The lesser of all evils
Why war in Iraq now? Veteran Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman says that sooner or later, now has to come. He spoke to
Khaled Dawoud in Washington
Anthony Cordesman
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Anthony Cordesman, holder of the Arleigh A Burke Chair in Strategy at the prestigious Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is a veteran of US political efforts in the Arab world and an open supporter of the United States administration's stance that the situation in Iraq necessitates war. He does downplay expectations that US soldiers will be welcomed as "liberators" in Baghdad, however, dismissing the notion as divorced from reality.
Cordesman has written extensively on security and strategy issues in the Gulf region and the Arab world, including the Arab-Israeli military balance. A former Georgetown professor, Cordesman has held positions at the Department of Defence, Department of Energy and the State Department and has had numerous foreign assignments, including posts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon
Asked whether he backed the administration's view that the expected war against Iraq would be quick, Cordesman said that "the probabilities are that this will be a relatively short war. The question is how intense it is, and ... how many casualties will result." He added that the Iraqi regime's military capabilities have been largely reduced since the 1991 Gulf War and that it barely maintains 40 per cent of its ground strength. "Of course there are wild cards here," Cordesman conceded. "Urban warfare is one of them; another is use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); the third is a set of attacks to try to bring Israel into the war. But all of these seem to me, at least at this point in time, fairly limited. So, is there a worst case where the war could last several months? Yes. But is it more likely that the war will be relatively quick? The answer is yes again." He added that, "it would take a combination of a popular uprising, large-scale use of WMDs and significant urban fighting to make this last more than four to six weeks, and it is more likely it will be a shorter conflict."
Like many strategic experts close to the administration, Cordesman believes that the Iraqi president has no support among Iraqis, particularly the Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north. "The population is overwhelmingly Shi'ite. It is ruled by a relatively small Sunni minority. Three of the provinces are Kurdish, out of 18, and they have no interest whatsoever in being ruled by Saddam Hussein," he said.
However, Cordesman is not willing to go as far as saying that Iraqis are putting their hopes in the US. "I think the reception will be very mixed, and the Iraqi people will have many questions," he suggests. "I think that having a completely optimistic picture about being greeted as liberators is very dangerous. I think many Iraqis are going to wait. They are used to living in authoritarian regimes, and it is going to take time for them to realise that there will be a lot of pluralistic and democratic opportunities." He also maintains that many people will worry about new forms of imperialism, about whether the government really will be 'by the Iraqis for the Iraqis'. "The idea that some Americans have that we are going to be greeted as we were in France is totally unrealistic. But similarly the idea that you are going to be facing major uprising is probably equally unrealistic."
Cordesman refused to provide an estimate on how long US troops would take to occupy Iraq, reiterating the administration's stance that they would stay "as long as necessary, and not a day longer." The real burden, he said, would be on the Iraqi people. "What this means in practice is that the emphasis is on the Iraqis. We will try to provide security, that is the purpose of having a military structure there, so there is no factional fighting, no warlords, you don't go back to dictators, and you don't have blood baths as people try to take revenge on the former dictatorship." He visualises the formation of consultative bodies of Iraqis dealing with almost all civil issues, saying also that this process will require time. "The key," he says, "is that it is going to be done by Iraqis, and not by Americans or Britons, or, for that matter, the United Nations."
Cordesman also backed the American government's position on the refusal to appoint a provisional government made up of Iraqis living in exile saying, "exiled Iraqis have no unity, they have no experience with governing, and no one in Iraq has selected them [to form] a government."
As for regional reactions to the likely war against Iraq, Cordesman expects it to be limited to massive protests that will soon calm down. "I think that there is going to be a lot of popular reaction while the war is going on. Other than that, I think, actually, the reactions are going to be relatively limited." He says the importance of the war to the 22 countries of the Middle East -- all of whom have serious internal, social and political problems -- will be limited, particularly if people see there will be no neo-imperialism and that it will be of benefit to the Iraqis, politically, socially as well as economically.
"Does that mean there will be no terrorism or no protests? No. But for the same reason, I don't think at the end of this, somehow, it is going to transform the Middle East. The demographic and economic problems of the Middle East are going to play out over at least two decades. Whatever political change takes place in Iraq is not going to affect what happens in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the southern Gulf states, Turkey, Syria or Jordan, for that matter, except peripherally."
Cordesman also downplays the strength of official Arab opposition to the war, saying most Arab governments support the United States in practice. "On the one hand, you have the Saudi foreign minister warning about things going horribly wrong, and, on the other hand, you have other Saudi officials on the military and civilian side who are far less dramatic about it. You have, obviously, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman supporting this operation. You have Egypt, which has raised deep concerns, a lot of them valid, particularly about the future of the second Intifada and what happens after this war. But Egypt certainly is not going to block transit through the Suez Canal or over-flights."
Cordesman maintains that regional concerns are overplayed, that some North African countries are more concerned with their own internal problems. Jordan, however, "may see problems", but the real problems lie with the second Intifada. Referring to an expected increase in US aid and a pledge by Saudi Arabia to compensate Amman, in the event of war, for the oil it gets from Iraq at the same discount prices, Cordesman argued, "at the end of this, in terms of oil and economic development, [Jordan] is not going to be considerably [different] than it is now."
Cordesman also dismissed fears among some Arab nations that a US attack against Iraq would be a precursor to similar strikes against other Arab countries which are at political odds with the United States. He said that long-standing disputes with countries like Iran and Syria have never generated a situation like the current standoff with Iraq.
He added that, "what you have here, and what you have in much of the world, is a virtual power vacuum. You don't have regional security arrangements, you have countries waiting until things go so wrong that what is a containable or limited conflict becomes general. You have international institutions that are not yet capable of actually enforcing the peace or dealing with these problems. This is only one problem of proliferation."
Yes, indeed, he concedes, "the United States, by accident, and almost [through] the forces of history, has been tossed into a given position." Is this inevitable? No, he says, but sooner or later, and until things change, the world simply watches and waits for things to collapse.
Asked whether the United States was not effectively the agitator undermining the authority of the United Nations through its insistence on waging a clearly unpopular war, Cordesman said that in this regard, the US is more guilty of bad rhetoric. "But one thing we have to remember is that the United Nations was set up when the Cold War was already beginning. It was set up so any one country could paralyse it. It was never set up to act as an international government to keep world peace or be a form for decisive action. It was set up to paralyse, and the fact is that the world cannot rely on paralysis."
The US, he maintains, could have described its approach much more clearly, and to misunderstand or wrongly characterise the UN as the final court which can make decisions of this kind is to ignore its charter and the grounds under which it was formed.
