Issue No. 610
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31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002 Issue No. 610 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Bush's no war scenario
How credible is the assumption that preparing furiously for war is the best way to avoid it happening, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
A scenario worth contemplating for the war against Iraq would be a plan by which Bush tries to topple Saddam Hussein by means of a series of escalating steps before, or even instead of, resorting to the military option. Such a plan would entail stepping up military mobilisation for a war on Iraq, and gradually intensifying the pressure as point zero draws closer in the hope that parts of the Iraqi army, particularly among the Republican Guard and other elite forces, would come to see defection as a lesser evil than continuing to implement Saddam's orders. This would pave the way for a coup in which Saddam would be removed without the US having to fire a single shot.
If such a scenario succeeds, Bush will have demonstrated he was right to adopt an uncompromising line and to reject the compromise solutions proposed by advocates of a diplomatic way out of the crisis. If his unyielding line succeeds in overcoming the resistance of the Iraqi military, this can whet his appetite for launching similar preemptive campaigns against other states that Washington accuses of belonging to the "axis of evil".
The recent period has seen the American president tone down his war rhetoric, claiming that he is ready to "give diplomacy a chance". Actually, the extra time allegedly given to diplomacy is the time he needs to reach the point where military mobilisation and escalation are such that the balance of power is so deeply disrupted to Saddam's disadvantage that it would be realistic to expect a breakdown of the Iraqi regime without the need for an all-out attack.
Such a scenario is far from being pure fantasy. It is compatible with Bush's rejection of the French demand that a second Security Council resolution must be issued before any attack can be carried out against Iraq. After the bill passed by Congress authorising the US president to go forward with the strike, even unilaterally, Bush now has all the prerogatives he needs to launch the attack.
The revised draft resolution presented by Washington to the other permanent members of the Security Council was opposed by Russia's ambassador to the UN because, in his words, it still included "an automatic authorisation for the use of force and imposed unimplementable, unrealistic demands on inspectors and Iraqi officials". Although it moderated some requirements for weapons inspections in Iraq, the draft resolution still threatened unspecified consequences if Saddam refuses to disarm. It abandoned none of the US administration's hawkish stands, such as America's alleged "right" to keep all its military prerogatives, the UN's "right" to question Iraqi scientists outside Iraq and an ultimatum to Iraq that it will have to implement instructions from the UN inspectors within seven days of receiving them. In addition, the revised resolution cancelled a previous understanding with the UN inspectors over how the search of the Republican palaces will be conducted. According to the American draft resolution, if Iraq wants to avoid war, all these instructions have to be rigorously applied.
Bush has defined the policy of his administration in its confrontation with Saddam Hussein as "regime change". But what does that mean in practice? The US president recently declared that if Saddam Hussein responds to the American demands, "that in itself will signal the regime has changed". This could indicate a readiness to come to an agreement. But Bush has also said, and more than once, that no understanding with Iraq is conceivable after 11 years of continuous violations. It therefore seems that what is presented as a less rigid position is nothing more than a ploy to buy time and give a better opportunity for the military to reach the level that, eventually, could be effective in achieving Bush's objectives.
But what does a change of regime actually mean? Does it mean changing Saddam, changing the Ba'ath regime or removing the military from power? Or is it, on the contrary, aimed at keeping the military in power, but without Saddam Hussein, to avoid having to deal with civil society, a challenging prospect both quantitatively (given its size) and qualitatively, in as much as it includes many different political trends which if given free rein could so radically alter the political landscape in Iraq as to defeat all attempts to keep the country under control.
A careful reading of Bush's statements on the need for a regime change in Iraq reveals a desire for a gradual, limited change, but not in the direction of more flexibility. The opposite is closer to the truth. The date for a military strike appears to have been postponed, most likely until after the half-term congressional elections later this month. Talk that a chance is still there for a peaceful way out seems to indicate that pressure on the Iraqi regime could still reap fruit, especially at a time when removing Saddam from office is America's policy, not the UN's.
The White House is aware that any military strike must be extremely powerful and decisive if it is to bring about a split in the ranks of the military. At the same time, it should not be so violent as to alienate Iraqi public opinion and impede the emergence of a new Iraqi government friendly to the US, which would also be positively accepted by the various segments of Iraqi society. Accordingly, the exact dose of devastation to be rained on the Iraqi people will go far towards determining the outcome of America's game plan.
On the external front, America is faced with the need to avoid a conflict of interests with three countries, France, Russia and China, who enjoy veto powers in the Security Council. Washington has every interest in playing down its differences with those countries and in convincing them not to take their disagreement with Bush to its ultimate end, thus exposing a rift Saddam Hussein could use to his advantage. On the domestic front, Bush has an interest in avoiding the military option and in achieving his regime change goal by making Saddam's hold on power untenable through other means of pressure. This would free him of the need to choose between the advice of the hawks in his entourage and those who resist their omnipotence to one degree or other. Both sides agree that Saddam must be removed; they differ only over whether such an objective justifies the use of force.
In the meantime, a row has broken out between the hawkish top leadership of the Pentagon and the less hawkish organs of the US security agencies, including the CIA, which accuses the Pentagon of poaching on its territory and of politicising intelligence to fit preconceived views on Iraq. There are some grounds for this accusation. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has set up a small intelligence unit in the Pentagon whose task has been defined by Pentagon officials as "searching for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked." The Pentagon leadership, for its part, blames the CIA for not doing enough to unearth evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein and his suspected ties to terrorist organisations, including Al-Qa'eda.
Moreover, Bush has been warned by his military commanders of the dangers of engaging in house-to-house combat in the hostile streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, which will result in thousands of American casualties and even more civilian deaths and can only stiffen resistance among the populace. In order to avoid such a scenario, the American military is polishing a plan for attacking Baghdad that calls for isolating the city and then taking control of it by seizing or destroying Saddam's pillars of power.
The new strategy is a significant change in Pentagon doctrine. In World War II the American military dealt with the difficult question of urban combat by using heavy artillery, intense fire-bombing and even, in Japan, atomic weapons. Since the war, the strategy has been to isolate urban areas, then to move on to other tasks. If they have to fight, American generals will choose their targets carefully and try to overwhelm them with such decisive force that Iraq's will to fight collapses. The American leadership could see such a development as eventually boiling down to circumventing all-out confrontation, hoping that Saddam's authority would implode as he loses control over his loyalists. This has been Sharon's approach to try to neutralise and topple Arafat. So far, the results have not been conclusive.
In a nutshell, the US strategy seems to be based on the assumption that strongly escalating preparations for war are the best way to avoid actually going to war -- a very questionable proposition that can easily get out of hand. Is the Bush administration ready to assume the consequences?
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