’ it in the confrontation with Iraq, but also that they will try to use Pakistan for this purpose and project it as a major guarantor of the status quo in the Gulf. This will be worse than folly. It will be a tragedy of the first order. Iraq may be four or five years away from the bomb, thanks to the Israeli attack on its key nuclear facility in 1981; Pakistan already possesses the bomb.
It shall be naive to suggest that a fool-proof solution is conceivable. It is not. All possible formulas are open to serious objections. But if anything can work, it is some kind of a collective security arrangement which involves world powers such as the US, the Soviet Union and China, on the one hand, and regional powers such as India, Pakistan and Iran, on the other.
Peaceful process
Collective security by definition involves respect for the status quo, Europe is an example. It was only when NATO powers accepted the realities on the ground created by World War II that progress towards the Helsinki accord could become possible.
Ironically, this accord itself has paved the way partly for disappearance of Soviet power from Eastern Europe and reunification of Germany. But this has been a peaceful process.
History cannot be frozen. The possibility of doing so are of necessity bleak in a region which is at once so rich in oil and therefore wealth and so deficient in modern institutions. On top of it all, Muslims are in ferment the world over. This ferment has been variously interpreted. But one central aspect has mostly been ignored. Islam as a faith does not recognise the legitimacy of national boundaries and in times of trouble, as now, when emotions run high, as they do quickly among Muslims, the ummah becomes a grim reality despite the lack of organisation. The governments of Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh have trifled with the emotions of the people under their control. The cost can be pretty high for them. Anti-government demonstrations have started in Pakistan.
There was a risk of the US confrontation with Iraq being seen by Muslims as a return to the days of the crusade; Saddam has not been sparing any effort for it to be so seen. To contain this threat, the Americans and the Saudis have persuaded the above named governments to send ‘Muslim’ troops to keep them company. This solution may turn out to be a blunder. This should persuade the Americans to take a second calm look at their overall policy.
The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, 21 August 1990