Clinton’s New Mideast ‘Containment’ Strategy: Start By Punishing Saddam For Trying To Kill George Bush

Among the many distressing aspects of what passes for Bill Clinton’s foreign policy — from the abdication of leadership concerning Bosnia to the imminent normalization of relations with the unreconstructed and unapologetic communist rulers of Vietnam to the accommodationist approach apparently at work with respect to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program — one initiative has been particularly troubling: Mr. Clinton’s stated determination to "depersonalize" the conflict with Saddam Hussein.

From its unveiling shortly before the Clinton inauguration, this policy has been seen as an attempt to differentiate the new team’s approach from what it saw as the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with Saddam. As he put it in an exclusive interview with Tom Friedman of the New York Times on 13 January 1993, President-elect Clinton told Mr. Friedman he wanted to send a signal to Saddam Hussein:

"Certainly based on the evidence we have, the people of Iraq would be better off if they had a different ruler. But my job is not to pick their rulers for them. I always tell everybody I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions. If [Saddam] wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior."

 

Non-Actions Speak Louder than Words

In the wake of the firestorm of criticism precipitated by this conciliatory pronouncement, both Mr, Clinton and his Secretary of State-designate, Warren Christopher, disassociated themselves with any notion of taking a softer line toward Saddam than the Bush Administration had done. The President-elect said on January 14th that "I have no intention of normalizing relations with [Saddam]"; for his part, Mr. Christopher pronounced himself "no Baptist" and deeply skeptical of "death-bed conversions."

Still, in its first five months in office, the Clinton policy toward Iraq seems, at best, to have been one of benign neglect. With the exception of allowing a few utterly ineffectual air strikes on missile batteries and the like in response to Iraqi provocations, the Administration has generally appeared determined to ignore the abiding malevolence emanating from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — and the need to complete unfinished business with respect to his continued hold on power.

The most ominous manifestation of this phenomenon has been the Clinton Administration’s response to date to the Iraqi despot’s effort to blow up former President George Bush and most of the other key U.S. Gulf War policy-makers who were travelling with him in Kuwait about a month ago. While the official line is that this matter is still under investigation, the unmistakable signal being sent is that the Clinton team is so determined to avoid becoming bogged down in its own crisis with Iraq that it is inclined to overlook the failed assassination attempt.

The Likely Results of Clinton Mismanagement of the Assassination Attempt

Toward this end, Administration sources have put out the word that the case against Iraq’s assassins now in Kuwaiti custody is less than airtight; that their interrogation at the hands of the authorities in Kuwait was botched and direct evidence of Saddam’s complicity not established. Such leaks are exceedingly pernicious.

The truth of the matter is that U.S. investigators are satisfied that the evidence of official Iraqi involvement in the attempt to kill President Bush is compelling. As this fact becomes public knowledge, the leakers are not going to have thwarted demands for appropriate retaliation — demands already being volubly expressed on Capitol Hill. They will simply have given aid and comfort to those disposed to challenge the legitimacy of any such U.S. retribution when it comes.

The really scary part about this inept U.S. response to the Iraqi assassination attempt is that it is doubtless emboldening Saddam to contemplate further outrages and is terrifying America’s allies in the Persian Gulf who have no interest in opposing the Butcher of Baghdad by themselves. Absent a new policy direction from Washington — including strong and effective action aimed at punishing Saddam Hussein and his clique for this latest act of aggression — the United States will find itself facing a far more dangerous situation in this strategic region even than that which prevailed prior to Desert Storm.

‘Dual Containment’ to the Rescue?

The one ray of hope on this front is that Martin Indyck, the top Middle East policy-maker at the Clinton National Security Council, unveiled last week a major new initiative which he dubbed "dual containment." In an address to the influential Washington Institute for the Near East, Indyck put a very different spin on the idea behind "depersonalizing" the conflict with Iraq:

"…We seek full compliance for all Iraqi regimes. We will not be satisfied with Saddam’s overthrow before we agree to lift sanctions. Rather we will want to be satisfied that any successor government complies fully with all U.N. resolutions. Nor do we seek or expect a reconciliation with Saddam Hussein’s regime…. Our purpose is deliberate: It is to establish clearly and unequivocally that the current regime in Iraq is a criminal regime, beyond the pale of international society and, in our judgment, irredeemable.

 

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security believes that these are both appropriately strong and thoroughly welcome words — particularly since they are accompanied by equally strong comments about the need to contain Iran and the Administration’s determination to do so without falling prey to the oft-repeated mistake of building up Iraq as a counterweight. Indeed, the Indyck speech is one of the most important and impressive foreign policy addresses in recent memory; it should be required reading for anyone with an interest not only in the region most immediately involved, but with U.S. security policy more generally. (The attached excerpts offer some of the highlights of this 18 March address.)

The question is: Will the Administration actually implement the policy so well enunciated by Martin Indyck? The place to start is with a powerful blow in retaliation for the attempted murder of a former American head of state. Ideally, this would involve an air strike aimed at destroying some of the as-yet-largely-unscathed bases of Saddam’s power — his security apparatus, the Republican Guards, the Air Force and other military headquarters.